Ronald Sundstrom

Ronald R. Sundstrom is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco. He is also the inaugural King-Jones Faculty Fellow for 2025-2026, a member of USF’s African American Studies program, and teaches for the university’s Honors College. His research focuses on the philosophy of race and related areas, including racism, xenophobia, and mixed-race identity; political philosophy and urban policy; and figures in African American political theory, particularly Frederick Douglass. He published several essays and two books in these areas: The Browning of America and The Evasion of Social Justice (SUNY 2008) and Just Shelter: Integration, Gentrification, and Race and Reconstruction (Oxford 2024).

• Social and political philosophy
• Philosophy of race and racism
• African American philosophy
• Asian American philosophy

• Urban Policy and Affairs
• Political philosophy
• African American philosophy
• Frederick Douglass
• Race and racism

• Inaugural King-Jones Faculty Fellow (2025-2026)
• Director of African American Studies (2022-24)

• University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, PhD in Philosophy, 1999
• University of Minnesota, Duluth, BA in Philosophy, 1994
   

• Assistant Professor in Philosophy, University of Memphis

• Inaugural King-Jones Faculty Fellow (2025-2026)
• USF National Endowment for Humanities Chair (2020)
• College of Arts and Sciences Full-Time Faculty Service Award (2017)
• Co-Winner of USF Distinguished Teaching Award (2010)
• Ignatian Service Award, University of San Francisco (2009)

• Just Shelter: Gentrification, Integration, Race & Reconstruction (OUP, 2024)
• The Browning of America & The Evasion of Social Justice (SUNY, 2008).
• "Frederick Douglass," entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• “The Prophetic Tension Between Race Consciousness and the Ideal of Colorblindness,” in To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. eds. Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry (Harvard UP, 2018): 127–145.
• “Xenophobia and Racism,” co-authored with David Haekwon Kim, Critical Philosophy of Race, 2:1 (2014): 20-45.
• “Responsible Mixed-Race Politics,” in Philosophy and the Mixed Race Experience, ed. Tina Fernandes Botts (Lexington Books, 2017): 21–55.