I am professor of philosophy at the University of New England. I earned my M.A. from Antioch University and my Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of London, Kings College.

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My books include Freud's Philosophy of the Unconscious (Kluwer, 1999), Approaching Psychoanalysis: An Introductory Course  (Karnac, 1999), Psychoanalysis in Focus (Sage, 2002), Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind (St. Martin's Press, 2004), The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War (St. Martin's Press, 2007),  Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others (St. Martin's Press, 2011), which won the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for nonfiction, and an edited volume entitled How Biology Shapes Philosophy. My new book, On Inhumanity:  Dehumanization and How to Resist It will be published by Oxford University Press in June, 2020. I am currently working on Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, which will be published by Harvard University Press.

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I speak widely at both academic and non-academic settings, and my work has been featured extensively in the national and international media. I have been featured in several prime-time television documentaries, and I am often interviewed for newspapers, magazines and radio. In 2012, in was a guest at the G20 economic summit, where I spoke on dehumanization and mass violence.