Murphy Institute Welcomes New Faculty to Campus
The Murphy Institute welcomed four new faculty members for the 2026-27 academic year, expanding its expertise in philosophy, political economy, law, and political science. Jason Lee Byas, Walker Kahn, Melissa Pavlik, and Alexander Schaefer join Tulane’s campus from leading universities and research institutions across the country, bringing scholarship that spans ethics, political violence, social and moral institutions, consumer debt, housing insecurity and the political economy of climate change.
Jason Lee Byas
Jason Lee Byas joined Tulane as an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and The Murphy Institute's Center for Ethics. He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and sociology from the University of Oklahoma, a master's degree in philosophy from Georgia State University and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Michigan.
Prior to joining Tulane, he was a Junior Faculty Fellow at Georgetown University and affiliated with the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets & Ethics. His research focuses on criminal punishment and alternatives to punishment, as well as reparations, political economy, war, and the philosophical dimensions of political action.
This fall, Byas teaches PECN 3030: The Individual, Society and State, a multidisciplinary examination of major political ideologies and their historical applications.
Walker Kahn
Tulane Law School and The Murphy Institute's Center for Law and the Economy welcomed Walker Nelson Kahn as an assistant professor of law.
Kahn's research combines machine learning and ethnographic methods to study how civil courts adjudicate consumer debt cases. His work focuses on foreclosure litigation, procedural due process, access to justice, and housing precarity. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation's Law and Science Dissertation Grant and was recognized with the Ronald Burt Student Paper Award from the American Sociological Association.
Kahn earned both his JD and PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and previously served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.
This academic year, he is teaching PECN 3020: Political Economy: Historical Overview, which examines how Western societies and thinkers have understood the relationship between politics and economics from the fifteenth century to the present.
Melissa Pavlik
Melissa Pavlik joined The Murphy Institute and the Department of Political Science as an assistant professor in July 2026. She earned her PhD in political science from Yale University in 2026. Before beginning her doctoral studies, she spent several years mapping and analyzing political violence for nongovernmental organizations, conflict observatories and think tanks, including the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). Her analysis has appeared in publications such as The Washington Post's Monkey Cage, World Politics Review, and Foreign Policy.
Pavlik's research examines the political economy and geography of informality, the consequences of climate adaptation, and the dynamics of repression and political violence, particularly in West Africa. Her recent research investigates how states use uneven patterns of enforcement to create precarity among populations displaced by conflict and climate change, often enabling exploitation by non-state actors. The work is informed by extensive field research conducted in Lagos, Nigeria.
This year, Pavlik teaches a capstone-style course, PECN 6000: Major Seminar in Political Economy, that explores major themes and questions that cross disciplinary boundaries, including capitalism, democracy, economic behavior, work, industrialization and social change.
Alexander Schaefer
Tulane’s Department of Philosophy and Murphy’s Center for Ethics welcomed Alexander Schaefer as an assistant professor of philosophy. His work lies at the intersection of philosophy, politics, and economics and explores social and political philosophy, political economy and the history of political and economic thought. A central focus of his work is how social and moral institutions emerge and endure over time.
Schaefer earned his PhD in philosophy, along with a doctoral minor in economic theory, from the University of Arizona. Before joining Tulane, he held academic appointments at SUNY Buffalo and New York University. His scholarship has appeared in leading journals, including American Journal of Political Science, Economics and Philosophy, Synthese, Philosophy of Science and The Philosophical Quarterly.
Like Byas, Schaefer teaches PECN 3030: The Individual, Society and State, helping students explore the connections between political ideas, institutions and social change.
Together, these new faculty members bring a wide range of expertise that reflects The Murphy Institute's commitment to multidisciplinary scholarship and teaching. Their research and classroom engagement will contribute to the institute's mission of exploring the complex relationships among politics, economics, ethics, and society.