Nancy Sherman is Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, where she has taught since 1989. She has an affiliate appointment with Georgetown Law’s Center on National Security and the Law. From 1997-1999, she served as the inaugural Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the U. S. Naval Academy, helping to design and teach the brigade-wide military ethics course, and laying the groundwork for the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the Naval Academy. She is an expert in ethics, Greco-Roman philosophy, the history of moral philosophy, moral psychology, military ethics, and emotions.
Sherman is a New York Times Notable Author. Her books include Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience (Oxford, 2021); Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of our Soldiers (Oxford, 2015); The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of our Soldiers (W.W. Norton, 2010); Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind (Oxford, 2005); Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue (Cambridge, 1997); The Fabric of Character: Aristotle's Theory of Virtue, (Oxford 1989). She is also the editor of Critical Essays on the Classics: Aristotle's Ethics, (Rowman and Littlefield, 1999). She has published over 60 articles and has delivered more than 60 named or endowed lectures and keynote or plenary addresses here and abroad.
Sherman has received many prestigious honors recognizing her work, including election to the American Academy of Arts&Sciences, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Wilson Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council for Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, the Yale Whitney Humanities Center, the Newcombe Fellowship of the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts. She has been part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Veterans Affairs Working Group, has advised the Army and Marine Corps as well as the Veterans Administration on suicide prevention and issues of moral injury and mental health, and in 2005 visited Guantanamo Bay Detention Center as part of an independent observer team assessing the medical and mental health care of detainees.
Sherman received her B.A. magna cum laude with honors from Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. from Harvard where she received the George Plympton Adam Prize for the most distinguished dissertation in the area of history of philosophy. She also holds an M.Litt. from the University of Edinburgh. She was an Assistant and Associate Professor at Yale before joining the faculty at Georgetown. Sherman has research training in psychoanalysis from the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. Sherman is a frequent contributor to the media. She has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Chronicle for Higher Education, New Statesman, and contributes frequently to many other media outlets. She is a frequent guest on a broad range of podcasts.