Robin Sleigh Dillon
Dr. Robin Sleigh Dillon is the William Wilson Selfridge Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics at Lehigh University. Her career as a philosopher was presaged in high school by participation on the debate team, where she first learned the power of reasoning, and in the junior and senior class plays, where she learned how to see things from others’ perspectives. After attending Lafayette College for two years, she transferred to the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned her B.A. (1977) and Ph.D. (1987) in philosophy. She joined the faculty of Lehigh University’s Department of Philosophy in 1987. She has also had visiting appointments at the University of North Carolina and Moravian College. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Andre," Mellon Foundation, the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation, and the American Association of Academic Women Educational Foundation, and she received Lehigh’s Stabler Award for teaching excellence.
Dillon served as the chairperson of the Lehigh Philosophy Department from 2008-2017; in 2017, she became the inaugural director of Lehigh’s new Center for Ethics, where she is responsible for creating the Center, shaping its mission and programs, and recruiting faculty and students into an Ethics Community.
Dillon is an internationally recognized philosopher whose scholarly work in ethics focuses on self-respect. Her interest lies in clarifying the moral nature and value of self-respect and its relation to other significant things such as respect for others, self-esteem, arrogance, humility, self-forgiveness, being a good person, and living a meaningful life. She has published three edited volumes and dozens of articles in philosophy journals, as well as entries on her focal topics in the leading encyclopedias of philosophy. Dillon has given talks at nearly a hundred universities and conferences around the world, and her work has been the subject of numerous Ph.D. dissertations. She is currently working on a book on arrogance, which will be the first philosophical monograph on the subject.
Dillon is married to James Dillon, who is the Global Engineering Leader for Honeywell Building Solutions. They have a daughter, Heather, who is senior accountant at the University of Delaware, and a grandson, Trevor, who is a student at UDel.