A graduate of the Van Andel Graduate School for Statesmanship received a major award for his dissertation on global justice theory last month.
The American Political Science Association presented Stephen Goniprow, visiting assistant professor of politics, with the award for the Best Dissertation in American Political Thought.
“It’s a special feeling to know that your academic peers have recognized your work,” Goniprow said.
He received the award at the APSA’s annual convention in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Sept. 11. Kevin Slack, associate professor of politics, was Goinprow’s dissertation chair, and John Grant, associate professor of politics, and Tom West, professor of politics, served as readers.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Kevin Slack, Tom West, and John Grant for their contributions to this project,” Goniprow said. “It was Dr. Slack who introduced me to the topic of global justice theory, and it was Drs. West and Grant who introduced me to the American foreign policy tradition. Without their guidance, this dissertation wouldn’t have turned out as well as it did.”
Goniprow completed his undergraduate degree at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 2014. He attended graduate school at Hillsdale and completed his doctorate at the Van Andel Graduate School in 2024.
APSA, which is the flagship association for political science and political scientists, presents the award biannually, according to Slack.
“This is the most prestigious award for a dissertation in the field of American political thought,” Slack said.
Grant said that Goniprow deserved the award.
“Steve’s dissertation was exemplary, and it reflects great credit especially upon Steve, his first reader Dr. Slack, and the graduate program,” Grant said in an email.
The dissertation, titled “An Introduction to Global Justice Theory,” distilled an entire field of thinkers into its most important ideas, according to Slack.
“He wrote very carefully,” Slack said. “The writing was excellent, and it needed very little correction. So it was just an excellent dissertation.”
Grant said that Goniprow’s dissertation demonstrated “originality, depth, and clarity.”
“Working with Steve was a great experience,” Grant said. “He was a very fine student, and he really went to a whole other level in his work on the dissertation. His work ethic and care in crafting a cogent, intellectually rich, and precise argument ensured that I had a great experience as a reader.”
In the late 1900s, many thinkers proposed different theories of global justice, according to Slack. Global justice theory claims that unequal starting positions, such as a family’s wealth, dictate an individual’s opportunities in life, and attempts to solve this problem on an international level.
“Steve’s description of 1970s international relations was very helpful,” Slack said. “He includes a lot of historical information that helps explain some of the political divides of the time. I would say, one of the most impressive things about what Steve did was he was able to summarize.”
Goniprow said his dissertation was an analysis of global justice theory, not advocacy for or against the theory.
In the dissertation, Goniprow argued that John Rawls was a point of departure for global justice theory. In his book “A Theory of Justice,” Rawls tries to work out a theory that narrows the range of starting positions in a nation, according to Goniprow.
“Rawls is one of the thinkers in global justice that is cited very heavily,” Slack said. “However, many of those citing Rawls are critical of Rawls, because he didn’t apply his own domestic theory of justice to a global theory of justice. And then what Steve does, it’s very interesting to me, is he talks about how Rawls’ views changed over time.”
Global justice theorists argue for wealth transfers from the West to third world countries. They also advocate for open borders, and occasionally advocate for global political institutions to enforce wealthier nations fulfilling their obligations to less fortunate countries, according to Goniprow.
The theorists who write on global justice are animated by deep resentment over an unhappy fact, Goniprow argued in his dissertation.
“We live in a world where one’s life chances are largely determined by something that’s arbitrary, the accident of birthplace, one’s nationality, and they think it should violate your sense of fairness that Americans have the unearned privilege of being born into material abundance, while others are sentenced to a life of near inescapable destitution through no fault of their own,” Goniprow said. “And so the overarching theme in the global justice literature is that we should move to a world in which an individual’s choices matter more to how their life goes and their nationality matters less.”
