Jennifer Morton

Jennifer M. Morton is Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania with a secondary appointment at the Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on how poverty and social class shape our agency. Her book Moving Up Without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility argues that first-generation and low-income students often must make ethical sacrifices to pursue upward mobility through education. It was awarded the Grawemeyer Award in Education, the Frederic W. Ness Book Award, and selected as Princeton President Eisgruber’s Pre-Read for the Class of 2025. Morton has received the American Philosophical Association’s Scheffler Prize for her work in the philosophy of education. She has been a Laurance S. Rockefeller Faculty Fellow at the Princeton Center for Human Values. In 2023-2024, Morton will be a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences. Her current project aims to develop a philosophical account of how poverty undermines our agency and shapes our capacity to aspire, value, and lead flourishing lives. Morton was born and grew up in Lima, Peru.