Jennifer Frey
Professional Background
Dr. Jennifer Frey is currently the Dean of the Honors College at the University of Tulsa, with a secondary appointment as professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Previously, she was an Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where she was also a Peter and Bonnie McCausland faculty fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Frey is also a faculty fellow at the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America and a Newbigin Interfaith Fellow with The Carver Project. Prior to her position at the University of South Carolina, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was also a member of the Society for the Liberal Arts. Dr. Frey earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied under John McDowell and Michael Thompson. In addition, she received a B.A. in Philosophy and Medieval Studies (with a Classics minor) at Indiana University-Bloomington.
Dr. Frey’s academic research is primarily in moral psychology and virtue. She has co-edited a volume titled Self-Transcendence and Virtue with her former colleague Candace Vogler, and she is currently finishing up a volume titled Practical Truth with her husband and colleague, Dr. Christopher Frey. A third volume, titled Practical Wisdom, is under contract with Oxford University Press. In 2015, she was awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation, titled “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.” She frequently writes more popular essays and book reviews in places like Breaking Ground, First Things, Image, and The Point. She hosts a philosophy, theology, and literature podcast called Sacred and Profane Love.
Points of Interest
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Aristotelian Virtue Ethics
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Philosophy of Literature
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Moral Psychology and Virtue
Education
PhD, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2012
B.A., Philosophy, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2000, magna cum laude (with a Philosophy and Medieval Studies Minor)
Citation
Written by Fr. Justin Gable, OP, on February 2025 at the Induction in the College of Fellows
Jennifer Frey, spouse and mother, philosopher, educator, loyal daughter of the Church, the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology salutes you.
In his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II declared that, “It is urgently necessary, for the future of society and the development of a sound democracy, to rediscover those essential and innate human and moral values which flow from the very truth of the human being and express and safeguard the dignity of the person: values which no individual, no majority and no state can ever create, modify or destroy, but must acknowledge, respect and promote” (71). The discovery, proposal and elucidation of the essential and innate human values of which St. John Paul spoke has been your great achievement, both in the academy and beyond.
You have insisted that the moral order consists of a practical truth: not only knowing what is true, but living it. It requires the judgment of what is true, but also of what is to be done, and therefore the action whereby judgments are executed. It also requires the courageous and uncompromising spirit that has been yours from an early age.
You have said of Elizabeth Anscombe that she belonged to "the venerable tradition of those who studied their way into the Catholic faith” moved, as she was, by “a deep and enduring commitment to the truth.” It has been a similar deep and enduring commitment to the truth that has placed you in that same venerable tradition. Your early decision to study philosophy and then to ground that study personally led you, through a study of the Church Fathers, especially Augustine, to embrace the Catholic faith and, subsequently, to insist upon the relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition in addressing contemporary philosophical inquiry.
Your academic accomplishments have been many. You presently serve as the inaugural dean of the Honors College at the University of Tulsa with a secondary appointment as professor of philosophy in the department of philosophy and religion. Previously you served as an Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where you were a Peter and Bonnie McCausland Faculty Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. You are Faculty Fellow of the Institute of Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, and have been appointed a Newbigin Interfaith Fellow with the Carver Project, integrating faith and academic research, and a member of the Hope in Higher Education Project of the John Templeton Foundation, which awarded you a multi-million dollar interdisciplinary grant titled, “Virtue, Happiness and the Meaning of Life.” You have co-edited the volume, Transcendence and Virtue, and have co-authored the volumes, Practical Truth and Practical Wisdom, while contributing numerous articles relating to moral philosophy, moral psychology and virtue.
Your contribution has not been limited to the academy. You have contributed articles to such publications as Breaking Ground, First Things, Harper's, Image, The Point, and The Wall Street Journal. You have also made excellent use of social media with your podcast entitled Sacred and Profane Love, in which you investigate the relationship that pertains between practical philosophy and the visual and literary arts.
We are delighted that you have consented to our invitation to enter into the conversations undertaken by our College of Fellows. In grateful recognition of your fidelity to the Catholic faith and your academic and social accomplishments, it is our honor to bestow upon you the degree Doctor of Humane Letters and to appoint you Fellow of the College of Fellows of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology.