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Paul Theodore Pojman ’87

A picture of Paul Pojman

Paul Theodore Pojman ’87, September 20, 2012, in Baltimore, Maryland, from lung cancer. Son of the prominent philosopher Louis Pojman, Paul lived in Denmark, England, and Texas before coming to Reed. After freshman year, he and Chris Lydgate ’90 went to the Holgate Yard and hopped a freight train intending to go to Seattle. Unfortunately, the train was headed the other way and they wound up in Cottage Grove, Oregon, before hitchhiking their way to San Francisco. Paul earned a BA and a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Mississippi and a PhD from Indiana University. He lived in India for two years and was a Hindu monk for seven years. He also was a musician, farmer, and strong chess player. He taught philosophy at Towson University in Baltimore and was active in the university’s environmental studies and science programs. Paul edited his father’s popular anthology textbook, Environmental Ethics, and selected a number of his essays for Food Ethics, which he published in 2011. In the introduction, Paul states that the moral standard his father attempted to live by was “the single greatest influence” on his own life and his thinking on environmental matters. As a community activist, Paul volunteered with Red Emma’s collective, the Towson Towerlight newspaper, the Baltimore Green Currency Association, the Baltimore Free School, and the Baltimore Free Farm. In a remembrance of Paul, we read: “Paul defined himself through the commitments he made to his communities. He sought the company of people interested in enormous undertakings—whether investigating the nature of reality or building a better world—and took pride in contributing to projects of lasting scale and scope.” Survivors include his son, mother, and sister.

Appeared in Reed magazine: September 2013