Iris Marion Young [1949–2006] "was Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago at the time of her death. She was affiliated with the Gender Studies Center and the Human Rights program. Her research interests were in contemporary political theory, feminist social theory, and normative analysis of public policy. Her books include Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 1990), Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (Indiana University Press, 1990), Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy (Princeton University Press, 1997), and Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2000), [and On Female Body Experience (2004)]....

...Young held a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Pennsylvania State University, 1974. Before coming to the University of Chicago she taught political theory for nine years in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, and before then taught philosophy at several institutions, including the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Miami University. During the summer term of 1995 Young was a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. Young held visiting fellowships at several universities and institutes around the world, including Princeton University, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Australian National University, and the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa." (paraphrased from former faculty website, University of Chicago Law School)

"Iris Marion Young, a leading philosopher called by a colleague 'one of the most important political philosophers of the past quarter-century,' died in her home Tuesday, Aug. 1 after a year-and-a-half long fight with cancer. She was 57.

Young, Professor in Political Science at the University of Chicago since 2000, was known for her work on theories of justice, democratic theory and feminist theory.

'When Iris came to the University she had already established herself as one of the most important feminist thinkers in the world,' said Associate Professor Patchen Markell, a colleague of Young’s in the University of Chicago’s Political Science department. 'She was absolutely unsurpassed in her ability to combine a very high level of philosophical analysis with relevance to contemporary political issues, and to the experiences of women and men who cared about social injustice.'

Young was born January 2, 1949 in New York City. She studied philosophy as an undergraduate at Queens College, where she graduated with honors in 1970, before she went on to earn her masters and doctorate in philosophy in 1974 from Pennsylvania State University.

Early on, Young built a reputation for her teaching and writing on global justice; democracy and difference; continental political theory; ethics and international affairs; and gender, race and public policy. But it was her 1990 book Justice and the Politics of Difference that propelled her to the international stage. It was in that text, a staple in classrooms the world over, that Young critically analyzed the basic concepts underlying most theories of justice, argued for a new conception of justice and urged for the affirmation rather than the suppression of social group difference. More recently she had been working on the issue of political responsibility, and especially on the question of how to conceive of responsibility for large-scale structural injustices that can’t easily be traced back to the doings of any single person or group.

'There is no question in my mind that she is one of the most important political philosophers of the past quarter-century,' said Cass Sunstein, the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago’s Law School and in Political Science. 'She was unexcelled in the world in feminist and leftist political thought, and her work will have an enduring impact.'

Known for her fierce commitment to social justice and her grassroots political activity on causes such as women’s human rights, debt relief for Africa and workers’ rights, Young was praised for being as comfortable working at the street level as she was writing about political theorists Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas.

'She combined a mind that went for the jugular with a passionate commitment to social justice, and the combination produced an absolutely magnificent colleague and an absolutely magnificent political philosopher,' said Jane Mansbridge, Adams Professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. 'She was a committed, decent human being and that informed every aspect of her work.'....

...Young’s popularity [with students] was just as sure among her colleagues, who loved engaging in debate with her as much as they enjoyed watching her play jazz piano at the University’s faculty club, the Quadrangle Club.

“It never ceased to amaze me how someone of such immense scholarly stature and distinction could be so unfailingly generous with her students and so completely egalitarian with her colleagues,” said Sunstein...." (excerpted from online obituary at The University of Chicago News Service website.)