Scholarship and Biography
Rajesh completed his PhD at the University of California, Irvine in the humanities with a concentration in modern continental European philosophies of history and critical theory at the Critical Theory Institute. He studied under the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, the founder of deconstruction. Rajesh's areas of specialization centered on the philosophy of history, historical time, and epochal shifts. Subsequently, he did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley and a D.A.A.D. research scientist fellowship in Germany where he published articles in continental European philosophy.
His current research interests and disciplinary expertise include: twentieth century Anglo-American and continental European moral and political philosophy, philosophical theories of modernization and social-historical change as it affects modalities of social exclusion and inclusion, and comparisons of Western philosophy and various philosophical traditions in the Global South and East. Teaching interests include Social Theory, Critical Race Theory/Intersectionality, Global Queer and Gender studies, Bioethics, Anglo-American, European and Global South traditions of philosophical ethics, human rights, and theories of justice when applied to sustainable development issues.
In addition to publishing in peer-reviewed academic journals and book chapters in scholarly anthologies, Rajesh has written an op ed. for The Washington Post, a letter to the Editor for the NY Times, a short article for The Conversation, and blogs for The Huffington Post on various topics in comparative constitutional law, public and social policy. He appeared on a panel on Huff Post Live that discussed diversity, rights and free speech at American university campuses. He appeared on Al Jazeera America's Sunday evening news to analyze the 2015 Indian Supreme Court hearing on LGBTQ rights. Most recently, he was interviewed for a feature on Critical Race Theory on WBZ's Boston affiliate for CBS news. In April of 2019, he was part of small group of individuals invited for a summit in Dakar, Senegal. The gathering included Members of Parliaments of African governments, heads of African regions for Amnesty International, advisers to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on minority rights, and executives from several major international NGOs. The goal was to explore conditions to produce a new, historic Declaration calling for a ban against discrimination based on descent and work (DWD): that would include modern forms of slavery, caste and other similar, intergenerational, hereditary-based hierarchical systems across different societal, cultural, national, and regional contexts in Africa, South Asia, Asia, which are not covered within existing UN Declarations, Conventions, and Treaties. In February 2020, Rajesh participated in a reading of the Arendt-Heidegger letter exchange as part of Dora Garcia's first solo exhibition in North America at the Brandeis University Rose Art Museum.
Rajesh is the Lead Investigator of the Program on Social Exclusion at the Heller School's Center for Global Development and Sustainability. For three weeks in the summer of 2016, Rajesh was a visiting professor in the philosophy department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem under the Brandeis-Israel Collaborative Research grant program funded by Bronfman Philanthropies. He recently joined the editorial advisory boards of the Springer Book Series in International Social Work and the Springer Book Series in Social Work and Social Change.
In the Fall of 2016, he was appointed to be a member of the Brandeis University President's Task Force on Free Expression. In the Spring of 2019, he was invited to join the working group on "Equal Opportunity, Social Impact and Community Engagement"-- one of two working groups that support the Task Force on "Honoring our Founding Values" as part of the Brandeis University President's "Framework of the Future."