Simeon Ilesanmi earned his PhD from Southern Methodist University and his JD from Wake Forest University School of Law. He teaches courses in comparative ethics, international human rights, religion and law, ethics of war and peace, and African religions. A recipient of many prestigious awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, Harvard University’s Center for the Study of Values in Public Life, the United States Institute of Peace, the Aspen Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. His recent publications include African Perspectives on Human Dignity (2024), co-edited with Brett Scharffs and M. Christian Green, and New Horizons in African Political Theology (2027), co-edited with Ross Kane. He serves on the editorial boards of several learned journals, including the Journal of Religious Ethics. His current and ongoing research interests focus on human rights; the Just War Tradition; and religion, law, and politics in Africa.
JD, Wake Forest University School of Law (2004)
Ph.D., Southern Methodist University (Religious Ethics), 1988-1993
B.A. First Class Honors, University of Ife, Nigeria (Religious Studies), 1987
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
New Horizons in African Political Theology, co-edited with Ross Kane (Routledge, 2027).
African Perspectives on Human Dignity, co-edited with Brett Scharffs and M. Christian Green (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2024).
The Rule of Law and the Rule of God, co-edited with Win-Chiat Lee and J. Wilson Parker (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
“The Gods are not to Blame: An Examination of E. Bolaji Idowu’s Perspective on the Paradox of Religion in Nigeria,” in Under the Shelter of Olodumare (Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press & John Archers Publ., 2014), 337-353.
“Democratic Leadership, Religious Values, and Social Justice: Examining the Ethical Dimensions of Anti-Gay Legislation in Africa,” in Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Contemporary Africa: Leadership in Transformation, ed. Ebenezer Obadare & Wale Adebamwi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 211-234.
“Corruption as a Violation of Human Rights: A Normative Perspective on Nigeria’s Anti-Corruption Law,” in Kenneth Ronald Hope, Sr., David Enweremadu & Oluwafemi Ladapo (eds.), Anti-Corruption Research and Policy-making in Nigeria: Closing the Gap Between Theory and Practice (Abuja: European Union, ICPC/ACAN, UNODC, 2017).
With Kate E. Temoney, “Counter-terrorism and religious violence in Nigeria: A Human Rights Perspective on the Doctrine of Necessity,” in M. Christian Green (ed.), Religion, Law, and Security (Stellenbosch/Oxford: SUN MeDIA/Oxford University Press, 2018), 77-93.
“Recentering Christian Ethics as Comparative Religious Ethics: In Defense of Emancipatory Criticism and Common Morality,” Journal of Religious Ethics 47, 4 (2019)
“Christianity and the representations of modernity in Todd D. Whitmore’s Imitating Christ in Magwi,” Practical Theology vol. 13, 3 (2020)
“Political Atrocities, Moral Injury, and Forgiveness in African Religious Ethics,” Religions Vol. (2020), 1–16.
“New Directions in African Political Theologies,” with Ross Kane, Political Theology (2021)
“Memory, Social Forgetting, and Political Forgiveness in Africa,” in Maria-Sibylla Lotter and Saskia Fischer (eds.), Overcoming Guilt. Forgiveness and other (un)encoded Ways of Moral Repair (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2022), 331-251.
“Issues and Challenges in University Governance and Autonomy: Perspectives from the United States of America Higher Education System,” in Anthony Kola-Olusanya (ed.), The Need for a New Social Contract Between Society and University (Osogbo: Osun State University Press, 2022).
“Christian Realism in the African Context,” in Dallas Gingles, Joshua Mauldin, and Rebekah Miles (eds.), The Future of Christian Realism: International Political Decay and the Crisis of Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield Pub., 2023), 281-302
“The Republic of Dignity: The Nigerian Common Humanity in a Culturally Heterogenous Nigeria,” in Andrew Haruna (ed.), Cultural Commonalities in Nigeria’s Heterogeneity (Ibadan: The Nigerian Academy of Letters & Greenminds Media & Publishers, 2023), 25-49.
“Negotiating Academic Freedom and Religious Sensitivities in a Pluralist Democracy,” Journal of Religious Ethics 51, 1 (2023).
“Religious Ethics and Human Dignity Revolution,” Journal of Religious Ethics 51, 4 (2023), 652-672.
“What Does the Poor Neighbor Need? An African Decolonial/Postcolonial Reading of Bharat Ranganathan’s On Helping One’s Neighbor,” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 106, 4 (2023), 463-477.
“Forgiveness or restitution? A critique of a false dichotomy in African indigenous religious ethics of reconciliation,” in M. Christian Green, Jean-Baptiste Sourou, and Celestin Gnonzion (eds.), Law, Religion, and Reconciliation in Africa (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2024), 353-370.
“Dignity as a right and as a ‘mother’ of rights,” in Brett Scharffs, M. Christian Green, and Simeon O. Ilesanmi (eds.), African Perspectives on Human Dignity (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2024), 63-82.
“The Status and Protection of Non-human Objects in Just War Tradition: A Comparative Analysis from an African Perspective,” in Ebenezer Obadare, Wale Adebanwi and Afe Adogame (eds.), Topographies of African Spirituality (Routledge, 2025), 140–165.
“An Elusive Justice: The Dilemma of Social Ethics Discourse in Contemporary Nigeria,” Nigerian Journal of Christian Studies, 8, 2 (2025).
“The Incomplete Impartiality: The Non-Discrimination Principle in the Nigerian Constitution and Conscience Rights for Civil Workers’ Solemnization of Same-Sex Marriage,” in Amal Idrissi, Rosalind I. J. Hackett et al. (eds.), Law, Religion, and Work in Africa (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2026), 303-318.
“Religious Conflicts and Violence in Nigeria” in Olufemi Vaughan and Nimi Wariboko (eds), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Nigeria, Routledge (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2025), 344-362.
“Christian Realism as Political Theology in the African Context,” in Simeon Ilesanmi and Ross Kane (eds.), New Horizons in African Political Theology (Routledge, 2027).
“Piercing the Veil of Nonjusticiability: A Dignitarian Grounding of Socioeconomic Rights in Africa,” in John Kelsay and Rosemary Kellison (eds.), The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Seventy-Five, forthcoming (New York: Palgrave MacMillan).
- REL 107: Introduction to African Religions
- REL 230: Religion and the U.S. Constitution
- REL 233: Religious Ethics and Moral Problems
- REL 331: Religion and Law
- REL 335: Religious Ethics & the Problem of War
- REL 336: Religious Traditions and Human Rights
- REL 338: Religion, Ethics, & Politics