Tilghman says that one philosopher who she feels “gets it” is a fellow faculty member names Kwame Anthony Appiah. He has written about the nature of ethnic, national, and religious identities. She also says the a good life can be measured by what one can achieve by their natural skills, and how one has treated others.

Transcript: I can’t . . . I don’t think that there is a single person who I would identify. I think there are many people whose ideas in various areas of human endeavor who I really admire. I would say one of them is Kwame Anthony Appiah, who is a faculty member at Princeton who has written, I think, quite brilliantly about an issue that I think is extraordinarily important, which is the nature of identity and how we translate our national identities, our ethnic identities, our religious identities into living in a cosmopolitan world. So there is something who is a philosopher and who I greatly admire.