David Schweickart is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. His primary areas of research are social and political philosophy, philosophy and economics, and Marxism. His main focus has been on developing and defending, as both economically viable and ethically desirable, a socialist alternative to capitalism, which he calls Economic Democracy. His research includes a large project on Third World poverty, determining what sort of economic structure a poor country should put in place in order to optimize genuine development over time for all its citizens, when not constrained by local elites or international interference. He is the author of three books and co-author of one. He holds a PhD in Mathematics (University of Virginia) and a PhD in Philosophy (Ohio State University).