Dr. Neill spent the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 academic years teaching in the philosophy department at the University of Notre Dame.  He was also a visiting scholar in the Center for Philosophy of Religion.  In 2009 Dr. Neill completed his PhD. degree at Saint Louis University under the direction of Professor James Bohman, the Danforth Professor of Humanities.  Prior to his doctoral studies he received his B.A. in Philosophy and English from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois in 2004.  His dissertation was an exploration of the importance of the character of citizens in the institutions of liberal democracies.

Dr. Neill argued in his dissertation that there is today in liberal democracies a decline in the civic involvement of citizens.  He traced this decline to the fact that some fundamental political theories of past and present (The Federalist, Kant, Gauthier, and Rawls) prioritize the development of institutions over citizens' dispositions.  He then advanced a liberal dispositionalist view as an alternative to institutional priority views and as a way of tracing the success of liberal democracies to a relationship of mutual reinforcement between their institutions and the dispositions of their citizens.  In healthy liberal democracies it is natural for institutions to develop the liberal virtues in citizens.  It is natural in turn for citizens who are practicing the liberal virtues to be positive influences on their institutions.  Dr. Neill analyzed the roles of citizens in institutions, arguing that virtues like autonomy, mutual deference, patriotism, and prudence are the staple excellences of citizenship.  His dissertation concluded with an application to civic education.  Civic education plans that are informed by the virtue-based emphasis of liberal dispositionalism are arguably sufficient to stem the decline in civic involvement in liberal democracies.