With deep sadness we inform you of the death of our colleague and member of the CTRT coordinating Committee, Prof. Eduardo Mendieta, on December 17, 2025, from complications of cancer. He was 61 years old.

Eduardo Mendieta was a deeply influential and productive scholar and writers whose work forged new pathways and connections between the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, Latinx philosophy, critical race theory, and decolonial theory. He was a remarkably curious and energetic thinker, and to the end of his life remained deeply engaged with a remarkably broad and diverse range of academic partners and collaborators. From the beginning of his career, his work was distinctive in its energy, its quality of incisiveness and compassion, and his steadfast insistence that philosophy matters for global justice. The body of work he leaves behind is a testament to the many areas of contemporary social and political philosophy he moved between and connected, and the countless colleagues and interlocutors he influenced.

Eduardo Mendieta was born in Pereira, Colombia in 1963. After moving to the United States, he received his B.A. in philosophy from Rutgers University and an M.A. in Systematic Theology from the Union Theological Seminar, a preparation that grounded a lifelong interest in the intersection between philosophy and theology both in the form of South American liberation theology and in debates over the role of religion in critical theory. He received his PhD in philosophy from the New School for Social Research under the direction of Richard Bernstein.

After an initial position at the University of San Francisco, Eduardo joined the faculty at Stony Brook University, where he remained until his move to Penn State University in 2015.

Among his voluminous scholarship are three books. His first, The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy: Karl-Otto Apel's Semiotics and Discourse Ethics (2002) is among the very few English-language studies of Apel's work in its relationship to Habermasian philosophy. Global Fragments; Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory, forged new and lasting connections between critical theory and Latin American philosophy. His last book is a profound meditation on the dynamic relationship between the human and the animal across multiple texts and authors in the tradition of critical theory. The Philosophical Animal: On Zoopoetics and Interspecies Cosmopolitanism (2024) is a bold and exhilarating work, showcasing his mastery of multiple traditions of critical theory. 

Eduardo leaves behind a remarkable number of colleagues, friends, advisees, and former students. He will be deeply missed.

A GoFundMe campaign has been established to raise money for the Eduardo Mendieta Memorial Prize. The prize, accompanied by a small cash award, will be awarded each year to an outstanding graduate student paper at the Critical Theory Roundtable to honor Eduardo's memory and passion for ciritical theory, and to support and recognize the rising generation of critical theory scholars.