Dr. Rashad Rehman

Dr. Rashad Rehman

Assistant Professor of Philosophy; Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics

rrehman@franciscan.edu

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Overview

Dr. Rashad Rehman (Ph.D. University of Toronto, Department of Philosophy & Joint Center for Bioethics) serves on the Franciscan University faculty as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy (Graduate Status Faculty) and is Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics, with primary research concentration in Bioethics, specifically areas concerning (biological) sex, gender, and surgery.

Bio

Dr. Rehman is a professionally trained bioethicist. During his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto where he completed the Collaborative Specialization in Bioethics, he had a Paediatric Urologist and Professor of Surgery serving as full committee member (alongside the philosophers), served as a TCPS2-certified student-observer on the Social Science, Humanities and Education Research Ethics Board (SSHE REB) at The University of Toronto, a Research Volunteer at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) under a Critical Care Physician, and Bioethics Research Volunteer at Mount Sinai Hospital under a Junior and Senior Bioethicist.

Beyond Bioethics, Dr. Rehman is a Josef Pieper scholar, and has defended, in various places in-print and in his speaking, Pieper’s elegantly simple, humane, and plausible account of the philosophical act and the metaphysical primacy and mystery of creatura in St. Thomas Aquinas. Dr. Rehman has also created and taught, at Franciscan, the first ever semester-long course in the English-speaking world devoted to the philosophical writings of Pieper, Philosophical Texts of Josef Pieper (430A). Dr. Rehman is currently preparing a book-length manuscript on the philosophical thought of Pieper with Cambridge University Press, (tentatively) entitled Josef Pieper and the Platonizing of Thomistic Epistemology.

With a heart for the Franciscan mission especially as a convert to Catholicism from Islam, Dr. Rehman is passionate about serving Christ in his teaching, research, and service. Dr. Rehman is married to the love of his life, Em, and together they have three children, their precious Edith, little arc-builder Noah, and their beloved daughter on the way. 

Fun fact, Dr. Rehman has done freestyle BMX biking for 17 years. 

Publications
  • “Sex is Biological, Binary, and Immutable” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, 26.1 (2026), 13-9.
  • “The Case Against Surgical Moratoria on Intersex Pediatric Surgery” The Linacre Quarterly, 93.3 (2026), 312-324.
  • “Five New Principles to Govern Intersex Pediatric Surgery: A Reply to Behrens” The Linacre Quarterly, 93.2 (2025), 148-158.
  • “Intersex-Selective Abortion is a Problem for Everyone” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, 24.2 (2024), 219-221.
  • “‘Intersex’ Does not Refute the Sex Binary” The Linacre Quarterly, 90.2 (2023), 145-154.