2025 Summer Program at
Princeton (6/8-14) & Swarthmore (7/27-8/2)

Introduction to Reason & Rationality

Meet the Founding Team

Peter Bach-y-Rita
DEAN OF ACADEMICS & CO-FOUNDER

Peter Bach-y-Rita: Ph.D., MIT (Philosophy), J.D. Stanford Law School, A.B. Princeton University (Philosophy with highest honors).

  • Dr Bach-y-Rita's dissertation at MIT was at the intersection of ethics, biology and technology, exploring what it means for body parts and human artefacts to have "function" (in the sense that the function of the heart is to pump blood). Dr Bach-y-Rita's 2021 article entitled 

    The Causal Mechanism Theory of Legal Causation (Ratio Juris · Mar 1, 2021)

    argued that the concept of proximate causation used in the law is implicitly based on the concept of a causal mechanism familiar in biology and other sciences.  

    Dr. Bach-y-Rita has had a successful legal career by figuring out class action legal theories that others missed by paying close attention to the wording of laws, a skill learned through his study of philosophy. Dr. Bach-y-Rita practiced for ten years at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. He then independently researched an antitrust claim that recently returned almost $300 million to consumers. 

    While continuing to practice as a class action attorney, Dr. Bach-y-Rita is passionate about helping high school students from all backgrounds to access the same opportunities that he had. He developed the Reason & Rationality curriculum as a crash course in critical thinking, presentation skills, and the intellectual canon that is recognized and influential across elite circles in technology, finance, and law.

    Dr. Bach-y-Rita previously served on the board of directors of Mount Tamalpais College (formerly the Prison University Project), which provides an associates degree program for people in San Quentin State Prison.

Program Impact

Donald Sung
PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER

Donald graduated from St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH as valedictorian and attended Harvard College, where he majored in

  • Comparative Literature and Philosophy with a minor in Mathematics, graduating with magna cum laude. He attended The University of Chicago Law School where he served as the editor-in-chief of The Phoenix and studied with several Law and Economics luminaries, including Ronald Coase and Richard Posner.

    After law school Donald worked in New York City as a corporate tax lawyer (incidentally, at the same law firm where Barack and Michelle Obama worked). After a year, Donald pivoted to investment banking, joining Morgan Stanley in their equity derivatives trading desk. Donald worked at Morgan Stanley for 9 years in their New York and London offices and was involved in several landmark innovative financing and M&A transactions. After Morgan Stanley, Donald worked as a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank and Nomura, and as a Partner at Lazard Freres in corporate finance, capital markets and M&A. After 20 years in investment banking, Donald worked in two tech startups in the Bay Area as a founder and executive. Donald currently works as a partner at a hedge fund/family office.

    Donald has served on the boards of several nonprofit organizations, including The Cathedral School for Boys in San Francisco (Executive Committee), Belvedere Tennis Club (President) and Church of the Incarnation (Chair). Don is fluent in Korean and conversant in Spanish and Italian. Having seriously considered going to film school, Don is a lifelong film buff.

Thriving Under Uncertainty

James B. Estes
PROJECT DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER

Project Director & Co-Founder of Reason & Rationality LLC. Previous work roles include: Data Analyst at Clix Capital,

  • a leading fintech company in India providing efficient loan solutions for underserved micro and small enterprises unable to access loans due to lack of credit ratings; Summer Intern at FarmWorks, a Kenyan agricultural company helping smallholder farms increase yields 3-4X and profitability 6-8X via enhanced farming techniques and aggregated leverage; Intern at EarSight LLC, an AI tech company that was spun out of the Stanford AI department, which developed an APP designed to help students with dyslexia and other reading challenges to achieve grade level reading fluency; Teaching Assistant for a philosophy program at Cathedral School of Boys in San Francisco. 

    Publications: Harvard Business Review – ‘The 4 Key Strengths of China’s Economy — and What They Mean for Multinational Companies’ – Co-Author;  Open Journal of Philosophy – ‘Empirical Evidence Reveals the Motivation of Subjects Who Switch Tracks in the Trolley Loop Case’ – Sole Author.

    Senior at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. Harvard Prize Book Award Winner: Awarded by St. Paul’s on behalf of Harvard Alumni Association to one ‘outstanding student in the next-to-graduating class who displays excellence in scholarship and high character, combined with achievement in other fields.’ AAIC National Chinese Speech Contest Winner: Won the national contest in 2023 in the Heritage Language Group (highest level) for grades 9-12.

Curiosity & Critical Thinking

STUDENT EXPERIENCE

PARENT PERSPECTIVES

  • PHILOSOPHY

    Students will tackle philosophical problems with current relevance, including: What is the dollar value of a human life? What is the difference between the political right and the political left? What is "bullshit" and why do people generate so much of it? The philosophy unit also focuses on probability theory and will introduce students to Bayes' Rule for updating probabilities in the face of new evidence.    

    "A background in philosophy is more important for entrepreneurship than an MBA."  

    —Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn

  • ECONOMICS

    The economics curriculum transforms Micro 101 into an entertaining salon style discussion covering such topics as supply and demand, elasticity, and marginal and total utility. In the 2024 election cycle, both presidential candidates have proposed eliminating the tax on tips. Students will learn how to analyze supply and demand to determine whether this policy would enrich restaurant workers or rather the owners that employ them.

    "Economics is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions."

    — John Maynard Keynes

  • ETHICS

    The ethics unit includes a basic introduction to Utilitarian and Deontological theories of ethics but focuses on helping students to think about the ways in which economics shapes our ethical norms around private property, parental relationships and bodily autonomy. 

    "I find this in all these places I've been travelling - from India to China, to Japan and Europe and to Brazil - there is a frustration with the terms of public discourse, with a kind of absence of discussion of questions of justice and ethics and of values.”

    —Michael Sandel, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University

Glimpse into class

Our classes introduce students to the joy of friendly but rigorous intellectual conversation. Students will cover core concepts in philosophy, logic, politics, and economics. By the end, students will have developed intelligent conversational techniques, think intensely about ethical and policy questions, and be able to hold good natured conversations that pursue an objective.