Faculty fellows in ethics named

The Center for Ethics and the Professions has selected the Faculty Fellows in Ethics for the 2000-01 academic year. Six scholars who study ethical problems in government, law, medicine, and public policy were chosen from a pool of applicants from colleges, universities, and professional institutions throughout the United States and 25 other countries.

Martha Minow, professor of law, who will be acting director of the Center while Dennis F. Thompson is on sabbatical leave, was enthusiastic about the results of this year’s process. “This promises to be one of the most stimulating and impressive groups of Fellows,” she said. The Fellows will be joined in the Center Seminar by Catherine Elgin, professor of philosophy at the Graduate School of Education.

The Fellows will be in residence, beginning in September, to conduct research on issues related to ethics within their respective fields and to participate in seminars on ethical issues that arise in public and professional life. They will participate in a wide range of activities throughout the University, including the Center seminars, curricular development, collaborative research, study groups, case-writing workshops, and clinical programs.

In addition, seven Harvard graduate students have been named Graduate Fellows in Ethics (including the Eugene P. Beard Graduate Fellows in Ethics and the Edmond J. Safra Graduate Fellows in Ethics). Under the direction of Arthur Applbaum, professor of ethics and public policy, the Graduate Fellows will pursue philosophical topics relevant to political and professional practice.

The Faculty Fellows in Ethics are as follows:

Maria Canellopoulou Bottis currently teaches law at Ionian University, Corfu, Greece, and is the editor of the Ionian Law Review. During the Fellowship year, she plans to research ethical and legal issues related to organ and tissue transplants, and hopes to complete a book on transplants.

Steven Joffe is currently completing a Fellowship in the Program in Clinical Effectiveness at Children’s Hospital. During the fellowship year he plans to complete a study of the relationships between trust, autonomy, and respect in determining patients’ evaluations of care.

Lukas H. Meyer is a Wissenschaftlicher Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Theory at the University of Bremen, Germany. During his fellowship year, he plans to complete a book on historical justice, with special attention to a normative theory of the individual and collective responsibilities of presently living people based on what they have inherited from past people. A current project is his work, as co-editor and contributor, on a book of essays tentatively titled Rights, Society, and the Law. Essays after Joseph Raz.

Steven D. Pearson is a general internist and assistant professor of ambulatory care and prevention at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. During his fellowship year, he will complete a book describing the results of an investigation on exemplary ethical policies of health plans in managed care. He will also pursue work on evolving types of conflict of interest for physicians.

Amnon Reichman is co-author of “The Israeli Discourse on Torture: Domestic and International Aspects,” forthcoming in a collection of essays on torture as tort. Current projects include “Overlooking the Common Law,” a law review article that develops a framework to analyze discrimination under the common law, and “A Charter-Free Domain,” which investigates the interplay between the different legal regimes that comprise the “law” and, in particular, between the common law and the Constitution. He plans to complete a book examining the practice of constitutional adjudication as a site of professional discourse, and the relationship between the professional discourse and other forms of political deliberation.

Andrew D. Williams teaches moral and political philosophy at the University of Warwick, England, where he is a research fellow in public philosophy, and co-director of the masters program in Philosophy. He has recently written on economic incentives, unconditional basic income, and political liberalism, and co-edited (with Matthew Clayton) a collection of essays: The Ideal of Equality. During his Fellowship year, he will work on “Procreative Justice,” a monograph examining how the benefits and burdens produced by individual reproductive decisions should be distributed.

The Graduate Fellows in Ethics are as follows:

Bryan Garsten has been named an Edmond J. Safra Graduate Fellow in Ethics. He is a Ph.D. candidate in government and his dissertation investigates the place of political rhetoric in contemporary, ancient, and modern conceptions of politics. Since returning to Harvard he has taught constitutional government and moral reasoning, and he recently participated in the Writing Fellows Program at the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

Jill Horwitz is a Ph.D. candidate in health policy, concentrating in ethics. She will serve concurrently as a Hauser Center Fellow for Doctoral Studies in the Nonprofit Sector. Horwitz’s dissertation explores the behavioral, ethical, and legal implications of corporate organizational form of American hospitals.

Aaron James is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy. His dissertation concerns the objectivity of normative judgments. It first proposes an account of what it is for a judgment about practical reasons to be objectively correct, and then defends a view about practical reasons that explains how judgments about them could be objective in this sense. James has also been a teaching fellow for courses in moral philosophy for Harvard’s Department of Philosophy and Core Program.

Madeline Kochen has been named an Edmond J. Safra Graduate Fellow in Ethics. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in political philosophy, ethics and Jewish law at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and is exploring the ethical issues surrounding the commodification of actions and property that might be considered sacred.

Tamara Metz, a Ph.D. candidate in government, has been named a Eugene P. Beard Graduate Fellow in Ethics. Her dissertation aims to clarify and critically assess the challenges posed by marriage as a political institution in a liberal democratic polity. At Harvard, she was awarded the Judith Shklar Memorial Fellowship. She has been a teaching fellow for courses in moral reasoning, political theory, and American Government, and served as an academic adviser to undergraduates in government. She received a Certificate of Distinction from Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

John M. Parrish is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of government. His research focuses on problems at the intersection of ethics and political theory, especially the so-called problem of “dirty hands” in early modern political thought. At Harvard he has taught courses on the history of modern political thought as well as American political thought and contemporary political theory. He presently serves on the Government Department’s graduate student committee.

Peter Spiegler, a Ph.D. candidate in economics, has been named a Eugene P. Beard Graduate Fellow in Ethics. His research focuses on the ethical implications of economic theory and practice. During his fellowship year he will examine the legitimacy of the claim that economics can and should be a purely positive science, as well as the implications of malleable preferences for the content and meaning of revealed preference utility theory.

The Fellows are selected by a University committee with representatives from several of the Harvard professional schools and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences: Martha Minow (Law School), Tim Scanlon (Philosophy), Lynn Peterson (Medical School), Michael Sandel (Government Department), Joseph Badaracco (Business School), and Dennis Thompson, director, University Center for Ethics and the Professions and Committee Chair. The Fellows join a growing community of teachers and scholars dedicated to the study of ethics. In addition to the Faculty Fellowships and Graduate Fellowships in Ethics, the Center sponsors a public lecture series on applied and professional ethics, and cosponsors, with the President’s Office, the University-wide Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

The Center, established in 1986, is one of the University’s interfaculty initiatives under the auspices of the Provost’s Office. It encourages teaching and research about ethical issues in public and professional life and aims to help meet the growing need for teachers and scholars who address questions of moral choice in schools of business, education, government, law, and medicine. The Center draws on the intellectual resources of the entire University, including the schools of business, design, divinity, education, government, law, medicine, and public health. Leading faculty in moral and political philosophy and social and political theory, as well as those from each of the professional schools and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, provide counsel to the participants in the Center. Also contributing to the Center are many of the activities of the professional schools, including the Program on the Legal Profession (Law School), the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (Kennedy School of Government), the Charles Francis Adams Distinguished Fellows (Business School), the Fellowships in Medical Ethics (Division of Medical Ethics at the Medical School), the Francois Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (School of Public Health), and the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life (Divinity School).