Safra Foundation Center names faculty fellows

The Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics (formerly the Center for Ethics and the Professions) recently announced its Faculty Fellows in Ethics for the 2004-05 academic year. The fellows, who study ethical problems in business, government, law, medicine, and public policy, were selected from a pool of applicants from universities and professional institutions throughout the United States and 17 other countries.

Under the direction of acting director Arthur Applbaum, professor of ethics and public policy at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), the fellows will conduct research on ethical issues within their own fields, and will participate in seminars on ethical issues in public and professional life. Fred Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, will serve as the center’s visiting professor in ethics.

The faculty fellows are as follows:

Jennifer S. Hawkins is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. Her interests are in philosophical approaches to well-being, autonomy, and practical reasoning; as well as in clinical research ethics and medical decision making. Her current project, a book for which she is both a contributor and a co-editor, is “Exploitation and the Dilemmas of Multi-National Clinical Research.” During her fellowship, Hawkins will write a series of papers on the concept of well-being and its role in both ethical theory and medical ethics.

Deborah Hellman is a professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law. Her research focuses on articulating a theory of discrimination that would describe criteria for distinguishing wrongful from permissible

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Additional information about the Safra Foundation

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discrimination. Her publications have appeared in several law journals. She will develop a book that argues that it is the social meaning or expressive dimension of governmental action that ought to matter in determining both its moral and legal permissibility. Hellman has been named the Eugene P. Beard Faculty Fellow in Ethics.

Simon Keller is an assistant professor of philosophy at Boston University. His main interests are in ethics and political philosophy, and he has also published on topics in metaphysics and the history of philosophy. During his fellowship, he will work on a book about the differences in nature and moral significance between different kinds of love, including romantic love, filial love, and patriotism.

Catherine Lu is an assistant professor of political science at McGill University in Montreal. She is interested in international political theory and ethics, cosmopolitanism and its critics, and the relationship between philosophy and literature. Her publications have appeared in several journals. During her fellowship, she will work on a book titled “Great Transformations: Moral Regeneration in World Politics,” about the normative issues of justice and reconciliation after international violence, atrocity, war, and oppression.

Kenneth Mack (J.D. ’91) is an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School (HLS), where he has taught since 2000. His scholarly work focuses on the relationship between identity and civil rights lawyering in early 20th century America. He has published in the Cornell Law Review, Law and Social Inquiry, and is included in anthologies of interdisciplinary legal scholarship. During his fellowship, he will write about the role of professional and middle-class identity in creating the modern-day civil rights lawyer.

Angelo Volandes (B.A. ’93) is an internal medicine physician at Harvard. He has written on the patient-doctor relationship and, during his fellowship, will research end-of-life care for Alzheimer’s patients. His film documentary, “Illness As Experience,” which explores the social dimensions of illness, is used in medical schools, hospitals, and university classes. Volandes has been named the Edmond J. Safra Faculty Fellow in Ethics.

The fellows are selected by a University committee representing several of the Harvard professional schools and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, including Arthur Applbaum (KSG), Joseph Badaracco (Harvard Business School), Martha Minow (HLS), Tim Scanlon (philosophy), Michael Sandel (government), Robert Truog (Harvard Medical School), and Dennis Thompson, director of the Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, and committee chair.

The fellows join a growing community of teachers and scholars dedicated to the study of ethics. In addition to the fellowships for faculty and graduate students, the center sponsors a public lecture series on applied and professional ethics, and co-sponsors, with the President’s Office, the Universitywide Tanner Lectures on Human Values.