My current activities include work as a university faculty member, e.g., as a writer and researcher; teacher; practitioner of outreach and community engagement. I am a university administrator. I also work on other-than-academic projects as a person involved in the world beyond academic organizations. As a faculty member and administrator, I have pragmatic and interdisciplinary interests as well as philosophical interests. I am a practitioner within higher education systems, but besides that, I am a theorist of higher education systems, as well as a public advocate about higher education to internal and external constituencies. My advocacy role extends to my active citizenship and to other contexts. Beyond academe, I exercise my version of engaged citizenship, including concerns about local, national, and global issues. I hope to further goals (e.g., about writing as such, in various modes, and about aesthetics and the arts) that extend beyond solely academic or political aims, in any confined sense.
I am currently beginning service as a member of the board of directors of the state affiliate of a major national-level non-profit organization. I expect to serve that non-profit on its finance committee, through fund-raising activities, and in other ways.
Distinctly, though similarly an extra-academic commitment, I am also involved in voter education and voter registration activities.
I am interested in individual and group decision-making, and draw on resources from philosophy, the social sciences, professional practice areas (such as law, medicine, engineering, journalism, public administration, business and finance), science and technology studies, and the arts, among other areas, in investigating and furthering good decision-making.
I believe that academics should act with ethical insight put to good effect not only in academic institutions but also in the non-academic world. But not to oversimplify, besides ethics in its usual meaning, there are plenty of other types of values I care about. Besides their ethics aspects, love, hard-won knowledge (scientific and non-scientific), aesthetics and the arts, technical ingenuity, etc. are among a variety of goods that attract my commitments. I believe that both articulating and reasoning about what should be our values, explaining how we have them, and acting on them, must be pursued together. This is tough to do well, and requires drawing on resources of many sorts, some of which I have mentioned.
I am interested in how the wider society makes higher education possible, and in what expectations are legitimate by the wider society about higher educational institutions. There are questions about how all the parts of human culture(s) that are supposed to be at universities and colleges can be assembled and supported, how they can live together at a school, and how such schools do and should interact with the wider society. As part of addressing this, I aim to understand the expanding goals of higher education, its economics, its political and cultural roles. I hope to do my part to influence, for the better, higher education and society generally. I am actively attentive about where the resources come from that shape higher education, including legislative appropriations (insofar as they are relevant for the particular institution), student tuition and fees, grants and contracts, fund-raising and philanthropy, auxiliary enterprises, organizational partnerships, etc. How this translates into the budgets, the operations, and the avowed moral or many other purposes of the university or college does occupy me.
II. Fundamentals of
Social Organization, Globalization
Recent public problems in politics and the economy, to my mind, re-inforce my view that we all need to think much more deeply than usual and to be actively committed to improving the fundamentals of social organization.
We need educational innovation to
deal with fundamentals. These days, like many others, I am in particular
pondering the implications of globalization, both opportunities and problems.
This is reflected in my administrative work and also in my experience of
faculty life. For example, in teaching Ethical Theory, I am increasingly
interested in how the globalization of ethics is changing the questions we must
deal with. This is having a considerable impact on my writing as well.
I presented a paper on July 28,
2009 at the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences
(ICAES), a major periodic conference which is one aspect of the work of the
International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES). This
was the sixteenth international gathering of ICAES, and was held from July
27-31, 2009 in
III. Public Presentations about Varied University Administrative Projects
I have organized panels and presented
papers discussing my varied university administrative projects and higher
education issues, e.g., at the annual meeting of the Council of Colleges of
Arts and Sciences (CCAS), a North American organization.
During this coming Fall, in 2009, I am scheduled to speak on a panel which I
organized and will chair at the CCAS annual meeting in
I am a member of the committee on research universities within CCAS.
At one previous CCAS annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, I presented a paper as part of a panel I organized and chaired about international and global aspects of universities; at another CCAS annual meeting in Boston, (held in conjunction with the International Council of Fine Arts Deans annual meeting), I presented a paper as part of a panel I organized and chaired about the arts at universities and in the broader society; at another, in Portland, Oregon, I presented a paper as part of a panel I organized about the College of Arts and Sciences (and similar units) in strategic planning and budget decisions, as well as organizational partnerships, that influence the course of decision-making about the overall goals of universities. At that same CCAS conference, I also participated (using a poster and PowerPoint) in a poster/multi-media session about integrating liberal arts education and professional preparation.
I have also presented my writing
and ideas (combining organizational analysis and pragmatic proposals with
multidisciplinary reflections) at the Association of American Colleges and
Universities (AAC&U) annual meeting. I have spoken at an annual meeting of
AAC&U not long ago about higher-education-related decisions about money.
Also, an invited and refereed article by me (about philosophy, public health
studies, and liberal education) has appeared in Peer Review, published by AAC&U in
IV. Some General Interests in Philosophy, Philosophy of Social Science, and Management
My main philosophical interests are
in Ethics and in Social and Political Philosophy. Some other areas in which I
work (as a faculty member): Philosophy of Social Science, Philosophy of
Education (especially about universities and colleges), Philosophy of Art.
I publish on free agency and responsibility, autonomy, individual and collective choice and decision, democracy, education, the social sciences, science and society, the arts.
I typically present my research papers at a wide variety of types of scholarly societies. For example, I have read refereed papers about my research, not only at American Philosophical Association annual meetings, but also at American Political Science Association annual meetings (e.g., about democratic legitimacy); Association for Politics and the Life Sciences annual meetings (e.g., about the ethics of scientific research at American universities, including research on human subjects, and topics concerning the ethics of the bio-behavioral and life sciences, as well as medicine in society); and American Anthropological Association annual meetings (e.g., about democratic legitimacy and culture).
For Fall, 2009, I am scheduled to read a paper (“Anthropology, Political Philosophy, and the Ethics of Identity”) at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting. In this paper I discuss the ethics of identity and globalization, as well as the relevance of these concepts to the advocacy and explanation of normative positions in ethics and politics.
My approach to philosophy encourages interdisciplinary studies as well as seeking to advance and develop more traditional disciplines. In general, as an administrator also, I aim to support academic strength within established disciplines in the arts and sciences, as well as interdisciplinary studies, multiple-college collaborations at the same institution, co-operation among different institutions, and interconnections between universities and the wider world. I and a colleague in philosophy have participated in a study of environmental ethics as part of a multi-year, multidisciplinary project about environmental policy, management, and decision-making, with many collaborators, funded (about $850,000) by the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency, and bringing together both varied academics and non-academics (such as public officials and interested citizens). This has been one stimulus among many to my thinking and writing about democratic legitimacy, a topic that underlies quite a bit of my research. Democratic legitimacy fits in well as a topic with my research and teaching foci on the ethics and political theory of choice and decision, freedom and autonomy, as well as responsibility.
Generally, I emphasize the
potential uses of philosophy and some other university disciplines in guiding
practical reasoning, choice and decision, and value judgments by individuals
and organizations. I make no sharp distinction between ethics and other types
of decision-making, nor between academic and
non-academic problem-solving. I'm interested in international issues (e.g.,
South African democracy: I've taught, delivered papers, and traveled there;
issues about political and economic development in countries such as
V. Selected University Administrative Projects about Curriculum
As mentioned above, I have taken on administrative as well as faculty work. This includes familiarity with the usual areas of university administrative activities, among many other things, curricular innovation.
Among other things, as an administrator I have coordinated the development of a new interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Information Studies, now operational and very successful, and have collaborated on the development of new master’s degrees in Organizational Psychology and in Knowledge Management, among other degree programs. I coordinated development of a new interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Religious Studies (now operational and very successful), and I have designed a new interdisciplinary undergraduate degree option in Organizational Studies, attracting remarkable student interest. I have worked on a campus-wide project to develop curricula about the ethics (and related legal and administrative norms, and the politics) of scientific research. As part of this, I taught a course listed in the Psychology Department (under the listing, Psychology 4920, Current Topics in Basic and Applied Psychology) about the ethics of scientific research at American research universities. This course is one expression of my curiosity about the empirical and normative study of organizations, including ethics and other modes of decision-making in organizations. This is a long-standing motivation of mine, and I have often taught or co-taught courses at all levels with natural scientists and social scientists about the interconnections of science and individual or collective choices.
VI. Teaching and Mentoring of
Undergraduates
I enjoy teaching at all levels, including teaching of undergraduates.
I teach classes for undergraduates and graduate students, especially in Ethics and Social or Political Philosophy, as well as Philosophy of Law. As I teach it, Ethical Theory and the other areas include study of work by philosophers, social scientists, legal scholars (and legal practitioners), etc. This type of philosophy is both interdisciplinary and includes empirical work.
Thus, as noted elsewhere, I have also taught interdisciplinary courses and courses in other departments and university units than philosophy altogether (or other than the humanities generally), particularly in the social sciences, and in science and technology studies.
One of my undergraduate students and advisees, who was an outstanding student in Philosophy of Law, received a prize for his undergraduate honors research done with me, and plans to attend law school.
VII. Teaching and Mentoring of Graduate Students
I enjoy teaching and mentoring of graduate students in various fields.
I have directed fourteen completed doctoral dissertations and at least five master’s theses, mainly in philosophy but also in interdisciplinary areas such as rhetoric and communication, and healthcare policy. Of my two most recent doctoral students, one wrote her dissertation on the ethics and politics of moral and civic education particularly in American universities and colleges, and the other wrote on the ethics of genetics-based medical interventions.
I have served as a committee member for graduate students in different fields, including Psychology, Political Science, Educational Psychology, English, etc.
My own doctoral and masters
students have written in many areas. Most of the graduate students whose
dissertations and theses I have supervised have gone on to work in academic
positions, a few in non-academic managerial and executive positions, and some
in both types of positions. E.g., one is currently Lincoln Professor of Applied
Ethics at
VIII. Selective Illustrative Short List of Some Representative
Publications
Here’s a highly selective illustrative short list of some of my representative publications.
“Philosophy, Public Health, and
Liberal Education,” Peer Review
(Association of American Colleges & Universities-Washington, DC)-(2009);
“Film Studies, the Moving Image, and Noel Carroll,” in The Journal of Aesthetic Education (2006); “South African
Democracy, Multi-Culturalism, Rights, and Community,”
in Problems for Democracy, eds. John Kultgen and Mary Lenzi, Rodopi, Amsterdam, (2006); “Film, Crime, and State
Legitimacy: Political Education or Mis-Education?”, The Journal of Aesthetic Education (2002);
"Negotiating Science and Values in the Illinois River Basin", M. Meo, L. Caneday, W. Focht, R. Lynch, B. Pettus, E. Sankowski, Z. Trachtenberg, B. Vieux, K. Willett, published
on a CD-ROM resulting from a conference, “Integrated Decision-Making for
Watershed Management Symposium: Processes and Tools,” (2001), sponsored by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, etc. A
version of this paper was also published in The
Journal of the American Water Resources Association (2002); “Liberalism, Communitarianism, and Moral Education,” Philosophy of Education (1999);
"Autonomy, Education, and Politics", Philosophy of Education, (1998); "Racism, Human Rights, and
Universities", Social Theory and
Practice (1996); “Art Museums, Autonomy, and Canons,” The Monist (1993); "'Paternalism' and Social Policy",
"Blame and Autonomy", both in American
Philosophical Quarterly (1985, 1992).