Edward Sankowski-Ph.D., Cornell University (Philosophy)
Updated January 2, 2007
My activities include work as a university faculty member and a university administrator, and projects done as a person engaged in the world beyond academic organizations. As a faculty member, I have philosophical and also interdisciplinary and pragmatic interests. I believe that academics should act with ethical authority and effectiveness not only in academic institutions but also in the non-academic world.
I am particularly interested in how the wider society makes higher education possible, and in what expectations are legitimate by the wider society about higher educational institutions. As part of this, I aim to understand and influence the expanding goals of higher education, its economics, its political and cultural roles. I am actively concerned with where the resources come from that shape higher education, including legislative appropriations, student tuition and fees, grants and contracts, fund-raising and philanthropy, auxiliary enterprises, etc. How this translates into the budgets, the operations, and the avowed moral purposes of the university very much occupies me.
I have organized panels and presented papers discussing my university administrative projects and higher education issues, e.g., at the annual meeting of the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences (CCAS). At one 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.
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 scholarly societies. For example, I have read my research not only at American Philosophical Association meetings, but also at the American Political Science Association annual meetings (e.g., about democratic legitimacy); the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences annual meetings (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 the American Anthropological Association annual meetings (e.g., about democratic legitimacy and culture).
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, 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 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 pragmatically inclined. I'm interested in international issues (e.g., South African democracy: I've taught, delivered papers, and traveled there).
I’m interested in theoretical and practical issues about the place of philosophy in universities, and indeed about universities in general, in their various contexts, not solely the place of philosophy in universities. This has some connection with my taking on administrative as well as faculty work. 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 others. 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 with natural scientists and social scientists about the interconnections of science and individual or collective choices.
I enjoy teaching at all levels, including mentoring of graduate students. I have directed fourteen completed doctoral dissertations and at least five masters 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, Dara Fogel, wrote her dissertation on the ethics and politics of moral and civic education particularly in American universities and colleges, and the other, Fuchuan Yao, wrote on the ethics of genetics-based medical interventions. My past and present doctoral and masters students have written in many areas. Most of these students 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 Arizona State University, having previously taught at Fordham University. She wrote a dissertation under my direction about John Searle’s philosophy of language, but later got increasingly interested in ethics, especially feminist ethics. Another doctoral recipient who worked with me taught at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and he then moved on to a career as a higher military officer and analyst. One student of mine, Christopher Herrera, received an OU prize for his doctoral dissertation on the ethics of research in psychology and the social sciences, and spent two years in a post-doctoral position which funded his individual research at the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics, spent more time in a post-doctoral collaborative research position at McGill University, and then got a tenure-track job at a public university in New Jersey, where he is now a tenured Associate Professor. He was chairing a search committee when I chatted with him at one meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in Washington, DC. I believe he will be pursuing further education in public health while also working as a tenured philosophy faculty member. Another doctoral recipient, Lee Hester, who worked with me, writing his dissertation on the history and normative politics of Native American sovereignty issues, is now Director of Native American Studies, and is a tenured Associate Professor at a state university in Oklahoma (and I’m the proud godfather of a young daughter of whom his wife and he are proud parents!), another of my doctoral students who wrote in Philosophy of Law received his doctorate, and has a tenure-track job at another state university in Oklahoma. Yet another who wrote in Aesthetics has a tenure-track position at a state university in Utah. One of my masters students, Susan Alvarado-Boyd, wrote a thesis about multiculturalism, and then went on to a doctoral program in higher education administration, and employment, at the University of Texas at Austin.
I often teach classes for undergraduates and graduate students, especially in Ethics, as well as Philosophy of Law. One of my undergraduate students and advisees, who was an outstanding student in Philosophy of Law, and who received a prize for his undergraduate honors research done with me, entered the doctoral program in Philosophy at Harvard, with full financial support.