FALL 2013 ISSUE 1, VOLUME 2

The Official Newsletter of Northeastern University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion & Ethics Institute

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR

philosophy.neu.edu

Faculty News

Faculty Spotlight: Elizabeth Bucar

Thank you, Professor DeAngelis

Ethics Institute Update

Ethics InstituteWorkshop Report

Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics

Alumni Updates

Student News

In Memoriam - Professor Peg Huff

Greetings from Philosophy and Religion!

As I write this Chairs Letter we are gearing up for our next academic year and greeting our incoming students who join us in small groups all sum-mer long.

It has been another eventful year in the department. As you know, we are always adjusting our curriculum to the world in which we find our-selves. This year we have emphasized expanding our international offer-ings and have put forward proposals for collaborative degree programs related to international affairs and global justice that would feature several of our faculty including Patricia Illingworth and Serena Parekh. In addi-tion, Professors Elizabeth Bucar, Whitney Kelting, and Jung Lee will play a central role in Northeastern’s new initiatives around international affairs and world cultures. In the next year we plan to continue to innovate new programs and develop collaborative research efforts.

We have also had several faculty changes. Our longtime co-op coordina-tor, Bill Wray, will retire in the beginning of Fall Semester. An attorney by training, Professor Wray has been the co-op coordinator for political science as well as philosophy. He was the best of the best, in my view, working hours convenient for students, encouraging each and every one of his charges, knowing each of them well, and sharing their excitement continued- Page 2

Susan Setta, Chair

3

5

6

9

10

11

12

13

14

CONTENTS

2 FALL 2013

when they found a co-op position. We will truly miss him!

One of our own alums, John Basl, will be joining us this fall as an assis-tant professor. John entered North-eastern as a biology major, took a course in Philosophy of Science with Professor Michael Lipton and was converted, so to speak. He went on to do his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, and has been a professor at Bowling Green University for the last two years. His background in the sciences fits very nicely with his expertise in ethics. Among the courses he will be teach-ing for us are Environmental Ethics and Technology and Human Values. Professor Basl will also be teach-ing the Philosophy at Northeastern course – the same course that he was required to take as a freshman!

Our Ethics Institute, directed by Professor Ronald Sandler, has also had a big year. Its fall 2012 work-shop, titled “The Ethics of Inclu-sion,” focused on ethical issues re-lated to citizenship, immigration,

and refugees. This fall’s workshop will be on issues of informed con-sent. The Ethics Institute will also be co-hosting the annual conference of S-NET this fall, which is the So-ciety for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies. If you are interested in attending either the workshop or the conference, please contact Professor Sandler (r.sandler@neu.edu). We would love to see you there. More infor-mation on what the Ethics Institute has been up to this past year can be found in Professor Sandler’s update in this newsletter.

Our students continue to inspire us – through both the excellent work they do in our classes and their success in study abroad and co-op placements. The generous gifts of department friends and alums have helped us to be able to support our students’ intellectual interests by providing resources for the weekly meetings of the philosophy club and paying the cost of attending pro-fessional conferences (such as the annual meetings of the American

Philosophical Association and the Society for Biblical Literature). This year we were also able to help send one of our students, Nicholas Kelly, to the International Society for Phi-losophy and Sport’s annual meeting in Porto, Portugal, where he pre-sented a paper that he had originally written for one of his classes.

News and upcoming events can al-ways be found at our department website (http://www.philosophy.neu.edu ), the Ethics Institute web-site (http://www.northeastern.edu/ethics/) and our facebook page (http://www.facebook.comPhiloso-phyNortheeastern ).

Remember that we love hearing from you—we think of you often—so please keep in touch and let us know where you are and what you have been up to (s.setta@neu.edu).

Sincerely,

Susan SettaChairperson of the Department of Philosophy and Religion

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR continued

FALL 2013 3

In the past year, department faculty have given talks all over the world, written and edited books, published in professional journals, and won awards. They have, of course, also taught courses on topics ranging from ancient philosophy to the ethics of technology, and Islam to cults and sects. Below are some of the research highlights from each of our department faculty, as well as the courses that they taught in the past year.

FACULTY NEWS, 2012-2013

John BaslAfter graduating from Northeastern in 2006, Professor Basl is rejoining the department as a member of the fac-ulty following two years as a professor at Bowling Green State University. His first edited volume (with Professor Ronald Sandler), Designer Biology: The Ethics of Inten-sively Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems, was released this summer. In the past year he has had ar-ticles published in Philosophy and Technology, Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, as well as in various anthologies. He has also given talks at the American Philosophical Association, the Rocky Mountain Ethics Conference, and has orga-nized a workshop on teleological organization in Co-penhagen.

Liz BucarThis was Professor Bucar’s first year at Northeastern and she taught two courses in the fall (Islam and Sex in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Ethics). She published two books in the fall of 2012, The Islamic Veil: A Be-ginner’s Guide (Oneworld Publications), written for a general audience who wants to better understand con-temporary debates about veiling, and Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalism: Shaping a Third Wave of Com-parative Analysis (Palgrave), which features new work from an exciting collection of leading scholars of com-parative religious ethics. She was on research leave in the spring, with the support of a fellowship from Wake Forest University and the John Templeton Foundation. During this time she completed a stint of fieldwork in Istanbul, Turkey on the ethical debates of fashion veil-ing and worked on her next book, Pious Fashion: The Virtues of a Hijabi Fashionista.

Kerry DuganProfessor Dugan continues to teach wildly popular courses on Introduction to Philosophy; Existentialism; 20th Century Continental Philosophy; Business Ethics; Technology and Human Values; and often in response to student periodic demands, his seminar on Plato. In addition to having been nominated three times for Ex-cellence in Teaching Awards, this year he was officially recognized in The Cauldron Yearbook as a faculty favor-ite by Northeastern’s graduated senior class. A growing number of student alumni from all over the globe (U.S., Britain, France, Spain, Saudi Arabia and Albania, for example) continue to keep in touch with him over many years now, including one who recently had him officiate at her wedding.

Patricia IllingworthThis spring, Professor Illingworth received promotion to full professor. Her book on social capital, Us Before Me, was published in 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan. She also co-edited a special issue of Bioethics on the role of solidarity in bioethics, and taught courses on business ethics, bioethics and the law, and moral and social prob-lems in health care.

Whitney KeltingProfessor Kelting’s teaching has centered on the Re-ligions of Asia and Islam. In the past year she began research and writing on a new book length project examining the intersection between changes in tem-ple patronage patterns from medieval times until the present and how new discourses about patronage and wealth shape Jain masculinities.

continued on page 4

4 FALL 2013

FACULTY NEWS, 2012-2013 continued

Jung Lee Professor Lee recently published an article in Asian Phi-losophy titled “An Ethics of Propriety: Ritual, Roles, and Dependence in Early Confucianism” and will have his book on Daoism (The Ethical Foundations of Early Dao-ism: Zhuangzi’s Unique Moral Vision) published by Pal-grave at the end of 2013. In August, he will be traveling to Nepal on a research grant to do fieldwork for a book project on the Dalit women of Nepal that will be pub-lished by Routledge in 2014.

Michael Meyer Professor Meyer continues to teach just about every-thing. He has recently begun to teach Social and Politi-cal Philosophy again after a long hiatus. This fall he will be teaching Philosophy of Mind for the first time, and in the spring he will be teaching a new course, the His-tory of Modern Moral Philosophy.

Steve NathansonProfessor Nathanson’s recent teaching has been an Hon-ors course on Markets, Governments, and Economic Justice, a course in Theory of Knowledge, and a gradu-ate course in Ethics and Public Policy. His writing and research has been focused mostly on issues in political philosophy about the role of the state in relation to a market economy. This has resulted in several talks and a paper titled “Political Polarization and the Markets vs. Government Debate” that will appear in a book com-ing out next year. His interest in utilitarian moral theory continues and is reflected in an article on “Partiality” in the Encyclopedia of Global Justice. He is currently work-ing on an article on act vs. rule Utilitarianism for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Serena ParekhProfessor Parekh published four articles and accepted a book contract with Routledge Press for a book on im-migration and refugees on which she is currently work-ing. In addition, she gave talks at conferences at Princ-eton, York University in Toronto, and at the University of Helsinki in Finland. This past March, she moderated a student panel on what it means to be a Northeastern student in a climate of diversity and conflict (the panel

was called “I am Northeastern” and featured five stu-dents reflecting on the way that their education and ex-periences on co-op, study abroad, and service-learning shaped their views of the world).

Ronald SandlerProfessor Sandler’s book The Ethics of Species was pub-lished in 2012. It focuses on the value of species and theethical significance of species boundaries, particularlyas they relate to such things as species conservation, genetic modification, and human enhancement. More recently he has been working on two textbooks, Eth-ics and Emerging Technology and Environmental Ethics: From Theory to Practice, which are based on courses that he teaches at Northeastern. This fall he will be teaching a course on food ethics and policy and writing a book entitled Food Ethics: The Basics.

Susan SettaIn addition to chairing the department, Professor Set-ta presented a paper, “From Heart and Lungs to Brain and Back Again: Changing Definitions of Death,” at the Mortality, Death and Dying Symposium at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. She also participated in the Center for Studies on New Religions conference at Darlana University in Falun, Sweden. An article pre-sented at a Prague Conference, “Determining Death: Perspectives from World Religions” was recently pub-lished in a collection titled Death, Dying, Culture: An Interdisciplinary Interrogation.

Rory SmeadProfessor Smead’s recent research has used game the-ory to study the social factors that give rise to spite, behavior that is harmful to others at a cost to oneself. He has also been investigating how spite can present a barrier to social cooperation. This research has led to two publications, one in Evolution and one that is forth-coming in the Journal of Philosophy. He also designed a new course, “Ethics and Evolutionary Games,” which surveys recent attempts to study ethical behavior using theories from biology and economics.

FALL 2013 5

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: PROFESSOR ELIZABETH BUCAR

When did you first become interested in religious studies and ethics – was it something that you always were drawn to?My interest in religious studies and ethics actually evolved from human rights work I pursued after col-lege, especially reproductive health issues in Latin America, where the Catholic Church is a major player in shaping not only national policies but also how in-dividuals think about sexual ethics. I’ve always been interested in “the why” of moral debates and for the majority of us the ethical theories and teachings of re-ligious traditions inform or at least influence “the why.”

You are one of the few Western scholars to visit the Khomeini archives in Iran, and possibly the only woman to do so. Can you tell us a little bit about the experience – why you went and what it was like?Hmm, you’re probably right! I know the bureaucrat charged with “helping me” were pretty floored that I, as a non-Muslim and an American, was writing a dis-sertation on Khomeini! You might have seen the recent FOX News interview with Reza Aslan that went semi-viral in which the interviewer can’t get past the fact that Dr. Aslan is a Muslim who has devoted his academic life in part to studying the historical figure of Jesus ofNazareth. I’m sort of like that: I was just fascinated early on by the way in which Khomeini became such an important charismatic leader in Iran, and his legacy for the understanding of sex and gender in Iran today. In terms of my time in the actual archive, it involved A LOT of tea drinking! A lot of time NOT getting to see the documents I wanted to see. But, in the end, after A LOT of patience, I was able to get what I was looking for, including a copy of Khomeini’s fatwa on sexual reassignment surgery.

What courses do you most enjoy teaching?I love teaching on a variety of issues related to my research such as Islam, sexual ethics, and comparative eth-ics. I have the most fun when I can “stir” things up….get students to question their assumptions about what is “real,” “true” or “good.” I’m super excited about a Dialogue I’m currently developing for the Hon-ors Program for summer 2014, which is going to involve hiking a pilgrimage trial in northern Spain called the Camino of Santiago. I think it is going to be an incredible experience: both for me and the students.

How have you found Northeastern in your first year here? I like Northeastern! Okay, the weather up here (a winter full of snow and slush), not so much, but I find that as an institution NEU is ambitious and growing and thus an exciting place to be a faculty mem-ber. I am a collaborator in my heart – there must be some connection to that and my interest in comparison – and I’ve already started forming relationships around my research interests in technology and aesthetics.

Elizabeth Bucar joined the Department of Philosophy and Religion in 2012. She was previously a professor of religious studies at the Univer-sity of North Carolina – Greensboro. She is an expert in comparative religious ethics, particularly Islam and Catholicism. In this faculty spotlight we ask Professor Bucar about her research and teaching.

continued on page 6

6 FALL 2013

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT continued

What projects are you working on now?I am currently working on two new book projects. The first is titled The Good of Ambiguous Bodies: Transsexuality in the Catholic and Shi’i Ethics. This book explores the startling diversity of positions on transsexuality within two traditions renowned for culturally conservative teachings on sex. The purpose of my research is not to judge what tradition “gets sexuality right,” but rather to provide new intellectual ground for understanding how gendered cat-egories of the human, which have historically held theological significance, are challenged by advancements in sci-ence and technology. I am also writing a book-length comparative study titled Pious Fashion: The Virtues of Veiled Fashionistas. While conducting fieldwork in Iran (2004), Indonesia (2011), and Turkey (2012 and 2013), I became interested in how veiled Muslim women reconcile intentionally enhancing their appearance with the Islamic vir-tue of modesty. I observed substantial theological and ethical conversations taking place that employ categories like “inner” and “outer” beauty, which I argue are affecting local Islamic discourses and beliefs about virtue. This project is supported with a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and has broad implications for how visual culture functions as a source for ethical reflection, as well as how to understand the relationship between aesthetics and ethical critique.

THANK YOU, PROFESSOR deAnGeLiSProfessor William James DeAngelis—also known as Bill, Billy, Billy D and (by some) Coach-has retired from his full-time position in the Department of Philosophy and Religion but continues to teach on a part-time basis. We wanted to mark this shift with an overview of his many contributions to students, to his colleagues, and to oth-ers over many years.

Bill joined the department in 1969, having completed a bachelor’s degree at City Uni-versity of New York and a Ph.D. at Cornell University, where his thesis advisor was Norman Malcolm, a prominent American philosopher who studied with Wittgen-stein and wrote works that both interpreted Wittgenstein’s ideas and applied them to a range of philosophical problems.

During his career at Northeastern, Bill has taught seminars and courses in Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Analytic Philosophy, Logic, Introduction to Phi-losophy, Philosophy in Literature, and seminars on Descartes, Hume, and Wittgenstein. He also co-taught courses on the Humanities in Film. His outstanding teaching was recognized by the university when he received the Presi-dential Award for Excellence in Teaching.

From 2002-2005, Bill co-directed and taught in the W. E. B. DuBois Program in the Humanities, a federally funded program run by Northeastern University and Roxbury Community College. The program provided the opportu-nity for local residents living near the poverty line to take college-level courses in the humanities. For this work, he (and his co-director Sally Solomon) received the university’s Presidential Aspiration Award.

As a philosopher, Bill has sustained serious interests in great thinkers such as Hume, Descartes, and especially Wittgenstein. In addition, he has a serious interest in the novelist Kurt Vonnegut and both taught and gave talks on philosophical ideas in Vonnegut’s novels. Bill has been very active writing journal reviews of philosophical books. He is an excellent writer, and his reviews are scrupulous and fair-minded, even when critical. Many of his reviews are of books dealing with Wittgenstein, the subject of Bill’s own major philosophical work.

continued on page 7

FALL 2013 7

THANK YOU, PROFESSOR deAnGeLiS continued

Having worked for many years on issues in the phi-losophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Bill completed a book length work, Ludwig Wittgen-stein—A Cultural Point of View: Philosophy in the Darkness of this Time (Ashgate, 2007). Though not popularly known, Wittgenstein was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century.

Bill’s book on Wittgenstein contains a number of focal points. The first is the influence of the German thinker Oswald Spengler, author of a book called The Decline of the West. Wittgenstein cited Spengler as an important influence on his own thought, but because Spengler has mostly been ignored by philosophers, it has been puz-zling that Wittgenstein would cite him. So the question is: what did Wittgenstein find of interest in Spengler? According to Bill, the answer is Spengler’s view of the stages of cultural development and the inevitable de-cline of cultures. Wittgenstein embraced this view and saw himself as living in a dark time, a time of cultural decline. A second focal point concerns the nature of reli-gion and Wittgenstein’s views about religion. It is worth noting that most philosophers completely ignored these issues in the period during which Wittgenstein’s influ-ence was greatest, and readers of Wittgenstein most fa-mous works, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations, would not think of Wittgenstein as having any serious connection either to Spengler or to religion. A third focus of Bill’s book, then, is the relationship between these two subjects and the better known aspects of Wittgenstein’s works deal-ing with logic, language, philosophical psychology, and the theory of knowledge. Do Wittgenstein’s thoughts and his pessimistic views about culture have any influ-ence on the more influential aspects of his thinking?

Bill’s work on Wittgenstein has been praised for its care, clarity, and insights. It shows an extraordi-nary patience in dealing with an author who is sel-dom very direct about his interests as well as a very high level of careful attention to other scholars who have worked on related problems about Wittgenstein.

One important Wittgenstein scholar praised Bill’s book, saying that it is “careful and scholarly while at the same

time very original. It guides the reader clearly and me-thodically to the conclusion that there are new and im-portant questions to be asked about Wittgenstein's phil-osophical intentions…[and] proposes resolutions to those questions. Some of these are unconventional, but all of them are plausible, interesting and very well argued.”

In addition to Bill’s scholarly work, he has played a very special role as a teacher in the department, and it will be very difficult for anyone to take his place as a teach-er of philosophy. His teaching has been characterized by a combination of serious dedication to philosophy, a sense of humor, and, as he calls it, a playfulness that have endeared him to generations of students. He has served as a mentor to many students both in their per-sonal and their professional lives. Many of his students have gone on to graduate school in philosophy and law.

We invited students to share with us some of their recollections of Bill, and the picture that emerges is an impressive one. Caryn Yilmaz, class of 2002, re-members that a “friend and classmate handed Dr. DeAngelis a Hershey’s kiss from the bag she and I were sharing, which he proceeded to eat. He then paused for a moment and looked up at the class with an expres-sion of amused confusion and said ‘That chocolate was so delicious that I completely forgot what I was saying.’”

Bill’s sense of humor made him an easy and reliable friend. It was common to see five or six students shar-ing his office during the day. Tamara Garcia, now a law student at Georgia State, had the following to say:

“Knowing Coach as a professor and friend was one of the best parts about being a department rat six years ago…. Coach lent me books, let me gripe on his fu-ton, constantly charmed the philosophy department…and he actually convinced me that I could do symbolic logic. I remember asking him to read over my state-ment of purpose for graduate school once, and he told me it was utter crap--not because it was poorly written or trite, but, “because you need to brag about yourself! With gusto!” I rewrote it and got into grad school. That’s how Coach is with students he believes in--caring, de-manding, and refusing to let them sell themselves short.”

continued on page 8

8 FALL 2013

THANK YOU, PROFESSOR deAnGeLiS continued

Ben Miller, now a philosophy graduate student at Stan-ford, recounted the following:

“I also got to participate in a reading group of Billy D’s book manuscript before it was published, and this was one of my favorite academic memories from NU. Looking back, I think it was amazing that he was quite happy to have a bunch of undergrads meet and talk about his book. We gave him feedback that was probably terrible, but he never gave us anything but positive feelings about it.”

John Basl, who will return to NU as a member of the faculty in the fall, said the following

“Billy always treated me as if what I had to say was worth thinking about, even in disagreement with me. He often responded, offering a quip or a counter-example, but nev-er for a second did he let me think that I had no business disagreeing with him or anyone else.”

Jack Woods, now finishing up his Ph.D. at Princeton paints a picture of Bill’s influence that is all too com-mon:

“It is difficult to guess as to what my relationship with philosophy would look like if I hadn’t taken Billy DeAnge-lis’s Philosophy of Mind course three quarters through my time at Northeastern. I had previously taken philosophy courses and enjoyed them, but they had mostly been of a historical bent. As much as I enjoyed the history of philos-ophy, it wasn’t exciting in the way that the Philosophy of Mind was…. Every class taught by Bill was an exercise in the sort of creative argumentation that I previously had

not realized I had a talent for…. This course was a revela-tion to me and, a couple of years later, after a year reem-ployed in my pre-college jobs of barbacking and temping, it was a major inspiration in thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could actually pursue contemporary philosophy as a career. Billy and Michael Meyer, to their discredit, encouraged me over pizza and beer. Billy has since been a constant advisor, available for a chat, a walk around Fresh Pond, and a rehash of long-standing arguments between us…. And, as I’m sure others will mention, his solid, good hearted advice about how to live a reasonable life are a comfort in times of non-academic stress. I owe Billy for all this support---and for an Otis Redding mix-tape which he has perhaps forgotten he made for me.

Kaca Bradonjic, class of 2004, and Mark Toledano, class of 2005, sums things up nicely:

“As a teacher, Billy D knew how seamlessly to dissolve the awkwardness of the student-teacher relationship. Despite the age gap, he was one of us, a young mind in awe of the world and eager to talk about it, both in class and in his office, the door of which seemed to be always wide open.” “I will always be an admirer of his playfully didactic style and how he cultivated great relationships with his stu-dents. He is a personal hero. I am lucky to have been one of his students and proud to call him a friend. He once kicked his feet up in his office and told me that he had the best job in the world — a case of the best of people having the best of jobs. I wish him the same joy in retirement!”

FALL 2013 9

Greetings from Northeastern’s Ethics Institute!

I am very pleased to report that the Ethics Institute is going strong as it enters its third year. We continue to add new partners, welcome new faculty, build new pro-gramming, and do new research.

Our annual Workshop in Applied Ethics draws leading researchers from all over the world to discuss cutting edge ethical issues. The 2012 workshop theme was The Ethics of Exclusion and focused on ethical issues related to immigration and refugees. A report on the workshop from Prof. Serena Parekh, who was the lead organizer, can be found in this newsletter. For the 2013 workshop, which will be held at the end of September, we are part-nering with Northeastern’s Social Science Environmen-tal Health Research Institute and the workshop topic is the Ethics of Informed Consent in medicine and re-search. If you are interested in attending the workshop, please contact me (r.sandler@neu.edu), or go to the Ethics Institute website to register (http://www.north-eastern.edu/ethics/).

Last year the Institute hosted the 29th meeting of the International Social Philosophy Conference, which was on the theme of Civic Virtues, Divided Societies, and Democratic Dilemmas. This fall (October 27-30) we are co-hosting, with Northeastern’s School for Public Policy and Urban Affairs, the annual meeting of S-Net, which is the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerg-ing Technologies. This conference will bring hundreds of people to campus to discuss the social and ethical di-mensions of powerful new technologies. Again, if you are interested in attending please contact me.

In addition to workshops and conferences, the Eth-ics Institute organizes individual lectures and events throughout the year. In the past year this included a two day campus visit by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben (with Northeastern’s Humanities Center), a lecture on integrity in public life by former Massachu-setts Governor Michael Dukakis, and a lecture on the ethics of genetic modification by Dr. Louis Newman (with Northeastern’s Jewish Studies Program).

The Ethics Institute is also very excited to now be the institutional home for the Society for the Study of Mus-lim Ethics (SSME). Professor Elizabeth Bucar, who joined the Ethics Institute last year when she arrived at Northeastern, is on the SSME board and we thank her for bringing the organization here. More information on Professor Bucar’s research and on the SSME can be found in this newsletter.

The Ethics Institute is very pleased to welcome Profes-sor John Basl as a new faculty member. Professor Basl is a former student at Northeastern and graduate fel-low of the Ethics Institute. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and had been a professor at Bowling Green University prior to returning to North-eastern. His research and teaching are in the areas of philosophy of science, ethics and technology, and envi-ronmental ethics. His work fits with the Institute’s com-mitment to addressing contemporary ethical issues and to public scholarship.

As you can see, we are looking forward to another year of intellectually interesting and socially timely events at the Ethics Institute. Institute news and upcoming events can always be found on our website (http://www.north-eastern.edu/ethics/), where you can also sign up for our email list. These events are open to the public and we would love to see you there.

Sincerely,

Ron SandlerDirector, Northeastern Ethics Institute

ETHICS INSTITUTE UPDATE

10 FALL 2013

ETHICS INSTITUTE WORKSHOP REPORTThe Ethics of Immigration and Refugees: Report on the 2012 Ethics Institute Workshop on Applied Ethics

This summer, both houses of Congress have addressed one of the most difficult political challenges: creating an immigration law that is just and fair, both to citizens who wish to protect their security and way of life, and to the many migrants who may already live in the country, have family in the country, or be dependent on seasonal work in various parts of the country. Though immigra-tion reform is a political subject, much of what underlies the debate is philosophical and ethical in nature: What moral obligations do we have to non-citizens who wish to live and work in our country? Should morality play a role in our immigration policy or is economics the de-fining issue? Globally, there are over 40 million refugees who have been forcibly displaced from their homes and this raises further ethical questions for our immigration policy. Do refugees have stronger claims to enter our country than immigrants who are coming for economic opportunities? Do we have an obligation to accept some refugees, particularly those from countries in which we have intervened (such as Iraq and Afghanistan)? If so, how many?

These are some of the questions that were address in the Fall 2012 Ethics Institute Workshop on the topic of the Ethics of Exclusion. The workshop brought together scholars from across North America, Canada, and Eu-rope to discuss these important political topics and the role that philosophy could play in clarifying some of these questions.

The keynote speaker was Joseph Carens, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and one of the foremost philosophers of immigration. Profes-sor Carens has argued, controversially, that a policy of “open borders” – where we let in all immigrants who

wish to come to our country, no matter how many or where they come from – is the only morally defensible position. He believes that none of the dominant moral positions in contemporary political philosophy (e.g. Rawlsian and utilitarian) could provide a justification for exclusion. Ultimately, he thinks we are obliged to keep our borders (relatively) open.

During the rest of the Workshop scholars from phi-losophy, political science, geography, sociology and law grappled with the moral issues raised by immigra-tion in contemporary democratic societies. The papers presented at the Workshop largely dealt with one of two topics: immigration or refugees. The scholars who looked at immigration tried to understand whether, contra Carens, it is ever possible to morally justify clos-ing our borders to certain groups – perhaps in the name of security, cultural identity, or democracy. The theo-rists whose work focused on refugees inquired about the special moral status of this group. Refugees are peo-ple who are forced to flee their home countries because they have a well-founded fear that they will be harmed, persecuted, or even killed if they remain. In a sense, be-cause refugees are forced to flee, it appears that we may have stronger moral obligations to admit refugees than immigrants in general.

Overall, the workshop contributed to a deeper under-standing of what a morally adequate immigration poli-cy might look like and what we are obliged to do to help refugees around the world. Given the importance of im-migration in our current political climate, the knowl-edge gained in this workshop will only continue to grow in relevance.

FALL 2013 11

Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics Comes to Northeastern!

Professor Elizabeth Bucar, who joined the department as an associate professor in 2013, specializes in com-parative religious ethics and serves on the board of the Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics (SSME). The SSME is a scholarly association dedicated to advancing intellectual inquiry in Muslim ethics, including the re-lation of Muslim ethics to other ethical traditions and to social, political, and economic problems. Last year, when SSME was looking for an institutional home, Pro-fessor Bucar brought the SSME to our campus, so that it is now officially based in Northeastern’s Ethics Insti-tute. This helps establish Northeastern as a leader in the field of religious ethics, since the SSME and its partner associations, The Society for the Study of Christian Eth-ics and The Society for Jewish Ethics, are recognized as the premier scholarly societies for the study of religious ethics.

The SSME supports academic work in both philo-sophical and applied ethics, and it encompasses both historical research and the study of contemporary is-sues. The Society also aims to promote the teaching of Muslim ethics in colleges, universities, and theological

schools, to improve understanding of Muslim ethics in the broader society through publications and other educational activities, and to provide a community of discourse and debate for those engaged professionally in the study of Muslim ethics.

The title of the society tells a little of the history of the field. As The Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics (in-stead of the Society for Muslim Ethics) the association is committed to the idea that scholars who are not them-selves Muslim may have substantial contributions to make to the field. This means that research into Muslim Ethics need not be limited to conversations within the Muslim community, but rather can also occur among scholars trained in a range of disciplines such as ethics, religious studies, anthropology, and the classical Islamic sciences of fiqh, abad, and tasawuff, among others. Pro-fessor Bucar believes scholars working on the Islamic tradition have much to add to the conversation about ethics, by suggesting religious norms and patterns of reasoning neglected by Christian or philosophical treat-ments, by increasing sensitivity to social and historical context, and by adding an appreciation for ethnograph-ic data and everyday practices.

SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF MUSLIM ETHICS

12 FALL 2013

We never cease to be amazed by the many accomplishments and adventures of our Department of Philosophy and Religion alumni. Please contact us either through our website (http://www.philosophy.neu.edu/contact_us/), by email (s.setta@neu.edu) or on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/PhilosophyNortheastern) – we’d love to hear about where you are and what you have been up to, and to include you in our next alumni update!

ALUMNI UPDATES

Kaca BradonjicAfter graduating from Northeastern with a dual degree in philosophy and physics in 2004, Kaca received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Boston University in 2012. Currently, she is a visiting lecturer in physics at Wellesley College.

Pamela ColleranDuring the years 1997 – 2008, Pamela studied Tibet-an Buddhist philosophy, psychology and cosmology (Abhidharmako’sa Bhasyam by Poussin) and all other major Tibetan texts, under the tutelage of Khenpo Mig-mar Tseten (Harvard Chaplain), and she was granted the opportunity to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in 2001. She earned a master’s level (Acharya) de-gree in 2005. Pamela worked diligently to complete the mandatory four units of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) required to become a chaplain. She served one unit of CPE at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the remaining three units in residency at the Chaplaincy Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Pamela was placed and then hired at Home and Hospice Care of Rhode Is-land as an Interfaith Chaplain for six years. She is pres-ently serving as the only full-time Interfaith Chaplain at the Kaplan Family Hospice House, a 20 bed facility located in Danvers, MA.

Annie HendersonAfter graduating with a degree in religious studies, An-nie moved to Cusco, Peru to get her TEFL certification and become an English teacher. She now works for a local institute teaching English to adults. In the process she is working on her Spanish, hiking her way around the Sacred Valley, and learning about the ancient Inca

culture and religion as well as its syncretization with Spanish Catholicism.

Ariel PablosAriel graduated in the fall 2012 semester and has been working at the China Medical Board (an NGO based in Cambridge). Ariel enrolled in a Shaolin martial arts school in the mountains in the Shandong province of China where he will be training there for a year start-ing in late August. At the same time, he is pursuing his Peace Corps application for when he returns.

Mark ToledanoAfter graduating in 2005, Mark spent five years as an Analyst and Operations Manager at Edwards Life-sciences, a company in Orange County, California that makes artificial heart valves. This past summer he start-ed a technology consulting business based in the Los Angeles/Orange County area. In his spare time he trains as an open water distance swimmer. One of his current goals is to swim the Bay Area Alcatraz crossing this fall to overcome his fear of hypothermia and sharks.

Meg WiechnikSince graduating from Northeastern in 2012, Meg has been teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at a school called Boston Life. She meets people from all over the world and uses her philosophy degree daily in discussions of life, politics, ethics, and culture. In July, Meg took a certification course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Her plan is to join the Peace Corps, so that she may get to know another culture through English teaching. Meanwhile, Meg remains connected to the National Alliance on Mental Illness of

Northeastern

Alumni

continued on page 13

FALL 2013 13

Massachusetts (NAMI Mass), where she did a co-op. Meg gives volunteer presentations to local groups in an effort to educate the public on mental illness and there-by reduce stigma.

Willow ZefWillow Zef graduated from Northeastern in 2009, re-ceiving a BS in philosophy with a concentration in re-ligious studies. Upon his departure from Boston, he moved to Philadelphia jumping head first into the city’s art scene. He participated in a number of poetry read-ings and word exchanges before moving into an art

gallery. Once there, he organized art shows and dream exhibitions. His artistry took him to Latin America for several months where he planted gardens in such places as Chile and Argentina. From there he found himself in the Bay Area of California where he picked up the craft of bookbinding. He has self-published three works of poetry and short stories and is currently working on a fourth. Most recently he has moved back to his home in Collingswood, NJ where the town has offered him a work-for-trade project restoring a vacant house from the 1880’s in the middle of the town’s park.

ALUMNI UPDATES continued

STUDENT NEWS – EDUCATION BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Kim BarretoKim just finished doing a co-op in the intellec-tual property department at Mintz Levin and is currently on a Dialogue of Civilizations in Ger-many and Poland focusing on the Holocaust and Genocide studies. She will also be working as a re-search assistant with Professor Rory Smead in the fall.

Devin DonohueDevin recently completed a co-op at the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue. This is a non-profit orga-nization, located in Cambridge, which encourages and facilitates dialogue and the exchange of ideas. Generally, the center focuses on current issues from a Buddhist per-spective. His responsibilities at the center were varied, and included designing promotional materials, helping to set up and organize events, and developing material for social media sites. One of his favorite tasks was help-ing to create questions which were used in a seminar with Dewey scholars Jim Garrison and Larry Hickman. Amy DundonIn fall 2012, Amy was involved in Slow Food at North-eastern, which is a student organization concerned with

food rights, sustainability, and local sourcing. This sum-mer, in addition to coursework, she is working every day at a small law firm, MacMurray & Associates. Amy is pri-marily involved in preparing packages for Asylum and Cancellation of Removal cases. She writes affidavits, an assortment of motions, and some subpoenas. The firm practices everything (family, criminal, personal injury, etc.) but she is primarily working on immigration matters.

Dylan Gibbs This summer Dylan participated in a Dialogue of Civilizations to Japan. He studied the politics and culture of the country, and in the course of one month he lived in Tokyo and traveled to Yokohama, Kyoto, Nagano, Nara, and Hiroshima. Currently, Dylan is in the middle of his co-op as a litigation as-sistant at Cetrulo LLC, a law firm in the Seaport dis-trict that specializes in Toxic Tort defense litigation.

Kevin HadarKevin Hadar graduated in 2012 with a double ma-jor in biochemistry and philosophy (B.S.). He worked as a teaching assistant for Professor Kerry Dugan his last semester at Northeastern. He will be at-

The strength and vibrancy of Northeastern University resides, as it always has, in our undergraduate students. The Department of Philosophy and Religion now has over 100 majors and minors. We are continually astonished by what our students are able to accomplish and create in their time here, as well as by the diversity of their interests and aspirations. Below is a sampling of the sorts of things—on campus positions, co-ops, study abroad, and jobs—that our students have been up to, above and beyond their coursework.

continued on page 14

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY Northeastern University 617.373.3636AND RELIGION 360 Huntington Avenue 617.373.4359philosophy.neu.edu Boston, MA 02115

Professor Peg Huff died unexpectedly in May of this year. Professor Huff taught courses in both religion and ethics for the department for many years. She taught everything from Introduction to Religion, to Mysticism, to Ethics East and West. She retired to Canada about five years ago. Below is the obituary that appeared in the New Bruns-wick newspaper:

HUFF, MARGARET "PEG" - Margaret "Peg" Huff of Stanley, NB, unexpectedly while on vacation in Nova Scotia, of a long-term illness. Peg is survived by her loving family: her spouse Ann Wetherilt, her sister Patricia Craddock of Gainesville, FL, her son David (Carolyn) and grandson Seth of Philadelphia, her daughter Patti Alvarado and grand-daughters Tatiana and Mayan of Gainesville, FL and her beloved Great Pyrenees Bromley and Warwick. Peg was a graduate of Stanford University and earned her doctorate at Boston University. She taught for many years at North-eastern University in Boston before retiring to Stanley. Memorial donations may be made to the St. Thomas church furnace fund, your local SPCA, or a charity of your choice.

Casey HerzThis summer Casey has been doing short documenta-ries for a Boston based weekly online zine called The Media.

Jodie LyJodie is doing a co-op at the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan this summer and fall. She and another Northeastern intern have been working on multiple cases ranging from healthcare fraud to bankruptcy fraud to cases dealing with excessive use of force in correctional facilities.

Monica MercolaMonica did her co-op at Attorney Mark D. Cooper's, a small immigration firm, where she managed 30-50 cases and oversaw them from their beginning to their completion. She also had the opportunity to write affidavits, fill out asylum applications, as well as meet with clients.

Jeff NewtonJeff is currently doing a co-op with the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation as a consumer information specialist. He has learned many of the laws and regulations that apply to most daily transactions and how to deliver that information to consumers. While on co-op, Jeff has assisted in per-forming studies aimed at uncovering information that is pertinent to consumers.

Peter RobyPeter Roby was selected as one of the Huntington 100 - a new honor acknowledging 100 distinguished juniors and seniors who have left their mark at Northeastern, academically, athletically, and socially. Peter gradu-ated in 2013 and is enrolled in the master's in English program here at Northeastern.

STUDENT NEWS continued

IN MEMORIAM - PROFESSOR PEG HUFF