"My scholarly interests for a long time have included issues of religious liberty broadly understood -- not only constitutional questions about the relationship between religion and government but also more general questions about the relationship between religion and public life, including political life," Conkle said. "This is an area of great interest to me, and I am very excited to be able to be pursuing this project."
Conkle has been a Poynter Fellow since 1992. He convened our multidisciplinary faculty seminar on the First Amendment and participated in two Lilly Endowment-sponsored projects --the project on "Religion and Moral Discourse" and a multidisciplinary national seminar on "Religion, Morality and the Professions in America." For the latter study, he wrote an essay entitled "Christian Pilots on the River of Law," based on interviews with Christian lawyers --"lawyers who not only identify themselves as Christians, but who view their Christianity as relevant or important to their professional self-understanding or professional practice."
He received his undergraduate and law degrees from Ohio State University and clerked for Judge Edward Allen Tamm of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He practiced law in Cincinnati before joining the IU faculty in 1983. Conkle teaches courses in civil procedure, constitutional law, First Amendment, and law and religion. He has received numerous awards for teaching and outstanding scholarship.
Conkle is the author of "Toward a General Theory of the Establishment Clause" (Northwestern University Law Review, 1988); "Religious Purpose, Inerrancy, the the Establishment Clause" (Indiana Law Journal, 1991); "Different Religions, Different Politics: Evaluating the Role of Competing Religious Traditions in American Politics and Law" (Journal of Law and Religion, 1994); "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act: The Constitutional Significance of an Unconstitutional Statute" (Montana Law Review, 1995); and "Secular Fundamentalism, Religious Fundamentalism, and the Search for Truth in Contemporary America" (Journal of Law and Religion, forthcoming).
In his spare time, Conkle has coached in Little League Baseball and YMCA Youth Basketball programs. In the summer of 1995, he accompanied a church youth group to Posoltega, Nicaragua.
The Poynter Center's other Nelson Poynter Senior Scholars are Roger B. Dworkin, Professor of Law and Director of Medical Studies, and David Boeyink, Associate Professor of Journalism and Director of Media Studies.
We propose to conduct a series of interviews with residents of Paoli, Indiana, exploring their experiences with the deaths of friends and family members, their attitudes toward their own impending deaths and their relationships with professional care givers. We will capitalize on a unique collection of life histories compiled by Oral History in previous work in Paoli. This resource will provide a rich context for the present study.
The project is inspired by a conviction that attempts to improve the lot of dying Americans have focused excessively on institutional issues -- possible abuse of professional power and failures of commuication between professionals and the dying. While those issues are important, this focus has failed to improve the last days of life for many Americans. We hypothesize that preoccupation with institutional issues distracts us from social, personal and religious issues of greater significance to the dying: the difficulties of communication within the family, physical suffering and the prolongation of the dying proces, the financial burdens of dying in America. Our in-depth ethnographic study will enable us to come to a better understanding of the meaning that ordinary people attach to death.
With supplementary funding from the Indiana Humanities Committee, we will convene a town meeting at the end of the project to share our findings with the community and to solicit feedback. The project will produce audiotapes and transcripts that will be archived in the Oral History Research Center and the Lilly Library at IU. We will write a monograph reporting our findings and will produce computer=based multi-media materials for
The aim of the workshop, directed by Research Associate Kenneth D. Pimple, is to enable science faculty to incorporate research ethics into their graduate courses. The workshop's format, essentially unchanged from the previous two years, featured sessions on ethical theory and pedagogy. The core faculty consists of Pimple, the Poynter Center's David H. Smith, IU Biology Department faculty member Karen M.T. Muskavitch, and Muriel J. Bebeau, Education Director of the Center for the Study of Ethical Development at the University of Minnesota.
With the end of our FIPSE funding, we are making some substantial changes to the project. Most of the CIC universities have pledged financial support (IU-Bloomington, Michigan State, Northwestern, Ohio State, Iowa, Purdue, Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin-Madison). We're very gratified and heartened by this show of confidence, which will give us a solid base.
The 1997 workshop -- shortened from six days to four -- will meet June 25-28. Participation had been limited to CIC universities, but we will now open the workshop to all interested science faculty members. A workshop fee of $300 will be required. Details of the exact workshop schedule are in the works; for the latest news, check out the TRE home page (http://www.indiana.edu/~poynter/tre.html). If you want to be added to the TRE mailing list and receive a flier, tell Ken Pimple.
The workshop was designed to prepare leaders of the next generation of scientists and engineers to confront significant issues in research ethics. The goal was to help participants gain a conceptual understanding of research ethics and ethical thinking and an awareness of the ethical literature that informs these approaches. Workshop sessions explored the historical context in which concern for scientific misconduct has developed as well as variations in conventions and research ethics expectations among differing disciplines.
Participants were asked to prepare in advance by reading in ethical theory, historical material in research ethics and current discussions and guidelines in research ethics. Each participant prepared a first draft of a case raising issues in research ethics. During the workshop, participants developed their capacity to recognize and analyze ethical issues in research situations and to apply moral principles and concepts to such situations. They were asked to do additional readings, engage in discussion of case studies and further refine their own cases under the direction of faculty.
Presentations included "The Nazi Doctors: Significance for the Ethics of Scientific Research," Robert Proctor, Pennsylvania State University; "Social /Historical Context of Engineering Ethics," Taft Broome, Howard University; "Statistical Analysis and the Responsible Use of Data," David DeMets, University of Wisconsin-Madison; " Impact of Science and Technology on the Environment," Aarne Vesilind, Duke; "Computers, Ethics and Social Values" and "Ethical Issues in the Mentor/Student Relation," Deborah Johnson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; "Owning Scientific Information" and "Standards of Conduct in the Sciences and Variations in Conventions," Vivian Weil, Illinois Institute of Technology; "Case Studies in Research Ethics," Karen Muskavitch, Indiana University; "An Overview of Ethical Theory" and "Ethical Theory Underlying Research on Human Subjects," Michael Pritchard, Western Michigan University, and Brian Schrag, IU.
Paticipants have been refining their cases, which will be published by APPE and made available to anyone who wants them. Participants are also expected to share their cases and materials with colleagues or students at their home institutions.
For the past few years, the Center has worked on our long-standing interests in religion and professional ethics with Lilly Endowment support. Both books relate to these topics.
William M. Sullivan opens Work and Integrity with a discussion of briefcases -- the classic symbol of the modern professional. "Even if [the professionals] tread softly in running shoes, the shoes are uniformly in good taste." (1) Sullivan is troubled by the extent to which professionals are preoccupied with technical competence and personal success, with their lack of attention to the larger community of which professionals are members and on which they are highly dependent.
Sullivan believes that professional training and credentialing should include requirements of service. Furthermore, professionals should be trained in "civic capacities" that are essential in "supporting long-term cooperation among divergent groups." (189) Doctors, lawyers and merchant chiefs have crucial roles to play in our civic culture; if they are to be trusted, they must organize their professional life and institutions to serve the common good. There is no taking the politics out of the professions, but we can hope to make it a politics of trust and discussion rather than self-interested power.
One of the great strengths of Sullivan's book is the first chapters' short sketch of the changing faces of professional life. The book has fewer "representative characters" than Habits of the Heart, but Sullivan makes some use of fieldwork, and he often identifies a major figure (Louis Brandeis, Jane Addams or Louis Mumford), who embodies the ideas he is explaining. His heart clearly belongs to the Progressive period right after the turn of the century. If you believe knowledge is power, and that power carries responsibility, you should read this book.
William Dean's The Religious Critic in American Culture is a different but equally provocative book. Dean does not offer a full critique of American culture, although it's not hard to see where he stands. Rather, he laments the loss of religious criticism from our national life. He argues that religion is essentially concerned with wholes, and religious criticism is distinguishable from artistic and political criticism; it is concerned with the whole of a community or a person, not some part or dimension. Dean can use the neo-orthodox language of "ultimate concern," but he is really after rediscovery of those ideas and commitments shared by a people as a whole. Heavily influenced by the original and new pragmatists, discontent with a religious perspective that insulates religious thought from scientific critique, Dean believes that religious critique, if it is any good, will make sense to many citizens of a pluralistic democracy, not simply to one traditional religious community.
Dean is predictably hard on specialists, and that leads him to heavy critique of universities as launching pads for religious criticism. He particularly notes the poverty of divinity schools and departments of religious studies in this regard. In addition to the excessive narrowing of terms of analysis, so common in the modern academy, the university world has become a separate culture, isolated and insulated from society as a whole. It's hard to criticize what you don't know! Dean thinks that a psychological home in any nonprofit organization (a church or temple, the YMCA, a soup kitchen -- anything other than a college or university) may be necessary to effective religious criticism.
Neither book is perfect; I hope that doesn't reflect the fact that both have some degree of connection with Indiana University. (Part of Sullivan's argument is foreshadowed in his Poynter essay Education as Care of the Self: Identity and Meaning in the Global Era, and Dean wrote his book in residence at the Center on Philanthropy.) Neither is reading for the beach or bedside table. Both are books of vision and courage that I recommend enthusiastically.
-- David H. Smith
The Annual Meeting is intended to provide an opportunity for interdisciplinary and interprofessional discussion of concerns in ethics. Individual sessions will appeal to practicing professionals and academics.
The meeting's keynote speaker will be David B. Wilkins, Director, Program on the Legal Profession and Professor of Law, Harvard University. Wilkins' topic will be "Intentions and Roles."
Activities will begin Thursday afternoon with a colloquium for directors of ethics centers and their representatives, planned by Vivian Weil. The discussion willl focus on "Innovative Projects of Ethics Centers: Center Development and Outreach."
Don Phillips will convene a colloquium on "Networking the Ethics Committee Networks" on Thursday evening.
Associated activities will also include a satellite conference on "Practicing and Teaching Ethics in Engineering and Computing," which will meet Saturday afternoon through Sunday. The conference is planned by Michael Loui, Charles Harris, Michael Rabins and P. Arne Vesilind.
The Third Intercollegiate Ethics BowlSM will be held in conjunction with the meeting, thanks to funding from Sears, Roebuck and Co.'s Office of Ethics and Business Policy. Ethics BowlSM is a team quiz game that combines the excitement and fun of a competitive game with an innovative approach to education in practical and professional ethics.
Colleges and universities are invited to enter teams of undergraduate students. To date, teams have been fielded by DePaul University, California State University-Chico, Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola University (Chicago), University of Montana, U. S. Air Force Academy and Western Michigan University.
To enter a team , or to obtain more information about Ethics BowlSM, contact Robert Ladenson, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616; phone (312) 567-3474; Fax (312) 567-3016; E-mail: ladenson@ charlie. cns.iit.edu; World Wide Web: http://www.iit.edu/~csep. Deadline for team applications is January 15, 1997. The field will be limited to the first twenty teams, so don't delay.
APPE's three-day Annual Meeting will feature papers, panels and posters on a wide variety of ethical issues in various fields and professions. The annual Call for Papers has been mailed, inviting submissions and providing full information on format. Demonstrations of ethics teaching, and discussion of moral education and curriculum development are welcome. Submissions for presentations will be accepted until October 31.
Members may sign up for Breakfast with an Author on Friday and Saturday mornings. This event provides an opportunity for informal discussion with authors who have recently published books.
The meeting will again offer several popular features continued from past years. Deni Elliott will present a Video Fair, demonstrating the use of videos in ethics teaching, on Thursday and Friday evenings. The Resource Room will display the wares of 20 to 30 publishers; books on display will again be sold at the end of the event.
The Sixth Annual Meeting will convene at the Washington National Airport Hilton. U. S. Air, the meeting's official airline, will offer discounts on fares.
For information on the schedule, accommodations and logistics, contact APPE, 410 N. Park Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405; 812/855-6450; FAX 812/855-3315; Internet: appe@indiana.edu.
Thus it came to pass that we met almost weekly through the Spring semester. Space does not allow a detailed description of every interesting presentation and lively discussion; we will have to settle for a list: Michele M. Moody-Adams, Philosophy, " Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance"; Richard B. Miller, Religious Studies, "Love and Death in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit"; Daniel O. Conkle, Law, "Different Religions, Different Politics: Evaluating the Role of Competing Religious Traditions in American Politics and Law"; David Boeyink, Journalism, "A Search for Meaning in the Media"; Rajeev Bhargava, Jawaharlal Nehru University, "Religious and Secular Identities"; Carol J. Greenhouse, Anthropology, "Ethics and Critics: The Case of Contemporary Ethnography"; Judith L. Failer, Political Science, "Civil Commitment of Dangerous Persons."
We plan to continue with this format, which was extremely well received. Sessions already scheduled for this semester include Richard Burke, Telecommunications, "Stimulating the Moral Imagination with Henrik Ibsen's Enemy of the People"; Paul Voakes, Journalism, "What Were You Thinking? A Study of Journalists Who Were Sued for Invasion of Privacy"; and David Williams, Law, "The Militia Movement and the Second Amendment Revolution."
In addition, we have scheduled several visitors. On October 17, Stephen Macedo, Political Science, Syracuse University, discussed "Liberalism, Diversity and Civic Education." On October 24, John D. Arras, Philosophy, University of Virginia, will present a talk entitled "Searching for a Middle Way on Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: Between Kevorkian and Moral Absolutism" (cosponsored with Religious Studies).
You will find interesting and useful stuff on the Web, including information on the Poynter Center, details about several of our projects (notably Teaching Research Ethics and Ethics and the Educated Person), our calendar of events, a list of our monographs, back issues of this newsletter, and a list of ethics-related books published by Indiana University Press and available at a discount. Our entire Web site can be easily searched, and you can even be notified automatically via e-mail whenever a page is updated.
Visit our Web site at the following URL (that's universal resource locater, or address ): http://www. indiana.edu/~poynter/index.html.
POYNTER_NEWS will be limited to announcements of events of local interest (e.g., on the Bloomington campus or in Indiana). Announcements of events outside Indiana will usually be posted on APPE_ETHICSNET (see below). Some duplication may occur; Ken apologizes in advance for any inconvenience.
Feel free to tell interested colleagues about POYNTER_NEWS.
The Poynter Center and the Association for Practical and Professionl Ethics (APPE) collaborate in supporting several lists for discussion:
Last updated: 23 October1996
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~poynter/nl1996-1.html
Comments: pimple@indiana.edu
Copyright 1996, The Trustees of Indiana University