Kenan Institute for Ethics Jonathan Glover, Professor of Ethics at King’s College, University of London, and Director of the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, examined the political choices and psychological traps humanity must navigate in the twenty-first century.
Glover is the author of several books on ethics, including the recent Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, an exploration of human capacities and resources for good and evil, and Causing Death and Saving Lives. He chaired a European Commission Working Party on Assisted Reproduction that produced Ethics of New Reproductive Technologies: The Glover Report. He has edited Utilitarianism and its Critics and (with Martha Nussbaum) Women, Culture, and Development.
Dr. Glover gained a reputation as an outstanding lecturer and tutor during his many years at Oxford University, where he was a Fellow of New College. In 2003 he presented the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Princeton University on the topic “Towards Humanism in Psychiatry.” The Tanner Lectureship recognizes “uncommon achievement and outstanding abilities in the field of human values.”
Among his interests are questions raised by the Human Genome Project. A video produced in 1982 by the BBC, “Brave New Babies?,” features Dr. Glover as he introduces and examines issues related to new techniques in genetic engineering. He work currently focuses on the philosophy of mental illness and ethical issues in psychiatry, in particular the nature of psychopathology.
The 2004 Kenan Distinguished Lecture in Ethics was cosponsored by the Center for International Studies, the Center for the Study of Medical Ethics & Humanities, the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy’s Center for Genome ethics, Law, and Policy, and the Office of the President.
