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Dear Friend of The Witherspoon Institute,
Greetings and best wishes to you. As the year 2011 draws to a close, the Witherspoon Institute is grateful for the successes that have come its way in the past year and it looks forward to 2012 eagerly.
The Institute is especially grateful to all those who contributed financially to make its programming possible. Your loyalty is very appreciated. The Witherspoon Institute makes no profit on its activities and recovers a negligible fraction of costs through book sales and seminar fees; far and away its programs rely on your private donations for their operations.
Please read below to see some recent fruits of the combined efforts of our affiliated scholars and the generosity of our donors to bring sound conceptions of humanity and the common good to the contemporary world of ideas.
If you do not wish to receive this letter, you may unsubscribe at the bottom of this e-mail, though we encourage you to read on.
Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy New Year.
Yours,
Luis E. Tellez
President
The Witherspoon Institute
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 Highlighted Articles from Public Discourse
(Now publishing Monday through Friday)
In October, Public Discourse marked its third anniversary of operations. From August 22 through September 2 the journal published a series of articles dealing with current issues in public life that touch on questions of individual human dignity and the common good, with a particular view toward the 2012 American presidential campaign. Links to all of those articles are given below:
Liberty, Justice, and the Common Good: Political Principles for 2012 and Beyond
Ryan T. Anderson
Being Human in an Age of Unbelief
Four arguments in defense of human dignity.
Charles J. Chaput
Conservatives and Social Justice
Ryan T. Anderson
It's a Girl
Millions of women obtain abortions because they do not want baby girls.
Michael Stokes Paulsen
Sold for Sex: The Link between Street Gangs and Human Trafficking
Laura J. Lederer
Conscience, Coercion, and Healthcare
Helen Alvaré, O. Carter Snead, and Gerard V. Bradley
My Guantanamo Experience: Support Interrogation, Reject Torture
Jennifer S. Bryson
Forty Years Later: How to Undo the Autonomy Argument for Abortion Rights
Erika Bachiochi
One Man, One Woman, and the Common Good: Marriage's Public Purpose
Austin R. Nimocks
The Vocation of a Doctor
How a deep spirit of service and respect for human dignity are essential to the practice of medicine.
Donald W. Landry
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The Economic Challenge
From December 5th to 6th on the campus of Princeton University, the Witherspoon Institute (accompanied by the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education of Princeton University) sponsored a small conference on The Economic Challenge: Fiscal, Monetary, and Financial Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, and the Common Good. The meeting brought together distinguished scholars, public intellectuals, and business practitioners for an in-depth, general, yet practical analysis of the American economy, its present problems, and future direction.
Rutgers economist Michael Bordo and Princeton economic historian Harold James prepared beforehand a memorandum titled "The Economic Challenge" to which the scholars and experts invited to the conference were asked to respond with papers of their own presented at the meeting. The Bordo-James statement synthesized the insights gained at the Institute's preceding consultations on the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2008.
The Witherspoon Institute plans to craft a statement of findings and recommendations based on this most recent consultation's conclusions. This statement will be made available to the public and be especially geared toward leaders in public policy, journalists, businessmen, and other social actors whose decisions affect economic policy in the United States.
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Islam and Civil Society
The Project on Islam and Civil Society under the leadership of Dr. Jennifer Bryson continues to pursue new ways to get people thinking about how to bridge Islamic and modern Western cultures.
Dr. Bryson is developing a project to translate and promote in the Muslim world books about Islam and religious freedom currently written only in English. She is working with Abdullah Saeed, a scholar of Islam and a committed Muslim who as a professor at a major Australian university is closely familiar with Western thinking. The project wants to clarify (among other things) that Western pluralism is not equivalent to irreligiosity.
Dr. Bryson is also trying to raise greater awareness among the public about the possible link between the recent wave of violent terrorism and the rise of extreme forms of pornography. An August 12 article of hers on Public Discourse quickly drew readers' attention and became one of the most read articles on the website in the past year. Click here to read the article.
Dr. Bryson is also doing research on the interrogation of radical Islamists. This project builds on her prior knowledge of the history of interrogation, and in particular of non-violent techniques that gain a greater breadth and depth of information from their subjects than do the harsher methods frequently debated today. She also draws on her firsthand experience as an interrogator during the 2000s at the U.S. military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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Alumnus in Video about 9/11
Mr. Yasser Khalil, an alumnus of Dr. Bryson's summer seminar on Islam and Religious Freedom, was featured in a video created by the British Council to mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Mr. Khalil gave special mention to Dr. Bryson and her seminar in the video, which can be viewed here.
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| Embryo, Second Edition
National debates over embryonic-stem-cell research have divided citizens and lawmakers over the proper relation between the moral law and science. In Embryo: A Defense of Human life, Second Edition, Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen make a compelling case based only on science and moral philosophy that we as a society should neither condone nor publicly fund research that kills or harms human beings at any stage of development, including the embryonic stage.
This revised, second edition includes an afterword addressing recent advances in stem-cell technology and an appendix containing an exchange between the authors and William Saletan, who reviewed Embryo for the New York Times Sunday Book Review.
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Virtuosity in Business
The University of Pennsylvania Press has recently published Virtuosity in Business: Invisible Law Guiding the Invisible Hand by Kevin T. Jackson, Daniel Janssen Chair in Corporate Social Responsibility at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. The recent global financial crisis raises pressing issues that are not exclusively economic. The health of the economy, Kevin T. Jackson contends, reflects the moral health of the wider culture: ethics must be considered along with economics to understand world markets, especially now that globalization and other forces increasingly have complicated the regulation of transnational corporate conduct.
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Herbert W. Vaughan (1920-2011)
The Witherspoon Institute mourns the death of Herbert W. ("Wiley") Vaughan, lawyer, preservationist and philanthropist. Vaughan was a passionate student of government and history, particularly of the United States Constitution, which he regarded as the greatest practical achievement of political science. He was a trustee of the Witherspoon Institute, a fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and an advisor of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He endowed lecture series at Princeton and at his alma mater, Harvard Law School, to advance the understanding of the core doctrines of American constitutionalism. For his full obituary, please click here.
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The Schreyer Alumni Report
A recent effort to gather information on past attendees at the William A. Schreyer summer seminars has yielded some encouraging findings.
Of the approximately four hundred seventy-six (476) people who have attended the Witherspoon Institute's William A. Schreyer summer seminars since 2005, at least 49 percent (234) have come to populate the professional fields of higher education and academic research, public policy, the legal profession, and the national judiciary, both in the United States and abroad. Among these, at least 6 percent are faculty eligible for tenure at American universities; 4 percent have other, short-term academic positions; 25 percent are studying for a PhD at American universities (many of them top-ranked institutions); some have held or do hold positions as legal clerks for federal circuit courts of appeals and even for the U.S. Supreme Court; and about 4 percent are studying abroad in places such as England, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Slovakia, and Australia.
Some of the alumni are now close collaborators of the Witherspoon Institute, including co-authors of the article "What Is Marriage?"; the editor of Public Discourse; a sociologist collaborating with our research into marriage and the family; and the contributor of a paper at our most recent consultation on The Economic Challenge.
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The 2011 Schreyer Seminars
This past summer the Witherspoon Institute held seminars for high school, undergraduate, pre-professional, or graduate students for the seventh year in a row. The highlight of this year was the addition of a new seminar on Medical Ethics in the Twenty-First Century for MD students or PhD students in the medical sciences. For details on each seminar, please read below.SUMMARY
Moral Life and the Classical TraditionFirst Principles: Natural Law in HistoryMarriage, Family, and the Social Sciences(NEW) Medical Ethics in the Twenty-First CenturyIslam and Religious FreedomThe Thomistic Seminar: Geach and AquinasThe Moral Foundations of LawThe Moral Life and the Classical Tradition (high school students; June 19-25, Princeton University). This seminar again considered what major authors of the Western Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian tradition have to say about the relationship between the moral life and the life of the mind. Sessions on Judeo-Christian thought were led by Paul MacDonald (Bucknell University) and Seana Sugrue (Ave Maria University); sessions on the Dialogues of the Greek philosopher Plato were led by Ana Samuel (Witherspoon Institute) and Matthew B. O'Brien (Villanova University).
First Principles: Natural Law in History (undergraduate and graduate students; July 31-August 13, Princeton University). This seminar studied Thomas Aquinas's De Regno and his Treatise on Law in the Summa Theologiae, with supplemental studies in medieval history; the political thought of the twentieth-century thinker Eric Voegelin; and the thought of the twentieth-century historian Christopher Dawson. The main sessionis were led by Thomas D. D'Andrea (University of Cambridge) and Susan Hanssen (University of Dallas); guest sessions were led by Timothy Fuller and Carol Neel (both at Colorado College). The seminar especially aimed to understand the thinkers being studied within their historical context.
Marriage, Family, and the Social Sciences: The Family and the Market (For graduate students in the social sciences). This year's seminar considered the mutual relations between family structures and economic phenomena as observable through the social sciences. Topics included the effects of fertility on the labor force and overall economic prosperity, and vice-versa; how markets rely on strong families; and how family life affects worker productivity. Presenters included Alicia Adsera (Princeton University), Jeffrey Dew (Utah State University), Samuel Gregg (Acton Institute), Jeffrey Hill (Brigham Young University), Robert Lerman (American University), Phillip Longman (New America Foundation), and Philip Morgan (Duke University). The seminar was led by W. Bradford Wilcox (University of Virginia). Next year's seminar will explore the social science literature on the transition of adolescents into adulthood.Medical Ethics in the Twenty-First Century (MD students or graduate students in the medical sciences; June 19-25, Princeton University). This seminar was brand new to the Schreyer Summer seminars. Its aim was to present students of medicine with a sound natural-law moral framework by which to approach complicated contemporary ethical issues in the medical profession. Topics included medical practice generally; end- and beginning-of-life issues; rights of conscience; medical science as a vocation; and legal issues. Farr Curlin (University of Chicago) and Christopher O. Tollefsen (University of South Carolina) served as the main presenters; guest presenters included Helen Alvaré (George Mason University Law School), John Keown (Georgetown University), Donald Landry (Columbia University School of Medicine), Ana Iltis (Wake Forest University), and Dorinda C. Bordlee and Nikolas Nikas (Bioethics Defense Fund). Islam and Religious Freedom (students and professionals in Islam-related fields; July 5-9, Princeton Theological Seminary). For the third year this seminar considered the compatibility between the Western notion of religious freedom and Islam. The seminar was led by Abdullah Saeed (University of Melbourne) and organized by Jennifer Bryson (Witherspoon Institute); guest speakers included Thomas Farr (Georgetown University), Ed Husain (Council on Foreign Relations), Julie Samia Mair (Baltimore Muslim Examiner), and Asma Uddin (Becket Fund for Religious Liberty). Topics this year included the nature of belief; the consequences of barring religious freedom; proselytization in Islam; understanding and answering Muslim arguments against religious freedom; freedom of speech and blasphemy regulations; and conversion. Next year's seminar will explore contemporary interpretations of Sharia, the laws of Islam. The Thomistic Seminar: The Philosophy of Peter Geach and Thomas Aquinas (graduate students in philosophy; August 7-13, Princeton University). This year the seminar studied the thought of Peter Geach, a major twentieth-century analytical philosopher, and the thought of Thomas Aquinas, on which Geach has commented extensively. The seminar was led by John Haldane (University of St. Andrews), accompanied by E. Jonathan Lowe (Durham University), Anthony O'Hear (University of Buckingham), and Candace Vogler (University of Chicago). Topics included causality and time; God and evil; conception and cognition; substance and quality; materialism and non-materialism; the proofs for God's existence; the divine attributes; morality and divine commands; and freedom, deliberation, and action. Next year's seminar will consider themes in social philosophy.The Moral Foundations of Law (JD and PhD students in legal philosophy; August 7-13, Princeton University). This year's seminar again studied the intrinsic connection between absolute natural law and man-made civil law in such areas as criminal punishment, morals legislation, family law, and church-state relations. The seminar was led by Gerard Bradley (University of Notre Dame Law School), accompanied by John Finnis (University of Notre Dame Law School; University of Oxford), Robert P. George (Princeton University), and Patrick Lee (Franciscan University of Steubenville). Guest presenters included Judge Edith Clement (U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit), and Gerard Wegemer (University of Dallas); Wegemer presented on the legal philosophical thought of the Renaissance Englishman Sir Thomas More.
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The Witherspoon Institute makes no profit on its activities and relies on the freewill generosity of donors to fund its projects and daily operations. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and as such any donations to it are tax-deductible. Donations of any amount are always welcome and can be made by mail-in check, or online by credit card or PayPal. For instructions, please click here.
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