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 At
top, Lori Gruen, associate professor of philosophy, explains "The Chimp
Project" from her office in Russell House. She and Hughes Fellow
Shayla Silver-Balbus '06 (pictured at left) studied chimpanzees in Ohio this
summer. |
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| Posted 10.01.05 |
Gruen Researches Empathy, Ethics and Chimpanzees, Philosophically
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Lori Gruen spent this past summer with curious
students of an unsuspecting kind – chimpanzees named Emma and Harper. Gruen,
an associate professor of philosophy and co-chair of the Wesleyan Feminism,
Gender and Sexuality Studies Department, formally known as the Women’s
Studies Department, studied the chimpanzees at the Ohio
State University Chimpanzee Center where she continues to gather information
for an upcoming book on empathy.
“By exploring our attitudes and relationships with chimpanzees we can
enhance our capacity to empathize with different others and get a glimpse at
how empathy might have evolved,” says Gruen.
Gruen’s book will focus on, among others topics, chimpanzee history, sign
language skills, comparative cognition and emotional and ethical
intelligence. Gruen plans to continue working on the new book during her
upcoming spring sabbatical.
“This is an opportunity for me to move away from practicing pure
philosophy,” she says. “This is a feature of being engaged in the world.”
Whether in the field with chimpanzees or in the classroom with students,
Gruen’s academic work always involves ethics. In her classes, one of which
includes the popular “Reproduction in the 21st Century,” she asks that her
students challenge their life choices.
Co-taught with Laura Grabel, professor of biology and Fisk Professor of
Natural Sciences, “Reproduction in the 21st Century,” focuses on such hot
button issues as the ethics of cloning, stem cell research, infertility,
contraception and abortion. Offered for the first time last year, the class
is again at it 65 student capacity. Gruen says an additional 130 students
were on the waiting list. Grabel says that a previous incarnation of the
class was taught without a real ethics component and that Gruen’s insights
have brought a whole perspective to the scientific information that’s
presented.
“Lori has brought that missing piece to the course, Grabel says. “She can
teach the rich intellectual history of the philosophical field of ethics and
teach students how to apply these concepts to crafting strong ethical
arguments relevant to reproductive issues ranging from cloning to abortion.”
Much like in “Reproduction in the 21st Century,” whose subject matter often
attracts the local and national media, Gruen longed to weave ethics into
other classes across campus. This past summer she helped launch Wesleyan’s
Ethics in Society Project, a similar program to the one she launched at
Stanford University before coming to Wesleyan in 2000. The project awards
Ethical Reasoning Capability Summer Development Grants to six Wesleyan
professors who are responsible for incorporating ethics into their
undergraduate curriculums.
The grant recipients for this year include: Christina Crosby, English for a
course "Questions of Embodiment"; Norman Danner, Computer Science for
"Cryptography"; Indira Karamcheti, English for "Postcolonial Literature";
Elizabeth McAlister, Religion for "Christianity and Globalization"; Sheila
Mullen, Less Commonly Taught Languages for "American Sign Language and
Current Issues" and Suzanne O'Connell, Earth &Environmental Science for
"Introduction to Environmental Science".
The Ethics in Society Project grants will be available to Wesleyan faculty
again at the beginning of spring semester as well. For more information,
visit www.wesleyan.edu/ethics.
“Wesleyan’s commitment to interdisciplinary work is great for students and
myself as a scholar,” says Gruen. “It’s important to be able to think deeply
and broadly about challenging issues. My students always want to learn how
to respond to the world around them, all while keeping ethics in mind.”
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| By Laura Perillo, associate
director of Media Relations |
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