Jack+Stanley

Jack Stanley In the late summer of 1959 Linda and I moved to New York City. From the fall of 1959 to the spring of 1961 I was enrolled in the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics Ph D program at Union and Columbia. I was fortunate to be able to work as a research assistant for Reinhold Niebuhr for a brief time (only three months). He was in his final year of teaching and was cutting back on all his activities, but still he was totally impressive and inspiring. For the remainder of my time at Union I worked as research assistant for John Bennett. I designed and started my dissertation under the gentle but firm guidance of John Bennett and Roger Shinn. At Columbia I studied History of Religions with Jacob Taubes and Horace Friess and History of Philosophy with John Herman Randall, Jr. I left Union/Columbia without finishing my dissertation. It was not finished until 1964. In 1961 I accepted a teaching position in the Department of Religious Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, where I remained until retirement in 1999. I was hired to teach “Faith Based Ethics” (Christianity and Judaism with reference to Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam), but for the first few years I was teaching everything – including ”Old Testament, ”New Testament” and “World Religions.” My interest in Hinduism led to a Ford Foundation summer grant to do preliminary research in India where I became fascinated with that country and its many rich religious cultures. I returned to Lawrence and joined professors from Lawrence, Carleton, Grinell and Colorado College to design an India Study Program which allowed about 15 students per year to go to India for six months of study and the experience of living with an Indian family. From 1970 to 1990 Linda and I would share this rich and wonderful experience with five different groups of students. In addition to the teaching experience in India I received grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Smithsonian Institution to conduct research in1971 and1975. In 1979 one of the examples that I had been using in my teaching of Christian ethics led me to a new interest which would profoundly influence the balance of my academic career. I designed a course on “The Emerging Ethical Issues in Medicine and Biology” and a series of public programs, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities that would run concurrently with the college course. By 1985 these public programs had attracted the attention of a local doctor and lawyer, resulting in a gift to Lawrence to establish and maintain a Program in Bioethics and endow a professorial chair. In 1985 I was named the “Edward F. Mielke Professor of Ethics in Medicine, Science and Society” and Director of the Program in Bioethics. I served in that capacity until my retirement in 1999. The highlights of those years were: 1) The design of an International Conference on End-of-Life Decisions which involved 38 doctors, ethicists and economists from seven countries and resulted in study groups on end-of-life decisions in four more developing countries.  2)  Team teaching two courses with William Sloane Coffin, Jr. on Death and Dying 3) Serving as President of American Health Decisions and securing a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to conduct a national focus group study about what Americans want regarding their end-of life treatment  4)  Serving as a consultant for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s effort to   improve end-of-life-care in several states and local communities
 * My Life Since PSR **