Holley Program in Applied Ethics
The Cyrus H. Holley Professorship in Applied Ethics was established in 1999 with a generous endowment from former trustee Cyrus H. Holley. It was Bloomfield College’s first endowed professorship, and it fosters teaching and scholarly creativity in the field of applied ethics. Cyrus H. Holley (1936-2008), a member of the College Board of Trustees (1987-1997), was an executive-in-residence lecturer; in that role, he visited classes and spoke with students, largely business majors. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus Richard E. Hart recalls Mr. Holley’s engagement with Bloomfield students: “I was impressed with his earnest concern for our students and his commitment to their advancement through education. Cy’s concerns about ethical matters was reflected in all the different ways he contributed to the College. He was a nice man of considerable professional accomplishment, but he always seemed to me to be on the level with students and faculty.” Mr. Holley was named Trustee Emeritus in 1997 and awarded an honorary doctorate of laws degree by the College in 1998. He was an engineer and executive vice president/chief operating officer of the Engelhard Corporation in Edison, New Jersey (now part of the German chemical company BASF).
Professor Hart was named the Cyrus H. Holley Professor in 1999. He held that professorship until his retirement in 2015. His thoughts about the opportunities afforded by the professorship illuminate the scope of Mr. Holley’s gift to the college: “I wanted to elevate philosophy as a discipline to a place of visibility and importance within the College. I also believed it important that there be a lot of varied, even at times controversial, discussion about all things related to ethics across the College and in society more generally. The work of the professorship, therefore, needed to be interdisciplinary and across majors. I wanted it to involve faculty, students, administrators and staff whenever possible.” Professor Hart’s standard method was to invite participants to read a common text and then to come together at a forum where they would analyze, interpret and debate the experience they had reading and reflecting.
Starting in 2002, the Holley event series included an annual lecture delivered by a prominent speaker from outside the college – an event open to the entire college community. Speakers invited by Professor Hart included among others Judith Green (Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University), John Lachs (Centennial Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University), Eduardo Mendieta (then Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center at Stony Brook University), Carolyn Patty Blum (then Professor of Law, Columbia University Law School), and Charles Johnson (National Book Award winner and Pollock Professor of English and Writing Emeritus, University of Washington). These annual lectures played an important role in Professor Hart’s efforts to “contribute to the advancement of the academic culture of BC” by developing “a vital, ongoing and open-ended public space for serious intellectual discourse . . . a place where we could all have fun exploring ideas and enjoy the fellowship of everyone.”
Upon Professor Hart’s retirement in 2015, Paul M. Puccio, Professor of English, was named his successor as Holley Professor. His commitments follow from the work established by Professor Hart; he writes, “With so many (often competing) pressures in higher education, including pressures to focus on the ‘business’ of education, I hope that this program will continue to provide our academic community with opportunities for recognizing and discussing the principles that distinguish education from other social and cultural institutions, and for examining the ethical choices in every aspect of our work (teaching, scholarship, advising, administration).” He is committed to serving the college by emphasizing the cross-disciplinary aspect of ethical study: in his words, “to envision programs that suggest that ethics is (to borrow a term from the theologian Paul Tillich) a ‘depth dimension’ of all that we do in our individual disciplines and departments. No matter the subject, our behaving with ethical sensitivity makes us better teachers, better scholars, better role models, better citizens, better human beings.”
Professor Puccio has focused his attention on goals that recognize the changing landscape of higher education and of Bloomfield College. He has collaborated with faculty to encourage more student attendance at events; he has also featured newer members of the faculty at forums, in order to showcase their innovative contributions to the college and to introduce them more formally to the community at large; he works with faculty across the college to enhance the library collection with materials about ethics in multiple fields of inquiry; and he supports faculty-led initiatives, co-sponsoring a variety of events throughout the year. He has also established an advisory board, with whom he consults on programming and initiative development. In 2020-2021 board members are Professor Esther Dillard, Dr. Demetris Nicolaides, Professor Yuichiro Nishizawa, Professor Lori Ann Palmieri, and Dr. Dunja Trunk.
Guest Lectures
Guest Lecture - Dr. Richard Miller
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Working from a case study of Tyler Clementi’s suicide, Professor Richard Miller explored the challenges of developing an ethics that applies to virtual lives and virtual selves meeting anonymously in virtual spaces. What are the personal and pedagogical implications of living in a world where we can instantly publish and distribute anything we see, hear, or think? How will this affect childhood development? Can our traditional models for education and parenting survive the “end of privacy”?
Presenter Bio
Dr. Richard E. Miller is a Professor of English at Rutgers University. His book On the End of Privacy: Dissolving Boundaries in a Screen-Centric World (2019) explores how education is being changed by the proliferation of hand-held devices that enable instant publication and global distribution of anything that can be seen or heard. Professor Miller spent three years on the faculty of the Doctoral Program in Social Work at Rutgers, where he designed and helped to implement a curriculum in multimedia composing. Having returned to the English department, he regularly teaches the course “The Coming Apocalypse,” which enrolls 200 students. With Ann Jurecic he authored Habits of the Creative Mind (2016, 2019), a guide to help writers practice being curious in the Age of Information Overload. He is also the author of As if Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education (1998) and Writing at the End of the World (2005); Professor Miller’s next project is a book about poverty, gender and mental illness
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Guest Lecture - Rev. Dr. Amaury Tanon-Santos
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Dr. Amaury Tañón-Santos spoke of the history of the Presbyterian commitment to higher education – a history that dates back locally to 1746 and the founding of the College of New Jersey (today Princeton University). The Presbyterian ethos is a commitment to the future of the body politic, and this continues to be central to the Presbyterian witness though education at home and abroad.
Presenter Bio
The Reverend Dr. Amaury Tañón-Santos is the Synod Networker for the Synod of the Northeast – the community of 22 presbyteries (districts), over 1,100 congregations, and over 180,000 Presbyterians that worship and serve in New England, New Jersey, and New York. His ministry is to connect passions in witness and ministry, brokering resources and joint learning opportunities. Before serving in the Synod, he was Director of Programs for Continuing Education at Princeton Theological Seminary, and pastored congregations in Union County, New Jersey, and in Westchester County, New York. He is currently a Minister of Word and Sacraments in the Presbyterian Church, USA. A historian, Dr. Tañón-Santos has advanced degrees from Princeton Seminary (MDiv, 2005) and New Brunswick Theological Seminary (DMin, 2011). He is a fellow of Duke University Divinity School’s Foundations for Christian Leadership program.
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Guest Lecture - Dr. Erec Smith
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Dr. Erec Smith analyzed the rhetoric of Donald Trump and his supporters. He explained the interpretive community of Trump supporters, juxtaposed their interpretations of Barack Obama to those of Trump, and compared their rhetoric to that of the social media phenomenon of trolling.
Presenter Bio
Dr. Erec Smith has a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Language, Literacy, and Rhetoric; he has taught at Temple University, Drew University, Ursinus College, and is currently Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at York College of Pennsylvania. He is co-editor of and contributor to The Making of Barack Obama: The Politics of Persuasion (2013), a collection of essays that examine President Obama’s rhetorical strategies and contexts. Dr. Smith’s scholarship also includes work in the Politics of Size, connections between Buddhism and teaching, hate speech in the classroom, and writing center practice. He has served on the Presidential Committee on Diversity at Ursinus College and was Special Assistant to the Provost on Diversity at Drew. In his local community, Dr. Smith also engages in workshops and events promoting racial justice.
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Guest Lecture - Andrew Tomlinson
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Mr. Andrew Tomlinson explored the dilemmas that emerge in values-based work at the United Nations (including the tensions between principles and pragmatism, accompaniment and accountability), and he reflected on how inclusive values-based approaches can create the conditions for transformative outcomes.
Presenter Bio
Mr. Andrew Tomlinson has broad and deep experience in history, politics, religion, and finance. He received First Class Honours at the University of Cambridge in archaeology and anthropology, and he has a Masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Oriental Studies. He was Vice President at S. G. Warburg & Co., an investment bank, and he was a director at Salomon Smith Barney, a division of Citigroup, where he was a senior member of the derivatives capital markets team. Since 2008, he has been the Director of the Quaker United Nations Office in New York and Quaker Representative to the UN. The organization Action On Armed Violence named the Quaker UN Office (under the leadership of Andrew Tomlinson in New York and Jonathan Wooley in Geneva) one of the 100 most influential global actors in armed violence reduction. Mr. Tomlinson is also a past member of the ensemble Pomerium Musices, which was dedicated to presenting vocal music of the Renaissance.
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Special Events
Special Event - Community Forum with Dr. Marcheta Evans
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Dr. Marcheta Evans spoke of the college mission and our shared values of Honesty, Respect, and Commitment. She appealed to the community to hold onto values and practices that she would herself follow: always keeping students as our top priority; being transparent about what we do and why we do it; remaining positive in our outlook about the college and our students; being willing to work hard, but doing what we can to create an environment in which we all want to work, and work together; being honest and expecting honesty of others.
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Special Event - First Generation Faculty Forum
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Faculty presenters Dr. Debra Curtis, Dr. Karen Fasanella, Dr. Paul Puccio, Dr. Rosita Rodriguez, and Dr. Carolyn Spies shared their own experiences as the first in their families to attend college. Their stories demonstrated a broad and varying set of experiences. Not all first-generation students are alike, and "first-generation" doesn't point to a one-dimensional or stable cluster of experiences.
Faculty Forums
Faculty Forum - Dr. Natascoa Boeri
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Dr. Boeri interrogated eurocentrism in cross-cultural research and considered ways to counter it. This forum focused on western theories of political economy and how they explain and do not explain women’s work in the context of the Global South. It examined the implications of this for labor mobilization in India, as well as how these alternative approaches might apply to work, labor, and care in the US.
Faculty Forum - Dr. Nixon Cleophat
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This presentation discussed how Haitian Vodou ecological ethics can be used to address forms of oppression such as ecocide, sexism and homophobia. Dr. Cleophat examined the personalities, characteristics, and manifestations of the lwas (Vodou divinities) as a theological source for an eco-theology of liberation.
Faculty Forum - Dr. Nora McCook
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With experience in two literacy initiatives (one in central Haiti, and one with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program), Dr. McCook explored these questions: What does literacy achieve? What are the benefits and risks to teaching literacy across cultures and languages? What do historical examples of literacy campaigns teach us about the roles and purposes of literacy volunteers? What can people interested in the power of literacy do today?
Faculty Forum - Dr. Karen Fasanella
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Dr. Fasanella provided an overview of the ethical response of our country and, in particular, our state to provide quality education for all learners; this overview included both the historical perspective and the current status of teaching and learning. Joining the discussion were Jasmine Webster, an education major at Bloomfield College, and Jasmine Kennedy, a doctoral student at Saint Peter's University.
Faculty Forum - Dr. Karen Luchka
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This forum focused on the financial scandals and events of the past two decades: Enron, Bernard Madoff, and the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2008. Professor Luchka highlighted the toxic environment where these scandals took place, and focused on how students may be affected as they work and try to fill leadership roles within such an environment.
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Faculty Forum - Dr. Harry Franqui-Rivera
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Dr. Franqui-Rivera explored how we have descended into an Age of Alternate Facts, in which political factions operate within echo chambers, creating their own realities, a world in which the President of the United States shows complete disregard for the record and lies with impunity. Scholars have a responsibility to step into the public arena and restore accuracy and reliability by becoming creators and disseminators of knowledge. While total objectivity in history is a myth because complete impartiality is not possible, a historian's training and vocation provides the tools and desire to discern between truth and lies, between facts and opinions.
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Faculty Forum - Dr. Suhaib Obeidat
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Dr. Obeidat discussed the hazardous materials that go in the making of technology, obsolescence at a formidable scale, why recycling is not so benign, the ecological and biological effects of improper recycling, and what constitutes proper recycling.
Faculty Forum - Professor Esther Dillard
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This forum examined questions that journalism educators must address when teaching news gathering and reporting in the era of President Donald Trump. Professor Dillard explored what the public should expect from journalists. What tactics are being used by politicians and spokespersons to confuse the public and journalists? And why should we all be concerned about 24-hour media exposure?
Faculty Forum - Dr. Peter Kardos
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Stereotype threat refers to being at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group. Dr. Kardos demonstrated how stereotypes, by affecting their targets directly, can explain ethnic differences in standardized test performance and the lack of diversity in specific occupations.
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Faculty Forum - Dr. Fiona Harris-Ramsby
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Theatre as ancient as Greek Comedy has been a "safe and special" space where subversion is practiced. Given her work on theatre as rhetorical theory, Dr. Ramsby added to dominant contemporary narratives about Ancient Greek Rhetoric an account of Aristophanes' Clouds, which lampoons Socratic and civic rhetoric, focusing on the body and its functions as a way to satirize rhetorical practice.
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Faculty Forum - Dr. Christie Cruse
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One of the most difficult leadership challenges in organizations is to create and maintain an ethical climate. Dr. Cruse led a conversation that focused on how leaders can influence the ethical values of organizations, build trust, and set behavioral boundaries within an organization.
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Faculty Forum - Dr. Grace Cook
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The Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and English Language Arts are a hot-button topic; their politicization has led to confusion over their intended purpose and their curricular applications. Is it appropriate to create a baseline for all students regardless of their education and socioeconomic background? Dr. Cook discussed the history of the standards, their current status in the United States (and in New Jersey), and the pros and cons of such educational standardization.
Faculty Forum - Dr. Zachary Aidala
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The use of animals in research is an increasingly divisive issue, even within the scientific community. Dr. Aidala discussed numerous ethical approaches towards the use of animals in scientific research, specifically examining the ethical dilemmas of biomedical and ecological research from both basic and applied approaches.
Faculty Forum - Professor Jonterri Gadson
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This forum focused on the challenges associated with art composed from borrowed expressions. With persona poetry (poetry written in a voice other than the poet's), Professor Gadson explored these questions: Who has the right to "give voice to the voiceless"? How do you avoid your voice overshadowing the voices you seek to amplify? Who can speak for whom?
Faculty Forum - Dr. Kevin Moran
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Dr. Moran aimed to raise awareness of mass incarceration, a subject already popularized by Michelle Alexander''s book The New Jim Crow and by thousands of activists across the country. This forum also examined the American prison system with the intent of representing it accurately.
Faculty Forum - Professor Abraham Gomez-Delgado
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Professor Gomez-Delgado reflected on how the identities of young people today are being formed in the online world. He asked, how do these digital environments create new mental models and new ethical minds? Where are the boundaries, and what exactly constitutes the digital territory?