Francis was elected president of the Pacific Division of the. Selection as one of the APA鈥檚 three divisional presidents is considered to be the highly prestigious.
Francis will wrap up her one-year post on June 30. One highlight of her tenure came earlier this spring, when she delivered an address to peers in San Francisco titled 鈥淎pplied Ethics: A misnomer for a field?鈥�
Her role as president caps off an exciting year for Francis, who also serves as director of the The new center, which received Board of Regents approval last fall, is a resource for improving the law as it relates to the rapidly evolving areas of health policy, the life sciences, biotechnology, bioethics and the medical and technological arts, in order to help overcome critical health care challenges. The center and its faculty and students are involved in applied, interdisciplinary research, innovative teaching and training and public service and programming. The center鈥檚 roots were established three years ago, and it has grown into a stand-alone center that has sponsored a number of academic initiatives including symposia; moot court competitions; contributing to the university鈥檚 role as an incubator of scientific discovery; working on pro bono work at the legal-medical clinic; adding a pro bono guardianship project; and publishing a lively blog on emerging biomedicine and law issues.
Francis holds joint appointments as Alfred C. Emery professor of law and professor of philosophy, and adjunct appointments in family and preventive medicine (in the Division of Public Health), internal medicine (in the Division of Medical Ethics), and political science. She was appointed to the rank of Distinguished Professor in 2009. In 2000, she was a co-winner of聽the U鈥檚 Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence, an endowed award given annually to an outstanding member of the faculty.
Francis speaks about her work in applied ethics, her experience as president of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, and what鈥檚 ahead for the University of Utah Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences in the following Q&A. (She is available to the media for other interviews on the topic of applied ethics as well).
Q: You work in the field of applied ethics. For those unfamiliar with this area, how would you describe what the field entails? 聽What drew you personally to want to work in this area of study? 聽
A: Applied ethics refers to the many ways in which ethics intersects with areas of practical and professional life. 聽Bioethics (referring to ethics in health care), public health ethics, legal ethics, business ethics, and environmental ethics are all examples. 聽I can鈥檛 say I was 鈥渄rawn to鈥� the field; rather, it was emerging around me as I got my education. 聽I鈥檇 always wanted to be a lawyer and when I got to college I became fascinated by philosophy. 聽My initial field was philosophy of law, including legal ethics. 聽I went to graduate school intending to get both a Ph.D. In philosophy and a J.D. When I eventually ended up with appointments in both philosophy and law at Utah, the artificial heart had just been put into its first (and really only) patient, Barney Clark. 聽The U needed more expertise on its institutional review board, the board responsible for reviewing research with human subjects. 聽What better combination, it seemed, than a young assistant professor in each of philosophy and law. 聽So鈥攖hat鈥檚 how I ended up in bioethics.
Q: The field is young 鈥攊t鈥檚 only been around for about 25 years, according to the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. How has the field changed in your view? Where do you see it heading next? 聽And how does the field play a role in contemporary society today? (I.E. For undergraduate students who might be reading this, how does what you do and what you study affect their everyday lives?)
A:聽First of all, there isn鈥檛 really one field; there are discussions of ethics in many fields. 聽Core to my approach is the need to understand both ethics and a field in which ethics arises; I don鈥檛 think I鈥檇 be able to do the kind of work I do without a great deal of practical knowledge in a field such as law. For undergraduates planning careers in many many fields: 聽you will face ethical dilemmas and it will be helpful to be able to recognize them, to know some systematic ways of working through them, and to understand differing ethical perspectives of others.
Q: You recently were honored and delivered an important presidential address. Tell us about the experience and what it meant to you.
A: I was elected President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association. 聽The APA has three divisions (no national president); being a divisional president is the highest academic honor in the field. 聽The Pacific Division covers everything from the Rockies west. 聽There has only been one other Pacific Division president from Utah in its nearly 100 years鈥攊t was established in 1924鈥擡.E. Erickson, from the University of Utah in 1941-42. 聽So it鈥檚 pretty amazing to be the first academic from Utah to have received this honor since WWII, and only the second overall.
Q: Your presidential address talked about 鈥渉ow to get it right鈥� when it comes to your field. Can you summarize some of your theories in this regard?
A:聽In a nutshell, I don鈥檛 think you can simply take ethical theories and apply them to a given practical context. 聽Bioethics has gotten something of a bad name for doing this: 聽using principles like autonomy or beneficence or non-maleficence and then stamping them onto situations. 聽I鈥檓 a pragmatist in the original theoretical sense: 聽that is, I think we keep understanding more about what ideas like autonomy mean by working them out in tough cases, such as decision making with persons who have intellectual disabilities.
Q: You鈥檝e been an educator for a long time. As we find ourselves in graduation season, what lessons do you hope your students have gained from your courses?
A: I hope they鈥檝e learned to think, to understand different points of view, and to see why I care about issues of justice even when they don鈥檛 share my views.
RSS