Honorary Degrees of Retiring Faculty
John M. Stanley, Professor of Religious Studies, holder of Edward F. Mielke Professorship in Ethics in Medicine, Science, and Society, 1999
"Jack Stanley, you have shown how one can combine academic training and scholarship with what Charles Dickens termed 'knowledge of the heart' to benefit the affairs of men and women. During the first phase of your career, you developed a mastery of and published articles about the anthropology of religion, focusing especially on the myths, ideas, and practices of the Eastern faiths. Turning then from East to West, you began increasingly to concentrate on the myths, ideas, and practices of contemporary medicine. What remained unchanged during this shift was your interest in those practical, ethical, and religious questions that seem both most vexing and most inseparable from the human condition. In each and all, you have patiently and effectively transmitted these values to generations of students, who have applauded your teaching prowess and your concern for their welfare.
Your service to Lawrence has been long and distinguished. Over nearly four decades you have taught in and sometimes chaired the Department of Religious Studies, directed both the ACM India Study Program and Lawrence's own London Center, and founded and supervised a groundbreaking interdisciplinary program in Biomedical Ethics. The inaugural holder of the Edward F. Meilke Chair of Ethics in Medicine, Science, and Society, your standing and stature in the field of biomedical ethics was affirmed in 1983, when you served as Visiting Scholar at the Hastings Center, perhaps the premier site for bioethical research in the world.
Grants, fellowships, and awards have come to you from, among others, the Ford Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Indeed, speaking for those of us who have served in Sampson House during your tenure, I can attest that at times we thought your true specialty was in creative entrepreneurial fund raising, to say nothing of fund accounting.
Your academic accomplishments, while impressive, may in the long run prove less significant than the remarkable contributions you have made to the local, regional, national, and even international deliberations on a range of difficult bioethical issues. The titles of some of the conferences and publications you have overseen in recent years testify to their significance: 'Developing Guidelines for Decisions to Forego Life-prolonging Medical Treatment;' 'the Quest to Die with Dignity;' 'Guidelines for the Responsible Utilization of Intensive Care.' These initiatives have involved participants from across the country and indeed around the world, and their influence has had comparable reach. Even to address these topics requires both courage and conviction. You have demonstrated both in great measure and have, in doing so, brought honor not just to yourself but to Lawrence and Appleton. For that we, in turn, thank and honor you.
By the authority vested in me, I hereby confer upon you the degree of Master of Arts, ad eundum, and admit you to its rights, its privileges, and its obligations."