Paul Root Wolpe, longtime director of Emory University’s Center for Ethics, will step down May 31 in order to found a new center focused on conflict management, mediation and peacebuilding.
Envisioned in response to a rising “climate of conflict” within the U.S. and abroad, the new Emory center will bring together expertise and resources across Emory and the city of Atlanta to study effective approaches to peacebuilding and support productive dialogue about difficult subjects. Building upon Wolpe’s connections and deep experience as an ethicist and mediator, the center will reach across ideological lines and facilitate the work of Emory faculty, students and staff responding to upheavals domestically in politics, the corporate sector, organizations and communities — and the way they manifest in academia.
“As director of the Center for Ethics, Paul has profoundly impacted the way the Emory community and those beyond our campus understand and engage with ethical issues,” says Ravi V. Bellamkonda, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
“In his new role, Paul will continue to guide Emory’s response to some of the most pressing issues of the day, and position Emory as a leading resource for dialogue, civil conversation and reconciliation,” says Bellamkonda. “I am grateful for his continued service, and I look forward to watching the center grow from an idea to a reality.”
Bellamkonda announced Wolpe’s plans to step down from the director role to the Center for Ethics community last fall. In addition, he announced the appointment of John Lysaker, William R. Kenan Professor of Philosophy, as the center’s next director. Following a sabbatical this academic year, Lysaker will assume the directorship on June 1.
Wolpe, the Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair of Jewish Bioethics and professor of medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, neuroscience and biological behavior and sociology, has served as the Center for Ethics…
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