Michele Moody-Adams, a moral philosopher who works on contemporary ethical issues in law, politics, class, race and gender, as well as on theoretical issues in moral objectivity and moral psychology, has been appointed the Hutchinson Professor and Director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life at Cornell University.

A search committee, chaired by Vice Provost Mary Sansalone and consisting of faculty members from five of Cornell's colleges, as well as the Program on Ethics and Public Life, unanimously endorsed the selection.

Currently associate dean for undergraduate education in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, Moody-Adams will begin her Cornell appointment July 1.

The Program on Ethics and Public Life (EPL), which has been led by its founding director, Henry Shue, professor of ethics and public life, for the past 13 years, is being enhanced through a process led by Sansalone and endorsed by President Hunter Rawlings. The initiatives in ethics are part of a much larger effort to reinvigorate the undergraduate experience at Cornell.

New EPL initiatives under consideration include freshman seminars in ethics dilemmas in student life beginning in fall 2001 and an ethics and a writing seminar series for upperclass students; both initiatives are being developed as important elements of the residential living-learning communities on North and West campuses. Also envisioned are an expansion of the core group of ethics faculty and support for faculty efforts throughout the university to consider the nature and significance of ethics in their particular fields.

"This is an exciting and important time to come in as director of Cornell's Program on Ethics and Public Life, and I am pleased to be able to build on the many strengths of the program built by

Henry Shue," Moody-Adams said. "Enhancements in the program over the next few years will be an integral part of several student life initiatives within the Cornell community. I believe that the program can play an important part in helping to make students reflective and responsible citizens of their university, as well as their political communities."

Shue will continue as a full-time faculty member within the program, in which he has taught courses about international issues, such as climate change and international justice, humanitarian intervention in countries like Rwanda and nuclear weapons and war.

"Cornell students are very interested in environmental issues and ethics," Shue said. "What's distinctive about Cornell's Program on Ethics and Public Life is that we don't discuss only abstract theories but draw concrete implications about public policy."

While his focus is in the international arena, Shue pointed out, Moody-Adams specializes in issues central to ethics in American life, such as privacy, business ethics, feminism, race and class. The EPL program also includes law Professor Kathryn Abrams, who, on a half-time basis, teaches issues in law and ethics to undergraduates.

Expansion of the program is being partially funded by an $8.5 million loan from the Pew Charitable Trusts announced by Rawlings in January. The proposal on ethics to the Pew foundation was written by Sansalone and Provost-elect Biddy Martin, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

As part of the university reaccreditation self-study process currently under way, several of the seven undergraduate colleges are examining their curricular requirements, and a number of them are considering courses in ethics in their areas of study. Moody-Adams will help in the development and prioritization of these efforts.

"Economic, technological and political changes on the global and national levels have made many ongoing ethical questions more urgent than ever and raised equally urgent new ones," she said. "I am pleased to be part of Cornell's effort to take a leadership role in encouraging discussion about these questions, since so much of the research and scholarship going on at Cornell plays an important part in speeding up the pace of change."

She added that she hopes, in addition to supporting more undergraduate and graduate courses in all the major degree-granting schools at Cornell, EPL will develop additional programming, such as campus lectures, ongoing seminars and regular conferences.

For the past eight years, under Shue's directorship, EPL has offered an annual program for young scholars, which is partly supported by the Cornell Class of '65. Moody-Adams participated in the program in 1999 as a commentator on the work of a young political philosopher.

"The Young Scholars Program is a mentoring program for professors at the beginning of their careers," Shue explained. "It's a program that is competitive and has attained national recognition." Plans are under way to enhance that program through fundraising so it can be expanded.

Shue will be on leave during the fall semester to complete a book on ethical issues surrounding climate change. Shortly after the United States presidential election in November, he will travel to The Hague for an international meeting on the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations treaty tackling global climate change. He will teach again in spring 2001.

Moody-Adams received her master's and doctoral degrees (1986) in philosophy from Harvard University and a bachelor's in philosophy from Wellesley College (1978). She was a Marshall Scholar at Somerville College, Oxford University, from 1978 to 1980, where she completed a second bachelor's degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

The author of a book, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and Philosophy, published by Harvard University Press in 1997, Moody-Adams also has published numerous articles. She serves on the editorial boards of Metaphilosophy, Utilitas, Hypatia and Public Affairs Quarterly.

She joined Indiana University as an assistant professor of philosophy in 1991 and became associate dean in 1998. Previously, she was assistant professor at the University of Rochester (1988-1991) and Wellesley (1986-1988).

A native of Chicago, Moody-Adams said she is looking forward to moving to Ithaca with her husband, James Eli Adams, and her young daughter. Adams, who is a scholar of Victorian literature, will join the Cornell faculty in English. He studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before coming to Cornell to earn a Ph.D. in English in 1987.