Bioethicist Jodi Halpern to be welcomed as Dr. Harry Lyman Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor

Jodi Halpern, professor of bioethics and medical humanities at the University of California, Berkeley, will be this year’s Dr. Harry Lyman Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor.

Halpern, who is a medical doctor as well as the co-founder and co-director of the Berkeley Group for the Ethics and Regulation of Innovative Technologies, will be giving a public lecture on Tuesday, April 4 called “Empathic Curiosity in a Divided World,” in which she explores the concept of empathic curiosity and how it can be practiced in times of conflict and polarization.

The first recipient of the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program Award, which enabled her to pursue an MD with a PhD in the humanities, Halpern’s work brings focuses on research and medical ethics, emotions, and decision making, as well as the ethics of innovative technology.

Her first book, From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice was called a “seminal work” by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“We are very much looking forward to welcoming Dr. Halpern to McMaster,” says Mark Johnstone, chair of the Department of Philosophy, who is hosting Halpern. “Her work on ethical issues raised by emerging technologies connects closely to work being done at McMaster’s Institute on Ethics and Policy for Innovation.”

Harry Lyman Hooker was an American medical doctor who left a $25 million bequest to McMaster upon his death in 1979. That gift funds, among other things, an annual visiting professorship and lecture series.

Event details:

• “Empathic Curiosity in a Divided World:” A public lecture by Jodi Halpern, MD, PhD, professor of bioethics and medical humanities, UC Berkeley
• Tuesday, April 4
• 3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m.
• JHE 264
• Reception to follow at the West Room of the University Club