Professor Lisa Eckenwiler published in the Hastings Center and named a Hastings Center Fellow

Professor Lisa Eckenwiler published in the Hastings Center and named a Hastings Center Fellow

Congratulations for Dr. Lisa Eckenwiler on your incredible achievements!

On Monday, November 29, the Hastings Center announced the election of 24 new fellows, and notified Mason that philosophy professor Lisa Eckenwiler had been elected to join this community. 

The Hastings Center is one of the leading and most prestigious bioethics centers in the world. It is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose members represent diverse disciplines, including philosophy, law, political science, and education. Founded by philosopher Daniel Callahan and psychoanalyst Willard Gaylin in 1969, the center is the oldest independent, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary research institute of its kind.

Her work on "Ethical Placemaking for Refugees" was then published on April 6, 2022. Here is a preview of her published work.

More than 4 million people have fled from war and terror in Ukraine. Numbers increase by the day. Neighboring countries are granting shelter and protection, people are making space in their private homes, in Airbnbs, in hotels. One project funded by New Zealanders is converting Slovak barns that once housed Nazis into refugee accommodations. The amount of help and donated money and goods for people (and their pets) is overwhelming. What was coined as “welcome culture” in Germany in 2015, when many refugees were greeted warmly and welcoming especially by volunteers and private supporters, is repeating itself.

And yet, refugees from other places face the same deterring policies and practices as usual. They must now make space for Ukrainian refugees and are thereby being torn from established structures such as language classes and schools. Conditions in Syria (also partly due to Russian bombardment), the Central African Republic (where Russian-backed mercenaries operate), and in many other countries including Eritrea, Mali, and Yemen are also dire. Desperate people from these places take the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea (where already in 2022 an estimated 227 people are dead or missing) in most cases to meet with hostility, barbed wire, and a state of protracted limbo. Some are using the terms first- and second-class refugees: one Swiss newspaper even spoke of “real” refugees when referring to Ukrainian refugees....

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