Dr. Robert Ladenson, an emeritus professor at Illinois Tech and long-time fellow of the Ethics Center wrote a beautiful piece on the legacy of our former director, Vivian Weil, that appeared in abbreviated from yesterday in the American Philosophical Association newsletter. Below is the complete piece.
Vivian Weil: October
29, 1929 – May 07, 2016
Vivian Weil taught
philosophy at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) for forty
two years (1972-2014). From its
inception in 1976, Vivian was involved actively in Illinois Tech’s Center for
the Study of Ethics in the Professions (CSEP), and she was Director of CSEP for
twenty seven years (1987-2014). The
decision to create CSEP forty years ago responded to a growing sense, at the
time, among engineers and scientists of being presented increasingly in
research, teaching, and work with ethical issues their education and prior
experiences did not equip them to address.
For this reason, during the early years of CSEP those who shaped its
agenda of activities and projects agreed on two basic objectives: (1) to create
useful tools for deliberation about ethical issues in different professions,
with special emphasis upon engineering, technology, and science; and (2) to
develop educational venues in which students (both undergraduate and graduate),
teachers, and practicing members of various professions (especially in
technological and scientific areas) could use these tools to explore ethical
issues in ways that are well informed, thoughtful, open minded, and open
ended. CSEP’s success in accomplishing
these objectives is now acknowledged throughout the world. CSEP has pioneered and developed educational
innovations which became adopted widely, conducted many sponsored research
projects that resulted in high quality publications on important topics in
practical and professional ethics, and organized numerous conferences,
workshops, and public lectures. It has,
in addition collected, curated, and is now digitizing, the world’s largest
archive of professional conduct codes and guidelines, the CSEP/Illinois Tech
Ethics Code Collection.
Vivian Weil’s leadership was by far the most important
factor contributing to CSEP’s record of achievement. Most, if not all, CSEP projects are
collaborations of CSEP staff with, in many cases, Illinois Tech faculty and
students, and, in many other cases, researchers, scholars and practicing
professionals from outside of Illinois Tech.
Vivian organized, encouraged, and took part in such projects unfailingly
with a combination of keen intelligence, enthusiasm, and a truly exceptional
affinity for productive collaboration.
Her most influential contribution was to develop and to model such
collaboration across disciplinary boundaries many had considered impassable,
for which Vivian received warm appreciation and strong recognition from her
fellow educators. In this regard, for
example, Julio R. Tema, Associate
Director of the Benjamin Franklin Scholars Integrated Studies program at the
University of Pennsylvania, who, as a graduate student, took part in a collaborative
project of Vivian’s with nanotechnology researchers, credits the experience as
having “changed his career trajectory and his intellectual life.” He writes: “Though I felt philosophy was somewhat empty
without real world involvement, I had not been exposed to much hands-on
philosophy. Vivian changed all that and
for this I will be forever grateful.”
During her career Vivian was Chair of the Executive Committee of the
Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, a governing member of the National
Institute of Engineering Ethics, a Fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the Sterling Olmstead Award of the
American Society of Engineering Education.
An outstanding
student from her early years, Vivian graduated as class valedictorian from the
academically distinguished Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. She then entered the University of Chicago,
which her former Walnut Hills fellow student, and future life-long partner in
marriage, Irwin Weil was attending. Vivian
received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy from the University
of Chicago, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Like many academically talented women of her
generation, throughout the 1950’s and early 1960’s Vivian subordinated her
strong interest in continued study of philosophy in graduate school to caring
for and raising her children (Martin, Alice, and Daniel). In the mid 1960’s, however, Vivian resumed
graduate study as a student in the newly created philosophy Ph.D. program of
the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC), and received her Ph.D. from UIC in
1972, writing a doctoral thesis on diverse aspects of action theory.
During her early
years on the Illinois Tech faculty Vivian wrote papers and published articles
in action theory. With the founding of
CSEP in 1976, however, her academic focus shifted entirely in a new direction
upon which it remained for the rest of her career. Practical and professional ethics, especially
related to engineering, technology, and science, aligned closely with Illinois
Tech’s fundamental mission. It provided
also an opportunity for Vivian to draw upon philosophy as an important
conceptual resource to address issues of major social importance, thereby
connecting with her abidingly strong sense of moral and social idealism. (Vivian one told me this sense took hold
initially through participating as a teenager in the youth group to which she
belonged of the Isaac Mayer Wise Reform Jewish Temple in Cincinnati.) Furthermore, as exemplified time and time
again during her years as Director of CSEP, it also gave full scope to her
instinctive pleasure and joy in facilitating and taking part in productive
collegial academic collaboration.
Summarizing
concisely Vivian Weil’s accomplishments and contributions, though not easy, can
be done. No words, however, at least
none I’m capable of expressing, can convey with adequate fullness and depth of
feeling how much those of us who knew and worked with Vivian admired,
respected, learned from, liked, and loved her.
We were blessed to have had Vivian as our colleague.
Robert Ladenson (December 07, 2016)
