William F. May, Ph.D.

"Venturing Beyond the Limits of Professionalism: Toward Professional Creativity"

Tuesday, October 19, 2004, 7:30 p.m.
Monsanto Auditorium (Life Sciences Center)

Professional standards emerged out of a double necessity. Reformers, led by Abraham Flexner at the turn of the twentieth century, developed standards of education and practice as a means of banning from professional life charlatans, scoundrels, and snake oil salesmen who exploited the needy and gullible. At the same time, the emergence of large, highly-specialized institutions, such as hospitals, universities, and corporations, required experts in the law, accounting, medicine, research, and engineering who could be relied upon to turn out predictable work. Such complex institutions function more smoothly when run by standardized and predictable rather than by idiosyncratic and maverick practitioners. However, this double necessity was a two-edged sword. It helped cut out inferior, erratic performance, but it tended to flatten out superior, creative performance. This lecture will deal with the effort to sustain creativity, in the midst of professional standards.

Dr. William F. May is a fellow at the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life and an adjunct professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. A distinguished and widely respected medical ethicist, May was head of the Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at Southern Methodist University and a founding fellow at the Hastings Center for Bioethics. He was also founder and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University. From 2002 to 2004 he was on the President’s Council on Bioethics. May’s numerous books include Beleaguered Rulers: The Public Obligation of the Professional (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), The Patient’s Ordeal (Indiana University Press, 1991), and The Physician’s Covenant: Images of the Healer in Medical Ethics (Westminster Press, 1983).

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