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) Print a Lecture
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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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