The Program in Ethics and the Professions has awarded graduate fellowships, including the Eugene P. Beard Fellowship in Ethics, to five Harvard scholars who study ethical problems in public and professional life.

Peter Cannavò, Evan Charney, Nien-Hê Hsieh, Samantha Power, and Angela M. Smith have been named Graduate Fellows in Ethics for the 1997-98 academic year.

The awards are given to outstanding Harvard graduate students, recent professional school graduates, or medical residents who are writing dissertations or engaged in major research projects in practical ethics. The fellows devote their time to an approved course of research and study and participate in a weekly seminar led by Arthur Applbaum, graduate fellowship director and associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government.

Cannavò is a Ph.D. candidate in government. His dissertation explores how environmental politics conceptualizes relations between human beings and nature, how such conceptual frameworks are rooted in Western political theory, and what implications they have for our notions of work and citizenship. Cannavò received an A.B. in government from Harvard in 1986 and an M.P.A. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School in 1992. While at Princeton, he initiated a redesign of the School's curriculum in science and technology policy. At Harvard, Cannavò has been awarded Mellon and National Science Foundation fellowships, and the Arthur Maass Prize Fellowship.

Charney is a Ph.D. candidate in government studying ethics and political theory. His dissertation examines the concept of political liberalism both as presented in the works of contemporary political theorists such as John Rawls, Brian Barry, and Thomas Nagel, and as exhibited in American constitutional law and jurisprudence. He has an A.M. in classics and philosophy from Harvard and has also attended Harvard Law School. As an undergraduate he won various awards in classics, and as a graduate student has held Andrew Mellon, Jacob Javits, and Earhart Foundation Fellowships and was an Edward Banfield Fellow in Government. He has an article forthcoming entitled "Political Liberalism, Deliberative Democracy, and the Public Sphere."

Hsieh is pursuing a Ph.D. in economics. He seeks to evaluate the organization of economic activity not only with respect to efficiency, but more fundamentally with respect to the promotion of individual well-being as defined by personal autonomy and self-realization. As part of this project, he is currently analyzing the relationship among ownership structure, profitability, and worker control in the firm. Hsieh received his B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College and an M.Phil. in politics at New College, Oxford, with scholarships from the Harry S Truman and Keasbey Foundations.

Power, a J.D. candidate at the Law School, has been named the Eugene P. Beard Fellow in Ethics. She covered the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a journalist for U.S. News & World Report and The Economist, and joined the International Crisis Group as a political analyst in 1996. Power is currently writing a book on international responses to genocide in the twentieth century. She is exploring the post-war development of a moral and legal right of military intervention and contrasting it with the empirical reluctance of outside powers to exercise that right. In addition to reportage from the field, Power's publications include Breakdown in the Balkans, "Greater Serbs" in Black Book of Bosnia, and "USA: The Reluctant Superpower" in With No Peace to Keep: U.N. Peacekeeping and the War in the Former Yugoslavia. Her commentary has appeared in the New Republic, New York Times, and Washington Post. She graduated from Yale University in 1992 with a B.A. in history. Power will serve concurrently as a fellow of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Smith, a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy, is exploring the role of the active/passive distinction in shaping philosophical accounts of moral agency. Smith received her B.A. in philosophy and political science from Williamette University in 1992 and received a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship to study philosophy at Harvard. In addition to teaching in courses in ethics and ancient philosophy, Smith is assistant head tutor in the Philosophy Department. Her first article, "Knowledge and Expertise in the Early Platonic Dialogues," will appear in the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie early next year.

The Program in Ethics and the Professions, currently celebrating its tenth anniversary, is one of five Interfaculty Initiatives under the auspices of the Provost's Office. The Program encourages teaching and research about ethical issues in public and professional life and aims to help meet the growing need for teachers and scholars who address questions of moral choice in schools of business, education, government, law, and medicine. The Program also sponsors visiting faculty fellowships and public lectures on applied and professional ethics. The Graduate Fellowships in Ethics are supported in part by a grant from the American Express Foundation.