Beyond Borders

By Rebecca Raber

Practical applications of knowledge are important to Jill Stauffer. In every one of her classes, the assistant professor of philosophy insists that her students research and give oral presentations, because regardless of what career path they eventually choose, those presenting skills will serve them well. Similarly, Stauffer, a scholar of ethics, law, and human rights, has created classroom situations in which her students not only read the works of leading researchers but also interact with them in person.

Stauffer's“Applied Ethics” course, for example, required students to read three books whose authors then visited campus and spoke to the class.“Engaging with the issues and authors in this way added so much to the class and helped me retain more information in the long term,” says Valerie Snow '14, a political science major.

In her own work, Stauffer has continually challenged herself to write for those outside higher education and to engage with issues and publications that address a more general audience. While earning her Ph.D. in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley, she began a long-running literary philosophy zine, H2SO4, which was nominated for several Alternative Press Awards during its 12-year existence. (Its title refers to the chemical formula for sulfuric acid, which, according to medieval alchemy, turns lead into gold.) She has also, for eight years, sat on the board of directors of Voices of Witness, a nonprofit book series co-founded by author Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; Zeitoun) to share oral histories of those affected by contemporary human rights injustices. And in addition to publishing in scholarly journals, Stauffer finds time to maintain an interview series with modern philosophers for The Believer, the hip culture magazine put out by Eggers' publishing house, McSweeney's.

“Writing is really important to me, and I like to do it in a way that is not just addressing a small group of people who have read the same books as I,” Stauffer says.“The interviews I do for The Believer with various philosophers, I do in order to see how I can help someone else translate complicated ideas into an educated general-audience form. And it's fun—I enjoy it. … And it's something I do because I think it's a part of the life of the mind to contribute to a larger conversation outside of academia.”

Even her research interests directly grapple with the practical issues and ethical quandaries of the larger world community. Stauffer has published widely on topics such as the international reach of rights, personal and political responsibility, and political reconciliation. She's just finished writing a book, due out sometime late next year, called Ethical Loneliness, which is her term for people who have been through trauma and then not been heard.

“The paradigm example would be Holocaust survivors, who were clearly abandoned by humanity for many years,” she explains.“Those who survived emerged to find that for many years people didn't know what had really happened or didn't want to hear the stories. So ‘ethical loneliness' is the original loneliness of being abandoned compounded by the loneliness of not being heard.”

It is this type of work, engaging with issues of ethics, conflict, and the philosophy of law, that uniquely qualified Stauffer to create Haverford's peace, justice, and human rights program when she arrived on campus four years ago. Though the College had been offering a similar Bi-Co concentration in peace and conflict studies for years, Stauffer, who had previously spent two years on campus as a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow, was hired in 2009 to reshape the program at Haverford and develop the curriculum for a more interdisciplinary program about justice. After a year of meeting with on-campus constituents about their hopes for the new concentration, Stauffer proposed a curriculum of six courses—three core classes and three electives—that has since been put into practice. The core coursework consists of an introductory class that familiarizes students with the history and philosophy of human rights as a concept; a 200-level course,“Applied Ethics of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights,” which surveys Western ethical thinking and introduces students to the philosophy of law; and a capstone course, based on a theme (this year it's“repair”) for which students plan a conference and present their own work.

But there is no official list of electives for the students to choose from. Instead, they must determine their focus, propose a list of classes to Stauffer, and articulate how these will inform their particular interests.“I think it's meaningful for students to take an active part in designing their own education,” says Stauffer.“It requires more of my time for advising to have it work that way, but it's worth it in the long run.”

Snow, the political science major, who is working toward a peace, justice and human rights concentration, says she appreciates how the program has compelled her to look at global human rights issues on a deeper level.“I came to understand how essential it is to study the theory and philosophy surrounding concepts like peace, justice, law, personhood, rights, truth and reconciliation, and cultural relativism, to name a few,” she says.“I really appreciate having that grounding.”

Unlike the previous peace and conflict program, which was social science-focused, the concentration that Stauffer now directs is open to students of all disciplines, and she proudly notes that students from all three divisions of the College (natural science, social science, and the humanities) are enrolled. By the time the Class of 2015 graduates, she estimates, roughly 55 students will have peace, justice, and human rights concentrations on their diplomas—no small feat, given that the next academic year will only be the program's fifth.

With Stauffer's guidance, the program brings together aspiring biologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and political scientists to discuss, debate, and untangle global ills using their unique perspectives, shaped by their diverse fields. This is how Stauffer wants it and what she feels the study of peace, justice, and human rights demands.

“I think students come to college these days interested in interdisciplinarity already,” says Stauffer,“and, though I think disciplinary study is a vital part of an undergraduate education, it doesn't take much looking to see that a lot of the world's most entrenched problems can't be solved by any one discipline's approach.”