The Young Scholar Award

The Young Scholar Award is designed to support and encourage tne research of promising junior faculty engaged in the normative analysis of contemporary social issues.

The Young Scholar visits the Ithaca campus for a weekend of intensive discussion of his or her work with leading scholars from Cornell and other universities. Manuscripts by the Young Scholar are circulated in advance to invited commentators who provide oral and written critique. Further reflection and comment are provided by other scholars invited to join the discussion because of their research interests and expertise. In addition to the expenses of the weekend at Cornell, the Young Scholar receives an award of $1,500. The deadline for applications is in January, and the selection of the Young Scholar is made in March for the Young Scholar Weekend the following spring.

For more information about the Young Scholar Award, contact the EPL office, epl@cornell.edu or (607) 255-8515.

NOTE: There will be no Spring 2008 Young Scholar conference, and applications for a future conference are not currently being solicited. Further updates will be posted in this space when they are available.

Young Scholar Award 2006/2007 - PDF

Young Scholar Alumni

The Young Scholar program has been bringing promising young scholars to Cornell to discuss their research since 1993.

Recent Young Scholar awardees have provided comments about their experience:

Dr. Jeffrey Moriarty, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green University

Papers Discussed April 28, 2007: "Rawls, Self-Respect and the Living Wage ;" "How (and How Not) to Justify a Desert-Claim "

COMMENTS: Winning the 2007 Cornell Young Scholar Award together with attending the Young Scholar Weekend was one of the most significant events in my professional career.  I was impressed by the people who won the award before me; they are accomplished scholars with interesting, topical research programs.  I've always aimed to make my research in philosophy relevant to real world issues, and was encouraged by winning the award to think that, in fact, it may be.  The weekend itself was a mix of productive discussion and gracious hospitality.  It was clear that my commentators, Richard Miller and Michele Moody-Adams, had thought deeply about my papers.  I was eager to begin (extensive!) revision of them in light of their careful comments almost as soon as the weekend concluded.  It was also great to spend time in social settings with Michele, Burke Hendrix, and the other conference attendees.  I am extremely grateful to everyone at Cornell's Program on Ethics & Public Life, especially Michele, Richard, Burke, and Margaret Nichols, for putting together such a special and rewarding weekend.

Dr. Christine Hauskeller, ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society, Exeter

Papers Discussed April 21-23, 2006: "Human Genomics as Identity Politics ;" "The Language of Stem-Cell Science"

COMMENTS: The Award Conference weekend in Spring 2006, brilliantly organized by Michele Moody-Adams and the Cornell Centre for Ethics and Public Life, was one my most stimulating intellectual experiences in recent years. It was made special by the excellent group of scholars from different disciplines who came together and gave well-prepared, insightful, and stimulating criticism and critique. The richness of engagement with my work and my plans to develop it further was as helpful and responsive as an academic can wish to get, and in the most welcoming and comfortable environment.

I submitted two papers for discussion: Genomics as Identity Politics, which aggregates two chapters of the book on this topic that I am working on, and The Language of Stem Cell Science, a paper that starts reflecting on the functions of language in global stem cell discourses. It would already have been an honour to get the opportunity to have the papers work discussed in such depths in this distinguished overseas academic arena. The invited commentaries which Chloe Silverman, Kimberley Leighton, and Josephine Johnston had scholarly prepared and presented, however, stimulated a rare intensity of discussion and commentary even more helpful for my further study and writing on both strands of my work. I hope I will be able to pay due respect to the arguments brought forward in my future work in the political philosophy of the biosciences. Also, it was delightful and made the weekend more exciting and relaxing, to share the occasion with Nir Eyal. The discussion of his work, so different from mine, was very stimulating and I enjoyed engaging with it. All in all I experienced the EPL Young Scholar Award Conference as intellectually demanding and, of equal importance, a helpful, supportive and appreciative institution, and I remain indebted to the program’s staff and members and all the participants in the event.

Nir Eyal, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Bioethics, Princeton University Center for Human Values

Papers Discussed April 21-23, 2006: "Informed consent and 'Respect for Autonomy;'" "Respect: A Consequentialist Approach "

COMMENTS:The Young Scholar award weekend, organized by the Program on Ethics and Public Life, is a wonderful event. Attention and recognition for a scholar's career are particularly helpful in early career stages. However, opportunities for focused attention with a broad group of experts are rare. Cornell's Young Scholar weekend is specifically designed to give intense and expert attention to academics early in their training, a unique opportunity. In my case, even prior to the weekend event, I was able to read eye-opening comments on my work by Michele Moody-Adams, Sam Gorovitz, and Karen Maschke. The weekend itself brought thorough discussions of these and other comments by participants from several disciplines, including sharp Cornell graduate students. Interesting thoughts and suggestions poured in even during meals. I hope that other institutions will model the EPL Program's leadership and introduce similar competitions. I am very grateful to Michele Moody-Adams, Burke Hendrix, and Margaret Nichols for organizing this wonderful event, for electing me as a co-recipient of the 2006 award, for memorable conversations, and for truly moving hospitality.

Sharon Dolovich UCLA Law School.

Papers Discussed April 29-30, 205: "State Punishment and Private Prisons;" "'Expressive' Meaning in Public Policy Debate"

COMMENTS: "I am extremely grateful to have been selected as a Young Scholar by the Program on Ethics and Public Life. At the conference itself, the participants and especially the commentators (Michele Moody-Adams, Steve Garvey and Trevor Morrison) really dug in and engaged fully with my work, and the feedback I received continues to shape my thinking in central ways. The generosity of all who attended that workshop still amazes me. But the Young Scholar program also provided an unexpected and extremely welcome benefit long before the conference itself, one which revealed itself as I worked on the papers I was to present during the YS weekend: it offered the promise of an audience that would engage with my work and take it seriously. So often for junior scholars, it can feel as if we are writing into a void. Will anyone listen to what we have to say? Will anyone care? The commitment of the YS program to listen to and care about what I had to say gave me a feeling of confidence and relevance at a very difficult (pre-tenure) stage for which I will be forever grateful.

Corey Brettschneider Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Brown University.

Papers Discussed April 29-30, 2004: "Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government;" "Public Justification and the Right to Private Property: A Defense of Guaranteed Ownership and Welfare Rights as Compensaion for Exclusion"

COMMENTS: "I am extremely grateful to Michele Moody-Adams, Henry Shue, Burke Hendrix, and Margaret Nichols for organizing the Young Scholar weekend. The conference is certainly one of the best academic experiences I have ever had. The comments from the presenters and the participants demonstrated both a deep understanding of my project and were constructive in pushing me to clarify and strengthen arguments. A year after the weekend I am still reaping its benefits as I publish articles related to the papers I presented and work towards the completion of my manuscript. Thanks again!"

Meira Levinson D. Phil in Politics, Oxford University; Boston Public School Teacher; Author of the book "The Demands of Liberal Education."

Papers Discussed March 28-29, 2003: "Separate but Equal? Segregated Schools and the Fragmentation of Civic Narrative;" "Kurt Cobain vx. Master P: A critical Taxonomy of Multicultural Education"

COMMENTS: "I am extraordinarily grateful to the Program in Ethics and Public Life for inviting me to present my work as a Young Scholar in March 2003. It is a rare and wonderful opportunity to have twenty or thirty scholars from a range of disciplines engage deeply and carefully with one’s ideas — and from breakfast through dinner, no less! I received comprehensive feedback on early drafts of two chapters of the new book I’m writing; in the months since the Young Scholar weekend, I have used participants’ comments not only to revise those two chapters in particular, but also to focus the structure and rhetorical style of the rest of the book. In this respect, I found the interdisciplinary nature of the workshops especially helpful; I’m trying to reach a wide audience in this book, and it was extremely useful to discover what approaches did and did not resonate among the group as a whole. Fielding questions and criticisms of one’s work over the course of two three-hour seminars plus meals could have been a daunting experience. But EPL director Michele Moody-Adams, Senior Scholars Robert Fullinwider and Lawrence Blum, who were the official commentators, and the other participants set a sympathetically and supportively critical tone that was both encouraging and invigorating. I would not have changed the weekend in any way: it is a perfect model for intense intellectual engagement with and support of young scholars. All in all, the Young Scholar weekend stands as an intellectual highlight of my time in academia, and I expect it will remain so for some time to come. Many thanks to Cornell University, the Program in Ethics and Public Life, Michele Moody-Adams, and Margaret Nichols for organizing and hosting a terrific and immensely productive weekend!"

To read more Young Scholar comments, click on the link below.

Young Scholar Alumni Comments - PDF