Skating with Socrates

I'm Maura, a philosophy professor and bioethicist at Arizona State University, and occasional visiting researcher at The University of Cologne (Germany). I've also spent time as a visiting scholar at Saint Louis University; The University of Connecticut, and Children's Mercy Hospital. At this site, you can learn about my research, upcoming book, teaching, upcoming talks, and below par social skills.

At ASU I am also involved in a variety of university service projects: managing editor for ASU's Applied Philosophy Website; the chair of the philosophy department's diversity committee; philosophy's faculty representative on the health humanities committee, and faculty adviser for ASU's Graduate MAP chapter. During the 2019-20 academic year I was on the both the graduate committee (evaluated grad applications) and the TT job search committee.

Through the above experiences, I have learned a lot about how this intellectual sport called "academia" tends to be played within the confines of our ivory tower stadium. It's not much like wide-eyed, bushy-tailed, "in it for the love of the game" eager graduate students assumed or hoped. This is something I touch on in my upcoming book , and something I plan to continue writing about in many other venues and capacities. We let too much go in the philosophy profession, and within the univeristy more generally. We let our life be swooped up with professional goals that are so often divorced from the intellectual goals that brought us to the profession in the first place. The bueracratic structure of the profession makes it damn difficult to do andything else. Nevertheless, hope might be a reasonable thing. The bueacracy is not impossible to change, nor are the equally toxic norms. Bad cultures are improved upon all the time. Never do they become perfect cultures. But they become much better than they were before. most graduate students expect as wide-eyed,

The cute pups below are Christmas the liver-speckled beagle (BAWF), and Spooky the Bulldog/Bassett mix (PBR). The pics atop the page are from various places I've lived and worked: Bellingham, WA(most beautiful and the nicest people); Brian Head, UT (10,000 FT, 200 residents); Burnaby, BC (Canadians are so cute) Cologne, Germany (amazing pretzels); Flagstaff, AZ (yes, it snows in Arizona), Orange Country, CA (always sunny and 72), and Tempe, AZ (too damn hot for a penjuign to be walking around).

contact: mpriest2@asu.edu