UMass Boston

Lawrence Blum is emeritus professor of philosophy and distinguished professor of liberal arts and education at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he taught from 1973 until 2016. He has published widely in the areas of race studies, philosophy of education, moral philosophy, and social and political philosophy. Blum is the author of five books. His “I’m Not a Racist, But…”: The Moral Quandary of Race” won the North American Society of Social Philosophy’s Best Book of the Year. Blum taught a course on race and racism at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School for four semesters, and wrote a book on that experience, High Schools, Race, and America’s Future: What Students Can Teach Us about Morality, Diversity, and Community. He has done professional development for teachers and other school personnel in Cambridge on racial issues in schools.
 
James Carroll is the author of eight works of non-fiction, most recently Christ Actually, and twelve novels, most recently The Cloister. Among his honors are the National Book Award, for An American Requiem; the National Jewish Book Award, for Constantine’s Sword; and the PEN-Galbraith award for House of War. He is an associate of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. He lives in Boston with his wife, the writer Alexandra Marshall.

Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz professor of the social sciences, professor of economics, and professor of international and public affairs at Brown University. He has taught previously at Boston, Harvard, and Northwestern universities, and the University of Michigan. He holds a BA in mathematics (Northwestern University, 1972) and a PhD in economics (MIT, 1976). He is an academic economist and public intellectual of some distinction.
 
As an academic economist, Professor Loury has published mainly in the areas of applied microeconomic theory, game theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and the economics of race and inequality. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a Member of the American Philosophical Society. He has served as Vice President of the American Economics Association, and as President of the Eastern Economics Association. He won the 2005 John von Neumann Award (given annually by the Rajk László College of the Budapest University of Economic Science and Public Administration to “an outstanding economist whose research has exerted a major influence on students of the College  over an extended period of time.”) In 2016 he received the great honor of being elected Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association.
 
Professor Loury has given the prestigious Lee Lecture on Politics and Government at Oxford (2016), the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford (2007), the James A. Moffett ’29 Lectures in Ethics at Princeton (2003), and the DuBois Lectures in African American Studies at Harvard (2000).

As a prominent social critic and public intellectual, writing mainly on the themes of racial inequality and social policy, Professor Loury has published more than 200 essays and reviews in journals of public affairs in the U.S. and abroad. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a contributing editor at The Boston Review, and served for many years as a contributing editor at The New Republic. Professor Loury’s books include One by One, From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America (The Free Press, 1995 – winner of the American Book Award and the Christianity Today Book Award); The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2002); Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and the UK (co-editor, Cambridge University Press, 2005); and, Race, Incarceration and American Values (MIT Press, 2008).

Father of five and proud grandfather of six, Glenn C. Loury is a native of the South Side of Chicago. He currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island.

Jennifer Radden is a professor emerita of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she chaired the Philosophy Department between 2002-07. She received degrees in philosophy and psychology from Melbourne University, and holds a doctorate of philosophy in philosophy from Oxford. A past president of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry, she has published extensively on mental health concepts, the history of medicine, and ethical and policy aspects of psychiatric theory and practice. Her books include Madness and Reason (1986), Divided Minds and Successive Selves: Ethical Issues in Disorders of Identity and Personality (1996), Moody Minds Distempered: Essays on Melancholy and Depression (2009), The Virtuous Psychiatrist: Character Ethics in Psychiatric Practice, co-authored with Dr John Sadler (2010), On Delusion (2011), and Melancholy Habits: Burton’s Anatomy for the Mind Sciences (2017), as well as two collections of which she was editor, The Nature of Melancholy (2000) and Oxford Companion to the Philosophy of Psychiatry (2004).

Recent articles include "Mental Health, Public Health, and Depression, a Bioethical Perspective" in Ethics, Medicine and Public Health (2016) and "Public Mental Health and Prevention" in Public Health Ethics (2017).