University Distinguished Research Professor and Regents Professor J. Baird Callicott | Philosophy & Religion

University Distinguished Research Professor and Regents Professor J. Baird Callicott

J. Baird Callicott's latest book, Thinking Like a Planet: The Land Ethics and the Earth Ethic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) will be the subject of an Author-Meets-Critics session on April 4, 2015 at the meetings of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in Vancouver, British Columbia.

During the fall semester of 2014, J. Baird Callicott was in residence as Visiting Senior Research Scientist at the Socio-environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the University of Maryland, in Annapolis. He convened and led an interdisciplinary working group of thirteen scholars linking ecological restoration and ecosystem services. Team members represented ecology, environmental studies, law, economics, quantitative analysis, political science, philosophy, and ethics. During Professor Callicott's SESYNC residency, his working group met in September, November, and December. Research clusters within the group were formed and deliverables are in preparation, including a revised submission to Science on international restoration policy and practice co-authored by all the group members.

J. Baird Callicott is a University Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy and formerly Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Texas. He is co-Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy and author or editor of a score of books and author of dozens of journal articles, encyclopedia articles, and book chapters in environmental philosophy and ethics. Callicott has served the International Society for Environmental Ethics as President and Yale University as Bioethicist-in-Residence, and he has served the UNT Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies as chair.

His research goes forward simultaneously on four main fronts: theoretical environmental ethics; comparative environmental ethics and philosophy; the philosophy of ecology and conservation policy; and biocomplexity in the environment, coupled natural and human systems (sponsored by the National Science Foundation). Callicott is perhaps best known as the leading contemporary exponent of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic and is currently exploring an Aldo Leopold Earth ethic in response to global climate change. He taught the world’s first course in environmental ethics in 1971 at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. His teaching at UNT includes graduate and undergraduate courses in ancient Greek philosophy and ethical theory in addition to environmental philosophy.

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