Center for Humans and Nature

Bruce Jennings, M.A.

Director of Bioethics

A political scientist by training (Yale University B.A. 1971 and Princeton University M.A. 1973), Mr. Jennings has written and edited twenty books and has published over one hundred fifty articles on bioethics and public policy issues. He is also Senior Consultant and an elected Fellow at The Hastings Center, where from 1991 through 1999 he served as Executive Director. He holds faculty appointments at the Yale University School of Public Health, the Weill Cornell College of Medicine, and New York Medical College and has been a leader in ethics education in the field of public health. He is the chair of the bioethics advisory committee of the March of Dimes. From 2003-2009 Mr. Jennings served as an appointed member and chair (2008-9) of the ethics subcommittee of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Among his recent books are Public Health Ethics: Theory, Policy and Practice (2007), The Perversion of Autonomy: the Proper Uses of Coercion and Constraints in a Liberal Society 2nd. Ed. (2003); and Access to Hospice Care: Expanding Boundaries, Overcoming Barriers (2003). A new book on The Moral Ecology of End of Life Care is due out in 2011, and he is currently completing a book on public health, health policy, and political theory.

He is also active in the area of educational and curriculum development, having co-developed three major curricula: The Decisions Near the End of Life Program (Education Development Center, 1989-96); New Choices, New Responsibilities: Ethical Issues in the Life Sciences (The Hastings Center, 1990-1996) and Ethics and Public Health: Model Curriculum (Association of Schools of Public Health, 2003).

He has served as a consultant to several governmental and private organizations, including the American Hospital Association, the Education Development Center, Eli Lilly and Company, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the New York Academy of Medicine, the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, and the Prudential Foundation.

Mr. Jennings has served on the boards of directors of several national and professional organizations, including the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (2000-2003), American Health Decisions, (1990-present), the American Association of Bioethics (1994-97), the Association of Politics and the Life Sciences (200-2003), and the Hospice and Palliative Care Association of New York State (1997-2003).

Statement of current research focus: My current research focuses on normative policy analysis and theoretical reconstruction in ethics and political theory. Drawing on conceptual frameworks of civic republicanism, deliberative democratic theory, and communitarianism, I am developing a civic conception of public health and health policy making in a book in progress entitled Civic Health. Other research and writing are focused on (1) prospects for democratic governance in the face of economic and social changes required by adaptation to climate change and biodiversity loss; (2) an ethic of care that can bridge bioethics and environmental ethics; and (3) an examination of the concept of resiliency as a normative goal in climate change adaptation planning and public health emergency preparedness planning.

Current CHN Projects: Frontiers of Ethics: Ethics of Care and Place, The Philosophy and Politics of Planning: A Case Study of the Hudson River Valley, Resiliency and the Ethics of Public Health Preparedness and Adaptation to Climate Change, Humans, Nature, and Democracy: Ecological Political Economy