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SHECP Founding Executive Director Harlan Beckley and Distinguished Professors Release Book

Updated: Jan 3


Beckley holding new book

SHECP Founding Executive Director Harlan Beckley and Distinguished Professors Release New Book – Dr. Harlan Beckley and Dr. Matthew Petrusek are two of the editors for the new book, "Ethics and Advocacy: Bridges and Boundaries." Petrusek proposed the concept and wrote the introduction and the chapter “Retrieving (Meta) Ethics in an Age of Advocacy.” He is an alum of the W&L Shepherd Program, served as the internship director for the Shepherd Alliance, the precursor to SHECP, from 2005-2006, and is now an associate professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University.


Beckley wrote a chapter entitled “Ethics and Advocacy in Pedagogy: An Example in Poverty Studies,” citing W&L’s Shepherd Program for Poverty and Human Capability studies and SHECP as case studies. After teaching in W&L’s religion department from 1974 to 1997, Beckley started the Shepherd Poverty Program and founded SHECP. In the chapter, Beckley discusses the origins of the Shepherd program, how it expanded to other institutions through the consortium, and the impact poverty studies has had on alumni, particularly regarding considerations of ethics and advocacy.


Howard Pickett, associate professor of ethics and poverty studies at W&L, director of the Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary study of poverty and human capability, and adjunct professor of law, shared his belief that ethics helps examine how to respect the dignity of every person, a question integral to poverty studies and social justice. “One of the pressing questions in ethics and poverty studies is, ‘How do we hold together the importance of both critical academic study of ethics with actual community collaborating activism and effort?’ This book is attempting to make the case for the importance and limitations of each of those,” Pickett said.


The book is available for purchase from numerous sources.

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