Former Cary M. Maguire Chair in Ethics William F. May was recently appointed to the Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics at the Kluge Center in Washington, D.C.
At the Kluge Center, a part of the Library of Congress, May will undergo research exploring the shift of political anxieties in the West. His current work, tentatively titled “A Shift in Political Anxieties of the West: From the Russians are Coming, to the Coming Anarchy,” focuses on an attempt to deal with the religious dimensions embedded in the politics of the last half century.
May’s three-month stay at the center revolves around two duties. He is to prepare for the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, a series of public lectures hosted by Librarian of Congress James Billington. The lectures will involve a gathering of experts in developmental fields. According to May, the lecture requires him to deal with the question of the appropriate vocation and calling of our nation. With knowledge in both medical and religious ethics, May will bring his expertise to the field of political analysis. His second duty, should the opportunity present itself, is to testify before Congress.
May came to SMU in 1985 to serve as the Maguire chair in ethics, a chair not established in a particular department, but rather a position that would serve various parts of the university. He founded the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility in 1995. Since his departure in July 2001, fellow faculty members continue to hold May in high regards.
“He is a wonderfully gracious person who does a good job at anything he tries, and I think he will do a very good job at the Library of Congress,” Maguire Center Coordinator Terri Gwinn said.
The appointment to the Maguire chair at the Kluge Center came as a total surprise to May as he had not applied for this position, he said. May was notified in a letter from Billington, who finalized the decision. However, there is a direct connection between May’s time at SMU and his recent appointment in the form of Cary M. Maguire, former member of the SMU Board of Trustees. This is May’s second chair to be endowed by Maguire. Nevertheless, it is May’s quality of character rather than his previous positions which earned him a place in the Library of Congress.
“He had a great influence on SMU in terms of lifting up the kind of historic commitment to ethics and values in education,” current Maguire chair in ethics at SMU Robin Lovin said. “The thing about his work and his thinking in general is he reads so broadly across history and literature and law. It makes him the ideal person [to be] at the library.”
In May’s college years at Princeton, exposure to literary works by Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard and Reinhold Niebuhr led to a newfound interest in the realm of death and dying. According to May, death poses the question for us all: What does it all add up to?
“…If one can begin to talk about the meaning of human life, one begins to question one’s own calling,” May said. “To die well one first has to live well. Maybe to live well and to live deeply one has to do one’s living in the knowledge that one is also dying.”
May concentrated on studying physicians and nurses because they, according to him, are the professions we have set aside to help us deal with our end years and our death. Because of his research, May was able to publish books on the subject, including “The Physician’s Covenant” and “The Patient’s Ordeal,” among others.
While at the Kluge Center, May intends to prepare for the series of lectures by making sure the pieces of his research fit together.
“I hope I can move a little deeper into insight, truth on these matters,” he said. “There’s nothing like having to live with a piece of paper in front of you, and your pen or pencil, and be wrestling and struggling with words in order to stimulate discovery.”
May will be working out of the Kluge Center until Dec. 7.
