Philosophy Department
Oregon State University
206 Hovland Hall
Corvallis, OR 97331-3902
Courtney S. Campbell joined the OSU faculty in Fall 1990. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia and his B.A. from Yale University.
Prior to coming to OSU, Courtney was a research associate at The Hastings Center, a "think tank" for medical ethics. He also was editor of theHastings Center Report, the leading professional journal in the field of bioethics.
A principal reason Courtney came to OSU was that he saw Oregon as a social laboratory for many of the difficult ethical issues in medicine. More recently, he has written papers for the National Bioethics Advisory Commisssion on the questions of human cloning and of research on human tissue. Among his publications are two edited books,Duties to Othersand What Price Parenthood?, as well as numerous professional publications on physician-assisted suicide, reproductive technologies, the status of the body in medicine, and religion and bioethics. Courtney's courses include "Biomedical Ethics," "Death and Dying," "Research Ethics," and "Philosophies of the Body," all of which stress interdisciplinary education and learner-directed course activities.
An associate professor at OSU, Courtney is also currently the director of the Program for Ethics, Science, and the Environment. This special program develops new courses, invites guest scholars to OSU and the Corvallis community, publishes a newsletter, coordinates faculty forums, and organizes public conferences.
We have two examples of Professor Campbell's IDEAS MATTER lectures on the Philosophy Department web site. You can read Courtney's essay on the origins of just war theory in the debate over the Spanish conquest "Dirt Greed and Blood: Just War and the Colonization of the New World" on the IDEAS MATTER web site. In the Utopian Visions IDEAS MATTER lecture series Courtney contributed a lecture Brave New World "Brave New World: Soma, Shakespeare and Suicide: The Terrors of Techno-Utopia" which explored the place of the humanities in the good life of a community.
Courtney's goals are to be a good husband and father, to embody a Christian spirituality, and to climb mountains, physically and academically.