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Joseph J. Fins

Dr. Joseph J. Fins is Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he serves as professor of medicine, professor of public health, and professor of medicine in psychiatry. Fins is also director of medical ethics at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he chairs the hospital’s ethics committee and teaches medicine and bioethics. The author of over 200 publications in medical ethics and health policy, his most recent book is A Palliative Ethic of Care: Clinical Wisdom at Life’s End (Jones and Bartlett, 2006).

Dr. Fins received his undergraduate degree in letters from Wesleyan University and his MD from Weill Cornell Medical College. His current scholarly interests include ethical and policy issues in brain injury and disorders of consciousness, palliative care, research ethics in neurology and psychiatry, medical education, and methods of ethics case consultation. He is a co-author of the 2007 Nature paper describing the first use of deep brain stimulation in the minimally conscious state. He has lectured widely in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America and delivered the 2006 American Osler Society John P. McGovern Annual Award Lecture. He has served as associate for medicine at The Hastings Center and been a visiting professor at The Complutense University in Madrid and Philipps University in Marburg, Germany.

Fins is a governor of the American College of Physicians and a member of the editorial boards of Neuroethics, Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, The Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, The Oncologist, and BioMed Central Medical Ethics. He was appointed by President Clinton to The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy and currently serves on The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law by gubernatorial appointment.

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David Harris

David Harris is deputy provost and vice provost for social sciences at Cornell University. As deputy provost he focuses on a number of key provost office priorities, including diversity, admissions, and financial aid. He also coordinates the work of the vice provosts. As vice provost for social sciences he is responsible for leading the development and implementation of university-wide efforts to enhance the social sciences, and for providing a social science perspective on Cornell policies and priorities.

Harris holds a BS in human development and social policy and a PhD in sociology from Northwestern University. His first academic job was as an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. Since 2003, he has been professor of sociology at Cornell University. From 2004 until 2007 he served as the Robert S. Harrison Executive Director of the newly established Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS). He was appointed vice provost for social sciences in 2005 and deputy provost in 2007.

Harris has broad research interests in race and ethnicity, social stratification, social identity, and public policy. His work applies theories from sociology, economics, and psychology to empirical studies of the fluidity of race, racial and ethnic disparities in socioeconomic status, and racial and nonracial determinants of white residential mobility. In addition to being published in academic journals, public policy outlets, and major national newspapers, he is editor of The Colors of Poverty: Why Racial and Ethnic Disparities Persist (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008) and the lead author of Eliminating Racial Disparities in College Completion and Achievement: Current Initiatives, New Ideas, and Assessment (Teagle Foundation, 2006).

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Alice Pell

Alice Pell is vice provost for international relations at Cornell University. She joined the Cornell faculty in 1990 as a professor of animal science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Since 2005 she has been the director of Cornell’s International Institute for Food and Agricultural Development (CIIFAD), a university-wide center that facilitates engagement in innovative, multidisciplinary initiatives contributing to sustainable agricultural and rural development. In this context, faculty and students have the opportunity to work with local universities, nongovernmental organizations, extension services, and other partners overseas to reduce rural poverty and develop sustainable food systems in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

A cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College, Professor Pell taught English, history, development studies, and geography in Botswana while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. Upon her return to the United States, she enrolled at Harvard University and earned a master's degree in international education and subsequently earned MS and PhD degrees in animal science at the University of Vermont. Her current research focuses on tropical farming systems.

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Michael Waldman

Michael Waldman is the Charles H. Dyson Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He is also the director of the Institute for the Advancement of Economics at Cornell (IAEC). In that role, he works closely with David Harris to improve the quality of Cornell’s economics research and education. As the Dyson Professor in the Johnson School, he has taken on numerous leadership roles, including chairing curriculum reviews and serving as the chair of the Johnson School’s Faculty Policy Committee.

Waldman received a BS in economics from MIT in 1977 and a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. His first academic job was at UCLA’s economics department, where he was awarded tenure. He moved to the Johnson School in 1991 and was given the Dyson chair in 1997. Waldman has also visited at Yale’s School of Organization and Management and Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, where he served as the John M. Olin Visiting Professor.

Waldman has conducted research on a diverse set of topics, including learning and signaling in labor markets; the operation of durable goods markets; the role of expectational shocks in business cycle fluctuations; how the theory of natural selection can explain systematic errors in decision making; and, recently, environmental triggers for autism. He has published in many top economics journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Rand Journal of Economics, and he has a recent publication concerning his autism research in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Waldman has also served as a co-editor at the Journal of Economic Perspectives and an associate editorat the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

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Sarah Kreps

Sarah Kreps is an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. She studies international relations, with a focus on international conflict and cooperation, alliance politics, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Her current research looks at the effect of economic sanctions and military force on nuclear proliferation; the conditions under which peacekeeping is likely to succeed or fail; and American grand strategy after major wars. Her book manuscript considers why strong states sometimes coordinate their military interventions through international institutions and other times undertake them alone.

Prior to coming to Cornell, Kreps was a research fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for International Law and Politics. She has a BA from Harvard, MSc from Oxford, and PhD from Georgetown.

Kreps's work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Security Studies, Political Science Quarterly, the African Security Review, Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, the International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, Orbis, and Intelligence and National Security. Her opinions have been featured in a series of media outlets including The Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, and Reuters TV.

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