Dawley Center Bestows First-ever Awards, Announces Fall Lecture by Leading Ethicist

The Alan Dawley Center for the Study of Social Justice is a thriving resource for campus. Read more about the center’s newest initiatives.

Words by TCNJ's editorial staff

TCNJ’s Center for the Study of Social Justice was established 10 years ago when the late Alan Dawley, then professor of history, set about creating “a campus resource to promote scholarship and teaching around social justice issues,” said Morton Winston, professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Dawley, an eminent historian and scholar, was a devoted activist for causes related to social justice. Following his untimely passing last year, the center he founded was renamed in his honor.

Winston, the center’s current director, was one of the original faculty members who worked with Dawley to establish the center. What started “with a wish and a prayer and a shoestring” 10 years ago has blossomed into a thriving resource for the campus, Winston said recently. During the center’s history, it has sponsored numerous symposiums, public lectures, film festivals, courses, and campus-wide learning communities.

Its newest initiative is the Alan Dawley Prize, an award that celebrates the best essay, film, work of art, or other creative project that addresses a social justice issue, from any disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective, and is produced by a TCNJ undergraduate. The center awarded the first-ever Dawley Prizes this past semester to two student projects.

Steven G. Morris ’09 won for his essay, “An Ethical Refutation of Torture,” which addressed the Bush administration’s torture policy and was extracted from Morris’ 236-page senior thesis, The Constitution in Peril: The Perpetual Growth of the Imperial Presidency During Wartime and the Subversion of Constitutional Checks and Balances. Winston said Morris’ essay was “an excellent paper, combining history, law, and current events…[that] deserved high praise and recognition.”

The other prize was awarded to 24 students from the Women in Leadership and Learning (WILL) Program for their senior capstone project, “Libraries Educating All Prisoners.” The project brought “awareness to the increasing imprisonment rates and illustrate[d] how significant the differences are amongst inmates who receive an education while incarcerated versus those who do not,” the group’s submission indicated. As part of their work, the WILL students also collected books and built a library for prisoners.

“These students wanted to change the focus from punishment to rehabilitation,” Winston said. “They had a really well worked-out program … [that] showed the kind of socially engaged activism that Alan always wanted to promote and be a part of.”

In October 2009, the Dawley Center will host famed ethicist and author Peter Singer as the first speaker in its new Distinguished Lecture series. Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne, will speak to campus on October 20. Alumni are encouraged to attend the event. For information on the lecture, please visit www.tcnj.edu/~adcssj.