Congratulations to the first graduating Ph.D. class, from all of us in the Department of Philosophy and the Ethics and Public Affairs programs! We are so proud of what you have accomplished over the years, and especially during this challenging past year. You have shown your strength, your perseverance, your wisdom, your versatility, and we couldn’t be more proud to call you Carleton alumni. We have been lucky to know you, teach you, learn from you, and work with you, so we will surely miss you. We wish you all the best and we encourage you to stay in touch as you take on new adventures in life.
Ozan Gurcan
A message from Jay Drydyk, EPAF Program Director
Ethics and public affairs is a conflict zone. For any important issue, there are strongly held ethical beliefs that pull and push in different directions. We encourage our EPAF PhD students to develop new lines of thinking that can make a difference within these ethical conflicts. And that is exactly what our first three PhD graduates have done.
Kerry O’Neill took on a type of development aid that was once considered a lifesaver for women, but as Kerry showed, it could also hold down the very women it claimed to empower. Seetal Sunga asked what ethical moves the Canadian state ought to make to better hear the concerns of Indigenous peoples – given the profound power imbalance between the two. Ozan Gurcan took on an aspect of privacy that is considered most intimate – the individual’s genetic code – and argued that it is no different from any other types of sensitive personal information.
With equal parts of daring and care, Kerry, Seetal and Ozan have charted new directions within three difficult policy issues. They have done our program proud.