The Philosophy Department is very sorry to report that Dr. Glenn Graber has passed away after a brief illness.

Glenn and his wife Caroline, a nurse, arrived in Knoxville in 1968 after completing their professional training at the University of Michigan. Glenn spent more than 40 years in the Philosophy Department, where he was one of the founders of the graduate Medical Ethics program — one of the first in the country, and one of the very first to include a clinical component, sending students to practica at UT School of Medicine in Memphis and the UT Health Sciences Center here in Knoxville.

Glenn was a beloved teacher and mentor who contributed to the College and University through his service roles great and small, and to the broader community by serving on ethics committees and in giving public presentations on issues of broad public concern.

Glenn was the author of numerous articles and books, including some of the earliest and field-defining texts in bioethics, clinical ethics, and the ethics of euthanasia. In addition to this scholarship, he contributed to the evolution of pedagogy in applied ethics, publishing papers on innovative methods in bioethics education and engineering ethics education. Earlier in his career, he also published numerous articles in the area of religious ethics and the philosophy of religion.

Glenn continued contributing to the Philosophy department right up to the end of his life. The Prados-Graber fund supports PhD students by buying out their summer teaching, enabling them to focus on their dissertation work; in addition to having steered this major gift to the department in the first place, Glenn continued to serve on the prize committee up until this year. And in his role on the Phi Beta Kappa committee, Glenn catalyzed our successful request for the fall 2026 Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar, who will be here in September.

A memorial service will be held Friday, June 26 at 3:00 pm at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 800 S. Northshore Dr., Knoxville, 37919. All are welcome and encouraged to attend. In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial gifts be made to Ascension’s Friends of Music and the Arts (FOMA). (You may do this by sending a check to Church of the Ascension and putting “FOMA in memory of Glenn Graber” on the memo line.)