New philosophy Department Head Avery Kolers describes the vital role of UT philosophers in healthcare, housing, and other issues affecting lives every day.

Please allow me to introduce myself as the new department head in philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 

I arrived in January after 25 years at the University of Louisville. I loved Louisville, but I saw in UT a genuinely rare and exciting phenomenon. Everyone knows that UT is growing and is poised to go to “the next level,” to compete with the Berkeleys and Michigans for rankings and dollars and whatever else. (We already outcompete them on the athletics field, of course!) But UT is also something else. 

Ensconced in the heart of Appalachia, UT is a university of, by, and for the people of the state and the region. As the university reaches for the stars, it also has a unique opportunity to deepen its roots by serving the people of Tennessee as never before. 

I’ve been fortunate already to have been in meetings about taking cancer care to people in hard-to-reach areas, and marshaling the brain power of students and faculty to address housing supply and quality shortfalls that depress families’ savings and opportunities. Not for nothing is UT one of only a few dozen schools nationwide to have been recognized with Carnegie Classification as both a top-level (R1) research university and a highly community engaged institution.

Great, you might say, but what does that have to do with philosophy?

Let’s start with cancer care. Healthcare access only helps people if they trust you enough to use the services you offer them. Philosophy develops bioethical expertise—the foundation of trustworthiness—which is not housed in other schools or colleges. Bioethics is not just about the instantaneous clinical encounter—do no harm, informed consent, and so on. Bioethics is also about enabling everyone to have a say in where, when, and how such clinical encounters take place. Whether someone profits by denying coverage. How care teams approach difficult conversations. For example: How should a physician talk to a patient about surgery and recovery, if that patient’s son became addicted to pain meds that had been prescribed for a workplace injury? Or, what lengths should a clinic go to in arranging for an extended course of treatment for an elderly person without a car who lives three towns over, where there is no clinic? These are ethical questions at least as much as they are medical questions.

As for housing, here, too, policy questions are ultimately also ethical questions. If people are unhoused, whose responsibility is it to see that they get back on their feet? While our region is growing, should we insulate long-term residents from rent or property-tax increases, or do we let the market sort things out? Should school districting be tied to residency, and how do we ensure educational equity if neighborhoods have sharply different levels of income and wealth?

UT philosophers are engaged on these questions and others. In this newsletter you’ll read about some of the ways our faculty, students, and alumni are pushing the envelope of knowledge on questions that affect all of us in the region and beyond. Pushing that envelope is an essential part of the mission of a public land-grant university; understanding the ethical and other philosophical issues involved is the distinctive contribution of philosophers to that mission. I am proud and grateful to be a part of this effort.

“It’s an exciting time to be a Tennessee Vol, and with your support we can make this department—this university—better than it has ever been. 

On a somber note, late this spring, the great Glenn Graber—a UT philosopher who was instrumental in building and sustaining this department’s innovative and world-leading clinical bioethics program in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—passed away after a brief illness. I know that many of you knew Glenn and will remember his mentorship and his dedication to students and the university. We have a fuller appreciation in the Honoring Our Past section of the newsletter. The department’s condolences go out to Glenn’s family.

Finally, for your enjoyment, here’s a picture of a statue of the great Scottish philosopher David Hume. As many of us learned during the World Cup, the residents of Edinburgh like to crown their public statues with traffic cones. They also like to rub Hume’s big toe for good luck. Hume would have doubted its efficacy but enjoyed the ritual.

Avery Kolers

Department of Philosophy

Department Head

Professor