Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics is pleased to announce the Eugene P. Beard Fellowship in Ethics, a new named fellowship made possible by a generous gift from Eugene P. Beard, founder of Westport Asset, Inc. and long-time supporter of the Center. The fellowship will support outstanding graduate students from any school within Harvard who are writing dissertations or are engaged in major research on topics in practical ethics, especially ethical issues in areas such as architecture, business, education, government, law, medicine, public health, public policy, and religion.

For the next three years, beginning in 2015-16, one Graduate Fellow with outstanding scholarship in the field of practical ethics will be named the Eugene P. Beard Graduate Fellow in Ethics. Zeynep Pamuk, a PhD candidate in Government, has been named the 2015-16 Eugene P. Beard Graduate Fellow in Ethics. Her research interests are in democratic theory, theories of authority and sovereignty, the philosophy of science and social science, and social epistemology. Pamuk’s dissertation concerns the role of experts in democratic societies, with a focus on issues that involve the translation and use of science in political decisions.

Professor Eric Beerbohm, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Graduate Fellowships Program, welcomed the announcement. “This fellowship will support research that bears on the most urgent ethical problems of our time. As we celebrate its twenty-fifth year, the Graduate Fellowship program, which Mr. Beard helped ‘kick-start’ with his innovative early gifts, is thriving. We are grateful for his continued support.”

Mr. Beard’s earlier contributions, from 1996-2001, sponsored the first-named Graduate Fellows in Ethics and, from 2001-2007, the Eugene P. Beard Faculty Fellowship in Ethics. Building on this solid foundation, gifts from the Edmond J. Safra Foundation, facilitated in 2004 and 2010 by Mrs. Lily Safra, first established, and then endowed, the Edmond J. Safra Graduate Fellowship program. 

For further information about the fellowship programs at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, visit www.ethics.harvard.edu/pages/fellowships.