Georgetown Professor Continues Equality and Difference Series with Research on Pregnant Women Maggie Little, director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics (KIE) at Georgetown University, will speak on “Research With Pregnant Women: A Moral Imperative.”

By Erica Turman
October 31, 2017

“We are very excited to bring a speaker to campus who can address issues of Equality and Difference in the clinical research context.”

Maggie Little, professor of philosophy and director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics (KIE) at Georgetown University, is the fourth speaker in the 2017-18 Equality and Difference series, sponsored by the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics at Washington and Lee University. Little’s talk will be held on Nov. 8 at 5 p.m. in Hillel Multipurpose Room.

Little will speak on “Research With Pregnant Women: A Moral Imperative.” The talk is free and open to the public.

“We are very excited to bring a speaker to campus who can address issues of Equality and Difference in the clinical research context,” said Angela Smith, Mudd Center director. “Professor Little is an expert in the area of bioethics, and has written extensively about a variety of issues in reproductive health and clinical research ethics.”

As director of KIE, Little has overseen many initiatives, including the launch of the world’s first Introduction to Bioethics MOOC in April 2014; the inauguration of Conversations in Bioethics, an annual campus-wide event focused on a critical issue in bioethics; the deployment of a series of experimental undergraduate courses utilizing project-based learning and design studio methods; and the founding of EthicsLab, a social innovation lab at Georgetown.

Little’s research interests include issues in reproduction clinical research ethics and the structure of moral theory. A Rhodes scholar and fellow of the Hastings Center, she has twice served as visiting scholar in residence at the National Institutes of Health Department of Bioethics and was appointed to the Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

She is a founding member of The Ob-Gyn Risk Research Group, which brings together experts for research encompassing a wide variety of issues in reproductive health and clinical research ethics. She also co-founded The Second Wave Initiative, which works to promote responsible research into the health needs of pregnant women.

The Mudd Center was established in 2010 through a gift to the university from award-winning journalist Roger Mudd, a 1950 graduate of W&L. When he made his gift, Mudd said that “given the state of ethics in our current culture, this seems a fitting time to endow a center for the study of ethics, and my university is the fitting home.”

For full details on this series, visit: https://www.wlu.edu/mudd-center.