William J. Buckley

William Joseph Buckley completed his MA (Religion) and PhD (Social Ethics) at the University of Chicago, where he was a University Fellow and Junior Fellow at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion. Selected a Fulbright Fellow, he instead accepted a German Government and University Fellowship (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) to continue his dissertation's comparative research on reproductive bioethics and end of life decision-making in Europe and the United States. Ongoing research into bioethics led to publications and teaching (Georgetown Schools of Medicine and Nursing; Johns Hopkins).

An ecumenical fellowship commemorating slain seminarian civil rights worker Jonathan M. Daniels was received by Dr. Buckley during his early years in his hometown of St. Louis. This supported his original work as a volunteer, and then as an organizer of international teams of peace volunteers in Northern Ireland during its civil conflict--while, during these years, he was studying philosophy and theology at Cardinal Glennon College and Kenrick School of Theology in St. Louis. Subsequent research into how local communities constructively mobilize resources for different kinds of justice, inspired courses, curricular designed service learning, and publications such as his volume on ethnic conflict and humanitarian intervention entitled Kosovo: Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions. Reviewed in over twenty-eight international journals--and still receiving thousands of online hits after over a decade in print--Kosovo features sixty-one essays by authors from seventeen nations translated from seven languages; it has been used in some sixteen colleges and universities across six nations.

W.J. Buckley's newest work, Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Death and Dying--includes a separate Instructor's Resource Guide--and both were completed with nationally distinguished gerontological nurse practitioner and geriatric nursing specialist, Karen Feldt (PhD, RN). These works are especially timely for regional, national and international conversations about end of life decision-making--they already have thousands of online hits. They bring new clarity to a widely debated question: How can good dying be an object of a just society--and not merely fortune or privilege? "Clashing Views" doesn't argue "Dying and Death" must somehow be finally "just". Rather-- using decades of outcomes based research and the most compelling philosophical and comparative religious arguments-- it demonstrates how particular experiences of dying and death have empirically better outcomes based on specific kinds of justice. Cultural consensus maintains that human flourishing is best sustained in healthcare as "just" when it reflects considerations of need, equal regard, merit, contribution, productivity, justice as fairness, free market competition, and promotes basic functioning or reduces inequities caused by dysfunctions (Powers, Faden, Nussbaum). Dying can be "better" or "well enough" when it reflects interpretations of justice in dying as equality (informed consent and decisional capacity in Chapter I), need (depression, I, compassion fatigue, IV, pain management , V), merit (futility, IX, brain death XIII), productivity-contribution (EOL costs, XV), justly sharing burdens of dysfunctions and justice as fairness (cultural competencies, XVII).

Buckley's research explores why some public debates about end of life decision-making mistakenly paralyze personal decisions. Our age of end-stage dying and desisted treatment are still vexed by whether it is rational to cause death--forgetting ancient wisdom now retrievable from outcomes-based clinical practices. Dying well (enough) can be reasonably improved as an art with practical attention to matters of depression, advanced directives, effective pain management, feared burdensomeness, compassion fatigue and good hospice practices. Rather than constrain dying and death as an onerously privatized ordeal, retrieved cultural imaginaries (poetics) enable dying well (enough) as a generously accompanied performance.

Recent publications include collaborative analysis of "Ethics of Palliative Sedation and Medical Disasters" following unfolding events in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that provoked wider public discussions about sedation at the end of life. He organized, chaired a select panel and edited the published international work exploring consensus to advance public debate among Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Common law traditions regarding "who decides and how" in palliative sedations.

W.J. Buckley uses gender and justice to examine a century of re-inventions of embodied intimacy. He publishes in specialized as well as multi-language and interdisciplinary formats. These writings demonstrate how ethical practices appeal to audiences convictions (called "rhetorics") as embodied performances that use figurative devices as literary tropes called social imaginaries (interpreted as post-structuralist "poetics"). For example, cross-cultural performances of betrayal music disclose global postmodern "knowledge economies" of "sexual optimism" poised to revise generations of patriarchal "sexual pessimism" with gender equity. Globalization is increasingly gendered through political repression and economic oppression. His bilingual essay, "Alone in a Fair: Has a Chilean Poet Civilized Consumerism with Justice?" probes the work of exiled Chilean poet Alicia Galaz (1927-2003). Her activism and writing mobilized transnational audiences by enlarging an entire generation's loves (elegies) and heroes (epics) from one period's surplus of hatreds and excess of villains. He has also explored papal understandings of ritual, education and justice, Love Grows Through Love; Exploring a Shared Catholic-Lutheran History (Benedict XVI's "Deus Caritas Est'). Ongoing research includes the politics of terrorism.

Dr. Buckley has also enjoyed a number of distinguished visiting teaching appointments in the humanities, social sciences and the professions (medical, foreign service, ministry, business). His reviews and articles have appeared in the Journal of Religion; Theological Studies; Modern Theology; Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics; Ethics and Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics; The Linacre Quarterly: Catholic Medical Association; Journal of Lutheran Ethics, Religious Studies Review; Revista Camino Real: Estudios de las Hispanidades Norteamericanas (Universidad de Alcalá, Spain); Revista Cultura y Religión (Universidad Arturo Prat, Chile); Filozofski Godisnjak (Belgrade University). He has presented papers and refereed scholarship for The Society of Christian Ethics, The American Academy of Religion, Catholic Theological Society of America, College Theology Society, The Association for the Study of Nationalities (Columbia); Center for Clinical Bioethics (Georgetown), among others. Dr. Buckley has just been appointed a lay member of the Judicial Ethics Committee of the Maryland Courts. Dr. Buckley has also served as a consultant to the United Nations Independent International Commission on Kosovo, the Maryland Higher Education Commission, as a member of hospital ethics committees and as a board member of a nationally recognized local domestic abuse shelter.

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Dr. Buckley teaches and writes on a range of issues in comparative ethics including; private and public initiatives in geriatric care and genomic innovations; medical futility, end of life care, contending cultural constructions of sexuality; ethnic conflict and the politics of terrorism.