The Vaughen Archives

Through a generous grant from Bettye Vaughen, the Center is creating an archive to document its activities. Summaries of the papers presented at Center faculty meetings and abstracts of professional papers written by Center members will be available on our website. Full copies of papers, books and video material also are available through the Vaughen Archives.  Contact Sarah Ubovich at subovich@uci.edu for this material.

Meeting of the Center, October 24, 2003

Larry Cahill presented a talk on his research about memory and emotionally charged events. His findings suggest there are important sexual differences in this process, with women tending to remember more details surrounding emotionally-charged events and men remembering more the big picture. The implications of this for treatment of post traumatic shock syndrome, unipolar depression and autism were discussed. Larry will be posting a more detailed but relatively non-technical overview of this work, along with citations for those interested in the more technical details of the work. Larry's work will be featured in a PBS show in January, as part of Alan Alda's series on Scientific American Frontiers.

Business:

1. All Center members are asked to send me (krmonroe@uci.edu) the following, to go up on our website as soon as possible: (a) a photo, (b) a short vita, (c) a short description of your research interests or a biographical statement, and (d) abstracts of any recent papers you would like to be up on the web. If you have no photo, please let me know and I will send some of our interns by to take a picture.

2. We have two postdoctoral fellows and five interns this year. Both Fellows and Interns are housed on the 4th floor of Social Science Plaza A. Fellow include Andrew Manning (the effect of emotions on decision making in foreign policy) and Lina Kreidie (Islamic fundamentalism and peace and conflict). We also established a pilot program with interns from University High School , as part of our community outreach program. Brian Hong, Andre Maranhao, Michael Song, and Clay Sterns will be working with us on the website and Kristin Fyfe will be working with Kristen Monroe on research on cognitive frameworks of genocidalists. If this program is successful, we will consider expanding it to include other students from local high schools and undergraduates from UCI. We welcome suggestions on the website; we are currently planning to have a flashpoint introduction that will feature pictures of those books, written by Center members and dealing with ethics in their title in some way. If you can send me (Social Science Plaza A) a book jacket, I will photograph it, put it on the website and return it to you.

3. Bettye Trowbridge Vaughen, one of the co-chairs of the Friends of the Center, gave money for us to establish an archive. This archive will document Center activities and will include both photos and, if possible, a video library, in addition to the working papers from the Center. In appreciation of Bettye's generous gift, plus her other efforts on behalf of the Center, we decided to name the archive The Vaughen Archives.

4. We will have an opening reception on Friday, November 21st at the home of Kristen Monroe and Wil Lampros, 2 Whistler Court , Irvine , CA 92612 . (In University Hills.) The reception will be open to the public, will take place from 4-7 p.m. and will have substantial appetizers but not dinner. This is an opportunity to bring new faculty and friends to the Center so please give me names and addresses of people you would like to have invited to this event and I will send them an invitation. (Email names and addresses to me at KRMonroe@uci.edu.) We hope all Center members can attend and will feel free to bring guests.

5. We issued an invitation to Jane Goodall to speak with us this year and are waiting her reply. We were not able to offer her the $100,000 honorarium she usually requests but she has promised to consider our offer and try to fit us into her schedule for a much smaller honorarium.

6. Other speakers who are being invited include both scholars and practitioners who can tell us something about how people grapple with ethical issues in their lives. Frans DeWaal (primatologist from the Yerkes Primate Center and Emory University ) and Loretta Lynch, former head of the California Energy Commission have been invited. Sarah Farmer is working on funding necessary to bring to campus Emmanuel Sivan, Israeli historian specializing on Islam. Other possible speakers include Paul Abramson (UCLA, legal implications of sexual identity), Antoine Bechara ( Iowa , frontal lobe activity and the morality of the decision-making process). Suggestions for future speakers are most welcome.

7. Our topic next year will be altruism and cooperation. We are exploring granting possibilities and speakers and welcome suggestions on both.

8. It was suggested that we explore the possibility of bringing a speaker who can talk about the ethics of stem cell research and the politics surrounding it. Roger Pittman was one suggested speaker. Pauline Yahr, Larry Cahill, Jerry Tobis, and Paul Silverman were volunteered (thanks!) to work on this. I would like to ask Ron Miller to join them and welcome other volunteers.

9. Please see our website for fuller details of Center activities, including a description of the UCLA Symposium on Ethics in which several of our members participated. To see the website, go to www.socsci.uci.edu/ethicscenter and click on conferences.