Scholars

Matthew Lee Anderson is an Assistant Professor of Ethics and Theology at Baylor University’s Honors College and the Associate Director of Baylor in Washington. He is an Associate Fellow at the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life at Oxford University, where he completed a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics. Anderson is a Perpetual Member of Biola University’s Torrey Honors College, and founded Mere Orthodoxy, a web-based magazine that since 2005 has been providing both long- and short-form commentary on matters of religion, politics, and culture from a broadly conservative, evangelical standpoint. He is the author of Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to Our Faith, and Called into Questions: Cultivating the Love of Learning Within the Life of Faith. Anderson writes occasionally for Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, The Washington Post, and other outlets. He lives in Waco, with his wife of fourteen years, where he regularly defeats fourth graders in basketball. 

Ben Frush is a fellow training in Palliative Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill. He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Duke University, his MD from UNC School of Medicine, and his MA in Christian Studies at Duke Divinity School where he was a Theology, Medicine, and Culture Fellow. He completed his medical residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he also served as a Chief Resident.  He is honored to be serving as a Paul Ramsey Scholar.

William Hurlbut, M.D., is a physician and Consulting Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University Medical Center. After receiving his undergraduate and medical training at Stanford, he completed postdoctoral studies in theology and medical ethics, studying with Robert Hamerton-Kelly, the Dean of the Chapel at Stanford, and subsequently with the Rev. Louis Bouyer of the Institut Catholique de Paris.

His primary areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral awareness, and studies in the integration of theology and philosophy of biology.

Dr. Hurlbut is the author of numerous publications on science and ethics including the co-edited volume Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue, and “Science, Religion and the Human Spirit” in the Oxford Handbook of Science and Religion. He has organized and co-chaired two multi-year interdisciplinary faculty projects at Stanford University, “Becoming Human: The Evolutionary Origins of Spiritual, Religious and Moral Awareness,” and “Brain Mind and Emergence.”

Dr. Hurlbut has testified to the National Academy of Sciences Embryonic Stem Cell Research Guidelines Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. In addition, he has made presentations to UNESCO, the Pan American Health Organization, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as well as at major medical centers and universities around the world.

From 2002-2009 Dr. Hurlbut served on the President’s Council on Bioethics. He is the author of Altered Nuclear Transfer, a proposed technological solution to the moral controversy over embryonic stem cell research.

Aaron Kheriaty, M.D., is a psychiatrist, and the director of the program in Bioethics and American Democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, and the director of the Health and Human Flourishing program at the Zephyr Institute in Palo Alto, California. He taught psychiatry previously at the UCI School of Medicine where he was the director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health, and the chairman of the ethics committee at the California Department of State Hospitals. 

Gilbert C. Meilaender, Ph.D., taught at Valparaiso University from 1996-2014, where he held the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics. Prior to teaching there, he taught at the University of Virginia and at Oberlin College. He earned his Ph.D. degree at Princeton University in 1976.

Professor Meilaender has published thirteen books and numerous articles. Among the books are Friendship: A Study in Theological Ethics; Bioethics: A Primer for Christians; The Way that Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life; Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person; Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging; and Working: Its Meaning and Its Limits. He is co-editor (with William Werpehowski) of the Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Christian Ethics, as an Associate Editor of Religious Studies Review, and as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Religious Ethics.

Bioethics is one of the areas to which Professor Meilaender has given considerable attention in his teaching and writing. He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center and was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2009. He was the 2009 recipient of the Center for Bioethics and Culture’s Paul Ramsey Award.

Victor Saenz is Executive Director of the Houston Institute (HI), an academic non-profit whose mission is to help the people of Rice University think deeply about the best way to live through the study of the liberal arts, especially philosophy and literature. HI accomplishes these goals through reading groups, public lectures, and mentoring. He is also a Lecturer at the Rice Philosophy Department, where he regularly teaches courses in classical philosophy (especially Plato and Aristotle) and the philosophy of religion. 

He completed his PhD in the Rice Philosophy Department, specializing in classical philosophy. He is currently working on a series of academic articles on various themes in Aristotle’s ethics. His writing has appeared in Apeiron, Ancient Philosophy Today, and The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. More broadly, he is interested in how the natural law tradition can help us understand our current bioethical challenges. 

While at Rice, Victor served as Senior Managing Editor of both The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy and Christian Bioethics. He holds a B.A. in philosophy and classics at the University of Notre Dame and an M.A. in philosophy from Texas A&M.