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Careers, Life, and Yale Turning Thought into Action

How can we turn thought into action? Coming up with an idea is one thing, but implementing it or manifesting it in or as your life is another matter. Most of us have plenty of opinions; how many of us take any steps to turn them into more than armchair musings or social media rants? What are the economic forces and cultural practices beyond individual inertia that work against a life of purpose? Is individualism the very thing that keeps us from being engaged, and what can pushback against the “tyranny of no alternatives” that maintains worn-out structures?

This conversation with Bruce Jennings ’71 comes at a time when Yalies are considering how to have more impact on matters of concern. Join others to discuss how one can live one’s values.

Speaker

Bruce Jennings ’71

Bruce Jennings ’71

Attending Yale when a lively classroom education was interlaced with activism, Jennings has made a career out of cultivating the mind to address meaningful collective behavior. He is an adjunct associate professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics, after teaching ethics at Yale’s School of Public Health. Editor of its online journal Minding Nature, he is a senior fellow at the Center for Humans and Nature, a nonprofit research center that studies environmental ethics and policy. Previously executive director, Jennings now serves as a senior advisor and fellow at the Hastings Center, where he worked for 26 years developing the field of bioethics. He has served on numerous boards for health and palliative care and ethics and was chair of the Ethics Advisory Committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He was elected as a trustee of the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, for 12 years and worked on conservation and sustainability issues in the Hudson Valley. His most recent book is “Ecological Governance: Toward a New Social Contract with the Earth.” 

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