Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the Department of Bioethics, Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, will be the keynote speaker at a symposium on health care reform at the College Oct. 24-26.
Emanuel will speak Friday night to about 50 invited guests from the fields of medicine, law and insurance as part of the College’s second Alumni and Friends Symposium. The idea is to help graduates re-engage in the intellectual life they enjoyed at Union.
Dr. Emanuel is a breast oncologist and the author and editor of numerous books, including "Healthcare Guaranteed" and the recently published "Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics."
On Saturday, Timothy E. Quill, professor of medicine, psychiatry and medical humanities at the University of Rochester Medical Center, will talk about end-of-life care in a discussion moderated by Carol Weisse, a professor of psychology at Union and director of Health Professions Program.
Throughout the weekend, guests will participate in a series of workshops to define major problems facing America’s health care system and propose solutions. They will also attend a screening of “Sicko,” the 2007 documentary by filmmaker Michael Moore that examines the growing health care crisis.
The first Alumni and Friends Symposium, held in June 2007, was modeled after the “Moral Dilemmas of Governing” class led for many years by Byron Nichols. Twenty former students of Nichols, a popular political science professor at Union from 1968 to 2008, returned for a spirited discussion on the moral and political issues surrounding illegal immigration.