Initiative for Chinese scholars to reflect on the relationship between values and virtues

The Nagel Institute at Calvin College and The Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP) announce a major, three-year initiative for Chinese scholars to reflect on the relationship between values and virtues. This initiative, which receives major support from the John Templeton Foundation, will include a variety of projects for Chinese scholars to reflect on the relationship between values and virtues. This program includes a variety of projects:

• Visiting Student Program. Eight to ten student fellows per year will be hosted for a year of coursework at Baylor University, University of Notre Dame, Calvin College, or Hope College.
• Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Three faculty fellows will be hosted for each year at Notre Dame, Baylor or Calvin.
• Competitive Project Awards. This program will solicit proposals annually from Chinese scholars or teams of scholars on projects of their own choice.
• January Seminars. Beginning January 2010 we will conduct a series of invitational Seminars on evolution & ethics, the foundations of morality, and virtues & vices. Seminar participants will present their own scholarship at follow-up conferences in October.
• October Conferences. These annual conferences, held at Chinese universities starting in 2010, will expand the conversation begun in the seminar and disseminate the seminar participants' work.
• Visiting Professors. We will fund eight visiting Western scholars per year to offer lectures and seminars in China.
• Summer Teaching Workshops. These workshops, held in 2011 and 2012 at Calvin College, are designed for professors interested in developing courses in science & religion, and virtue & vices.
• Book Distribution. A continuing program of book distribution for universities hosting SCP programs.

Kelly James Clark, Ph.D., Project Director. Clark, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College and former Executive Director of SCP, has been a principal organizer, coordinator, and fund-raiser for many ventures in China. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford University, the University of St. Andrews and the University of Notre Dame. An accomplished philosopher with a focused interest on epistemology and Chinese philosophy, he is the author, editor, or co-author of more than ten books and author of over fifty articles; his books include Return to Reason, The Story of Ethics, and 101 Key Philosophical Terms of Their Importance for Theology. Professor Clark has hosted and mentored twenty-five Chinese graduate students at Calvin College, arranged for thousands of books to be shipped to Chinese universities, organized and participated in SCP conferences in China, lectured and taught mini-courses in Chinese universities, helped other colleges set up China exchange programs, and had two of his treatises, Return to Reason and The Story of Ethics, translated and published in China. He has edited a series of books for Chinese audiences: Faith, Knowledge and Naturalism (Peking University Press, 2007), Reading Thomas Aquinas (forthcoming), Happiness (forthcoming), and Human Nature in Chinese and Western Culture (Sichuan University Press, 2005).