Holy Cross Lecture to Address Trafficking of Human Organs

Esteemed medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the Chancellor’s Professor at University of California at Berkeley, will give a lecture titled “A World Cut in Two: Global Justice and the Traffic in Humans for Organs” on Monday, Sept. 24 at 4:30 p.m. in the Rehm Library, Smith Hall, at the College of the Holy Cross. The lecture, sponsored by the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, is free and open to the public.

Scheper-Hughes, who launched the human rights project “Organs Watch” with three other professors in 1999, spent several years investigating an international ring of organ sellers based in New York, New Jersey and Israel. She interviewed hundreds of third-world organ donors who felt they were taken advantage of, threatened or tricked into donating. Many were left sick, injured, and unable to work or to get medical care. Her findings, which she reported to the FBI, led to a number of arrests in 2009.

Throughout her career, Scheper-Hughes’ research has focused on the anthropology of violence, madness and culture, inequality and marginality and childhood and the family. She is best known for her books “Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland” (University of California Press, 1979) and “Death without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil” (University of California Press, 1992).

She is an advisor to the World Health Organization and is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study's School of Social Science in Princeton, N.J. At Berkeley, she directs the doctoral program in Critical Studies in Medicine, Science, and the Body.

Learn more and find lectures online at www.holycross.edu/mcfarlandcenter.

About the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture:

Established in 2001 and housed in Smith Hall, the McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture provides resources for faculty and course development, sponsors conferences and college-wide teaching events, hosts visiting fellows, and coordinates a number of campus lecture series. Rooted in the College's commitment to invite conversation about basic human questions, the Center welcomes persons of all faiths and seeks to foster dialogue that acknowledges and respects differences, providing a forum for intellectual exchange that is interreligious, interdisciplinary, intercultural, and international in scope.  The Center also brings members of the Holy Cross community into conversation with the Greater Worcester community, the academic community, and the wider world to examine the role of faith and inquiry in higher education and in the larger culture.