May 23, 2024 // Diocese

‘Who Counts as One of Us’: ND Professor Wraps Up Tenure Directing Ethics Center

OSV NEWS

By Matt Lamb

“Who counts as one of us, who gets to do the counting and according to what criteria?”

Though it is the broader idea of a future book, it is also a question that Professor O. Carter Snead has been working on for two decades now, including the past 12 years as the Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame.

The bioethicist has written papers, given talks, testified to Congress, and written a book about this very topic, titled, “What It Means to be Human” (Harvard University Press, 2020).

Under his leadership, the center has hosted conferences and trainings for the pro-life movement. It has also published books and continues to recruit academics to research and write about important bioethics topics.

Snead began his career in this field as general counsel to Leon Kass, the former Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics in Washington, D.C. After shaping policy on stem cell research, cloning, and end of life issues, Snead is confronting new challenges.

Snead will stay on at the de Nicola Center and as a law professor at Notre Dame. But he said he is taking leave to research another book about upcoming bioethical problems.

In talking to a bioethicist such as Snead, one is reassured people like him – and places like the de Nicola Center – are thinking about the ethics of advancing technology. It is good that someone with a grounding in Christian morality is testifying to Congress, writing academic papers, and authoring books to shape public policy and opinion.

On the other hand, he articulates well the perils we face as a society.

Snead said the topic of “synthetic embryos” is one he plans to explore for an upcoming book. “To make them, scientists use pluripotent cells [which are able to develop into many different types of cells or tissues in the body] to assemble what appear to be organisms at the embryo stage of development. They are working on cultivating them outside the body to very advanced stages of development, such that they even have beating hearts and primitive brain structures.”

Snead talks about a scientist who wants to create an embryo through seven weeks outside a womb.

“The ontological and ethical questions are whether these beings are mere artifacts with limited developmental trajectories, or are they actually disabled embryos created for the sake of research in which they will be destroyed,” he said.

“Another case study in the book will be animal-human chimeras [organisms composed of at least two genetically distinct populations of cells], focusing particularly on non-human animals whose brains are made of human neurons, or who can produce human gametes – egg and sperm,” he said.

The third case his new book will take up will be “neural organoids, sometimes controversially described as ‘mini-brains’” that are constructed and exist outside the body.

“Some of them have formed optic cups, which are the precursors of eyes,” Snead said. The case of neural organoids requires us to consider “the nature of organisms, parts versus wholes, embodiment, and the markers of humanity.”

While those are some of the future bioethical issues, he said abortion, in vitro fertilization, and end-of-life debates will also remain a focus. He said these topics “will require a lot of additional attention.”

Snead and the de Nicola Center won’t be tackling these issues alone.

A major achievement of the center under Snead’s tenure is “formalizing” the Sorin Fellowship under the center’s direction. There are now more than 600 Sorin Fellows.

While law, medicine, and politics are the most common areas, “we have every major and every college represented among the Sorin Fellows,” Snead said. This includes business students who go into accounting and economics, Snead said. Engineering and neuroscience are other fields represented.

“There’s really no profession that’s not represented among our Sorin Fellows,” he added.

Among those is Luke Schafer, currently a student at Harvard Law School. In a twist of irony, the Sorin Fellows program helped Schafer choose to attend law school at Harvard instead of at Notre Dame.

“I’m not sure I would be at Harvard Law School without the formation of the Sorin Fellows program,” Schafer said. “I was always worried about Harvard because of its hostility to my values, but I eventually realized that the formation I [received] at Notre Dame – and especially as a Sorin Fellow – prepared me for this challenge.”

“If I didn’t think that my faith was strong enough, or that I didn’t have a strong enough group of friends to rely upon in challenging times, I’m not sure I would have chosen to attend Harvard,” he said.

Schafer cited his friendships through the program and its curriculum as helping him. He enjoyed attending daily Mass with other Sorin Fellows. “In addition to the opportunities to deepen my faith, the Sorin Fellows program also gave me the opportunity to enrich my understanding of the Catholic intellectual tradition,” Schafer said.

After 12 years as Director of the de Nicola Center, Snead’s tenure will come to a close on Sunday, June 30. The university has chosen Jennifer Newsome Martin as the next director of the center. Martin is a Notre Dame associate professor with joint appointments in both the Program of Liberal Studies and the Department of Theology, as well as a longtime faculty fellow of the de Nicola Center.

Schafer described his encounters with Snead as “generous and kind.”

“Professor Snead is an incredible asset to the de Nicola Center, and he will be dearly missed.”

Matt Lamb is Associate Editor of thecollegefix.com, where this article was first published. It has been reprinted with permission.