Biography
I was born in Camp Blanding, FL where my father was stationed at first during WWII. When he was shipped overseas my mother moved us to her parents’ house in Brooklyn where we lived for about three years. When my father returned, he bought a dental practice upstate and we moved to Elmira, NY. I loved living there. We lived at the edge of town where I had easy access to the woods and the Chemung River. When I was 13 we moved to Bethesda, MD. I was not thrilled with the place. Very little public transplantation and DC seemed to be all government and military.
A major event in my childhood was a conversation with my uncle, who was a graduate student in philosophy. I was 10 years old, and I asked him what philosophy is. He said it’s about asking questions such as does God exist. I was blown away by this question and, as a result, I became interested in philosophy.
I hated high school but fortunately I had a teacher who saved me. Mr. Perialis taught social studies, asked fundamental questions about the world, and treated us like adults. He wrote my letter for college, and I was admitted to Shimer, a school that had incorporated the old University of Chicago Great Books curriculum. When I graduated, I was immediately drafted in the US Army, but was eventually discharged as a conscientious objector. I applied and was accepted at Brandeis University. In my third year, I received a traveling scholarship from Brandeis to study at Oxford University.
My first job was at a campus of Indiana University where they had just set up a branch of the school of medicine. Hired to teach undergraduate ethics and introductory philosophy, I was also invited to start working with the medical students. This was in 1975 and ethical issues in medicine were just getting attention. This was a wonderful opportunity. As a result, bioethics became, and continues to be, my main area of research. Also, when I eventually moved to Chicago, because of my work in medical ethics, I was invited to provide clinical ethics consults at Rush University Medical Center. I did this from 1986 until 2023.
I count myself as extremely fortunate to have had work that I love, to have come in contact with a group of very talented colleagues and students, and to be father to two sons and a grandfather to five grandchildren, all of whom live close by in Evanston.
sheldon@northwestern.edu