Image: Bill speaking on ethics and public policy.
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Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.
- Bertrand Russell. Quoted in Antony Flew's Thinking About Thinking (1989)
William S. Lynn, Ph.D. is a visiting professor of environmental studies at Williams College.
Bill received his doctorate in Geography from the University of Minnesota. While there he studied ethics, environmental and human geography, interpretive social science, and qualitative methods. A founding editor of the international journal Ethics, Place and Environment, he is a member of the Ethics Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union/IUCN, and an International Associate of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies (www.nzchas.canterbury.ac.nz).
Before arriving at Williams College, Bill was a professor of environmental studies at Green Mountain College, a research scholar at non-profit think-tanks, and a professor of human-animal studies at Tufts University. While at Tufts, he was the Assistant Director at the Center for Animals and Public Policy (www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa), and Program Director for its Master of Science in Animals and Public Policy (MAPP). Bill is also the founder and Senior Ethics Advisor of Practical Ethics www.practicalethics.net), as well as a columnist on the Ethos blog.
Bill's research is located at the intersection of ethics and nature-society relations. He is best known for his work on the ethics and politics of wolf recovery, deep sustainability, and practical ethics. These are subjects that exemplify his concern for the interconnections between human, animal and global well-being, as well as the role of ethics in science and policy. His work has been featured in numerous books, journals, magazines, and radio talk shows. He is currently finishing a book on practical ethics.
At Williams he teaches Introduction to Environmental Studies, Interpreting Nature (a qualitative research course), Understanding Policy (a critical public policy course), and the Senior Seminar in environmental studies. The latter is focused on the ethics and meaning of nature-society relations, for example, 'Conceptions of Nature' and 'Ethics and the Environment'.