Faculty Win MacArthur Grants

Two Harvard faculty members, a moral and political philosopher and a physician who studies poverty, were recently honored for their creativity with MacArthur Foundation "genius" awards.

Thomas M. Scanlon, Alford professor of natural religion, moral philosophy and civil polity, will receive $320,000 over the next five years.

"It's thrilling and rather embarrassing and daunting," Scanlon said yesterday.

Scanlon said he hopes to use the money to allow himself "to devote more time to thinking about moral and political philosophy."

He said he plans to continue offering the popular core course, Moral Reasoning 32, "Reason and Evaluation," every other year, or at least one year out of three.

Paul E. Farmer, instructor in medicine in the Department of Social Medicine, will receive $220,000 over the next five years.

Farmer said he plans to use the money to start the Institute for Health and Social Justice, to "help other people who are working more invisibly among the poor."

Farmer, who spends about six months a year working at a clinic in rural Haiti, said he is interested in "the ways in which poor people are put a risk for infectious disease."

He said he hopes the Institute for Health and Social Justice will recognize and assist people who are actively helping the poor and studying and exposing the mechanisms and political and economic structures that make people poor and sick.

Last year, another Harvard philosopher, Stanley L. Cavell '56, also won the MacArthur fellowship.