William C. French, Ph.D.
	Title:	Associate Professor, Director Center for Ethics, Section Coordinator of Christian Ethics
	Office:	Crown Center 443
	Phone:	773.508.2356
	E-mail:	wfrench@luc.edu

Personal Information

Specialty: Ethics and Society
Research Interests: Ethical theory; Environmental ethics and creation-oriented theology; War and peace studies
Sujak Teacher of the year 2005


William French is an Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago, and Director of the Center for Ethics.   He graduated from Dickinson College in 1973, received his M.Div. degree from Harvard University in 1977 and completed his Ph.D. in the "Ethics and Society" program at the University of Chicago in 1985. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Christianity's responses to emerging ecological concerns. He teaches courses in ethics at the undergraduate level focusing on war and peace issues, ecological ethics, and religion and nature. At the graduate level he offers courses on those areas as well as in the history of Christian ethics and the natural law tradition. His research centers on religious ethics and ecological concerns and on religion, violence and peace-making. He has published on global warming concerns, the Catholic common good tradition, global population rise, the moral status of animal and plant life, green taxation and sustainability, Christian theology and animal rights, and the ecological dimensions of global security. His articles have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Religion, Journal of Environmental Ethics, Soundings, New Theology Review, Christian Century, Theology and Public Policy, Peace Review and Second Opinion. He has also published chapters in a number of books. He has been the recipient of a Louisville Institute Grant for research on a book project, Natural Law and Ecological Concern, a project that continues to occupy his attention. While trained in Christian ethics, French has strong interests in other religious traditions and their understandings of conflict and peace and of humanity's relationship to the rest of the natural world. He has traveled widely in the Mideast, South Asia, and Europe. His courses regularly serve Loyola's Peace Studies and Environmental Studies Programs. He serves on the board of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education and is a member of a task force working on an Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature.