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Home » Current Focus » Events » Living with Mortality - Participant Bios Living with Mortality: How Our Experiences with Death Change Us Saturday, September 20, 2008 9:00AM - 4:30PM Participant Bios
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Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue
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Vincent Harding is an historian, activist, author, and Professor Emeritus of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. Deeply concerned for the state and development of American democracy, he has spent half a century studying and teaching about movements for compassionate social change. Harding is chairperson of the Veterans of Hope Project – an educational initiative on religion, culture, and participatory democracy -- which he co-founded in 1997 with his late wife, Rosemarie Freeney Harding. He is author of numerous essays and books, including Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Inconvenient Hero. Harding was the first director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center for Social Change and the founding director of the Institute of the Black World, both in Atlanta, Georgia. He also served as senior consultant to the groundbreaking PBS series on the history of the Civil Rights Movement, Eyes on the Prize. 
Pam Kircher is a family physician and hospice doctor who served as Director of Integrative Medicine at Mercy Medical Center in Durango, Colorado from 2001 to 2006. She speaks nationally on integrating complementary medicine into the conventional medical setting. As a board-certified hospice and palliative care physician, Kircher worked with the Hospice at the Texas Medical Center and currently serves on the Advisory Board of Hospice at Mercy Medical Center in Durango, Colorado. She is also a childhood near-death experiencer and, in 1995, wrote Love is the Link: A Hospice Doctor Shares her Experience of Near-death and Dying. Since that time Kircher has spoken internationally on end-of-life issues including the importance of hospice and advance care directives. Much of her work has involved educating physicians and medical students about caring for patients who are dying. She has also served on the board of the International Association of Near Death Studies. Additionally, Kircher has studied Tai Chi for Health programs with Dr. Paul Lam and has been a Master Trainer in the US since 2002.
Megan Laverty is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Laverty’s research interests include moral philosophy, philosophy of education, and the teaching of pre-college philosophy. Before joining Teachers College, Laverty taught in the Philosophy Department at the University of Melbourne (Australia) and then as Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations at Montclair State University (USA). She has written widely on these themes, edited textbooks, and recently published Iris Murdoch’s Ethics: A Consideration of her Romantic Vision (2007). Laverty’s current research focuses on the philosophy and practice of dialogue in education.
Anthony J. Marsella is Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii. He is past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Hawaii, founder and past director of the University of Hawaii Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance Program, and past director of the Clinical Psychology Training Program. He has been a visiting professor in Australia, China, India, Korea, and the Philippines, and a visiting lecturer at numerous national and international universities. In his 35 year career, Marsella has published 14 edited books and more than 190 book chapters, journal articles, and technical reports in clinical psychology and cultural and international psychology. He is known as a pioneer figure in advocating "global psychology," a new psychology that resists Western hegemony in psychology theory and practice and that encourages activism and responsivity to the many social problems the world is facing. Marsella serves currently as President of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility. He continues to speak and write on issues of peace and social justice.