Researcher to discuss stages of the aging process, March 5

Harry Moody, director of the Institute for Human Values in Aging at Hunter College in New York and national chair of Elderhostel, will deliver a speech titled “Stages on Life’s Way” at 7:30 p.m. , Monday, March 5 in McKinnon Hall, located in Moseley Center on the Elon campus. The lecture, which is jointly sponsored by the Elon philosophy department, the nonprofit organization Second Journey, and the Elon department of human services, is free and open to the public.

Moody’s most recent book, “The Five Stages of the Soul: Charting the Spiritual Passages That Shape Our Lives,” published in 1997, combines 20 years of case studies and research with a comprehensive knowledge of psychology, religion, and literature. The book offers a compelling exploration of the spiritual “passages” encountered in the aging process.

He is also the author of more than 80 scholarly articles, as well as three other books, including, “Abundance of Life: Human Development Policies for an Aging Society” and “Ethics in an Aging Society.”

A 1967 graduate of Yale University, Moody earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1973. Moody taught philosophy at Columbia, Hunter College, New York University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. From 1999 to 2001 he served as national program director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Faith in Action and from 1992 to 1999, Moody was executive director of the Brookdale Center at Hunter College.

Before coming to Hunter, he served as administrator of Continuing Education Programs for the Citicorp Foundation and later as co-director of the National Aging Policy Center of the National Council on Aging in Washington, D.C. He has also been active in the field of biomedical ethics and holds an appointment as an adjunct associate of the Hastings Center.

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