Bioethicist to lecture on torture in the war on terror
Steven Miles ’72, a professor of bioethics at the University of Minnesota whose research has made him the go-to authority worldwide on the ethical issue of physicians and torture, will visit St. Olaf College March 7 to deliver a lecture titled “Military Psychology and the War on Terror: Lessons from Abu Ghraib.”
Miles, the St. Olaf Psychology Department’s 2013 Allport Award Speaker, will discuss the role that psychologists and physicians played in the abusive interrogation techniques used as part of the war on terrorism. Miles’s research on the issue, which included a detailed examination of 60,000 pages of government documents, was outlined in his book Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror, as well as numerous articles.
A recent recipient of St. Olaf’s Alumni Achievement Award, Miles is the Maas Family Endowed Chair in Bioethics at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He is an affiliate faculty for the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and for the University of Minnesota Law School’s concentration in health law and bioethics. He is board certified in internal medicine and geriatrics and teaches and practices internal medicine at the University of Minnesota.