The Emanuel and Robert Hart Chair of Bioethics
Robert L. Hart established the professorship in 2001 as a tribute to his father, Emanuel Hart (1884–1942). The Chair is awarded to a senior faculty member heading a major research program in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy.
Emanuel Hart died when Robert was in his teens. After he attained success as a real estate and securities investor, Robert Hart created the Professorship in memory of his father and to support critical thinking about the complex philosophical issues engendered by current medical advances.
Current Chairholder
Emily Largent, JD, PhD, RN
Emily Largent, JD, PhD, RN, is a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Largent’s current research focuses on ethical and regulatory aspects of human subjects research, including paying research participants and integrating research into care. Dr. Largent also works on ethical aspects of Alzheimer’s disease research and care and seeks to understand how our evolving understanding of the disease affects patients and their families and challenges our legal frameworks. Her work — which combines normative, empirical, and legal methods — has been published in The Hastings Center Report, The American Journal of Bioethics, The New England Journal of Medicine, and JAMA Neurology, among other journals. She co-authored Clinical Research Ethics Consultation: A Casebook (Oxford University Press).
Dr. Largent studied Science, Technology, and International Affairs as an undergraduate at Georgetown University and earned a second degree in nursing from Penn Nursing. She received her PhD in Health Policy, with a concentration in ethics, from Harvard University and her JD from Harvard Law School, both in 2016. Dr. Largent was previously a fellow in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health (2008-2010) and clerked for Chief Judge Jeffrey Howard of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit before coming to Penn.
Previous Chairholders
- Arthur L. Caplan, PhD 2002–2009
- Steven Joffe, MD, MPH 2017–2018