Santa Clara University

William O'Neill, S.J.

Associate Professor of Social Ethics

B.A., St. Louis University
M.Div., S.T.M., S.T.L., Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Yale University

Courses offered:

• RSCE 4294: The Ethics of Social Reconciliation
• RSCE 4675: Thick or Thin? Ethical Criticism
• RSCE 4872: Issues and Methods in Ethics (taught with Lisa Fullam, Ph.D.)
• CE 5002: Methods in Ethics
• RSCE 5003: Western Social Thought
• RSCE 5150: The Ethics of Social Reconciliation
• ST 4302: Aesthetics and Ethics
• RSCE 4040: Methods in Moral Theology
• RSCE 3230: Christian Social Ethics
• RSCE 5525: Seminar in Human Rights
  

About the Professor

William O'Neill, S.J. is a professor of social ethics at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley and a visiting professor of ethics at the Jesuit School of Theology, "Hekima" in Nairobi.

His writings address questions of human rights, ethics and hermeneutical theory, social reconciliation and conflict resolution, and refugee policy. He has worked with refugees in Tanzania and Malawi; done research on humana rights in South Africa and Rwanda.

He received a Newcombe Fellowship, a Lilly Theological Research Grant, and held the Jesuit Chair, Georgetown University (2003-2004). He has served on the Editorial Board of The Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and serves on the Board of the Society of Christian Ethics and of the journal, Theological Studies.

Selected Publications

• The Ethics of our Climate: Hermeneutics and Ethical Theory, Georgetown University Press, 1994;
• "No Amnesty for Sorrow: The Privilege of the Poor in Christian Social Ethics"in Theological Studies, December, 1994;
• "Commonweal or Woe? The Ethics of Welfare Reform," in the Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy of Notre Dame University, 1997;
• "Rights of Passage: The Ethics of Immigration and Refugee Policy," in Theological Studies, March, 1998;
• "Public Reason and the Common Good," in a Christian Spirituality and the Culture of Modernity: The Thought of Louis Dupré, 1998;
• "Babel's Children: Reconstructing the Common Good" in The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 1998;
• "African Moral Theology," in Theological Studies, March 2001;
• "Imagining Otherwise: The Ethics of Social Reconciliation," in The Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 2002;
• "Modernity and Its Religious Discontents: Catholic Social Teaching and Public Reason," in the Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy of Notre Dame University, 2006;
• "What San Salvador Says to Nairobi: The Liberation Ethics of Ignacio Ellacuría," with Aquiline Tarimo, S.J. in Love That Produces Hope: Essays on the Thought of Ignacio Ellacuría, Liturgical Press, 2006;
• "Neither Thick nor Thin: Politics and Polity in the Ethics of Margaret A. Farley," chapter in A True and Just Love: Feminism at the Frontiers of Theological Ethics: Essays in Honor of Margaret A. Farley, Notre Dame Press, 2007;
• "What We Owe to Refugees and IDP's: An Inquiry into the Rights of the Forcibly Displaced," chapter in book, Refugee Rights, Georgetown University Press, 2008;
• "Reflections on Evolutionary Theodicy: A Response to 'Shadow Sophia in Christological Perspective'" in Theology and Science vol. 6, No. 1 (February 2008);
• "Visions and Revisions: The Hermeneutical Implications of the Option for the Poor," chapter in a volume dedicated to Jon Sobrino, Orbis, 2008.