ceaselessly sought opportunities to foster rigorous, critical thinking among his students and empower them within and beyond his classroom. His crucial contribution to the development of logic courses at Rollins College is one example. Another is the Rollins College Debate Team that he founded, and whose members he mentored to first-place finishes at national and international competitions. Recognizing the potential impact that the team could have beyond the college itself, he went on to create the popular Great Debate forum, an international cultural and debating exchange which has featured debate teams from around the world, including the Cambridge Debating Union, the Jamaican Association for Debating Empowerment, iDebate Rwanda, the China Foreign Affairs University Debate Team, the Hellenic American University Debating Team, and many others. Through this program, students at schools and colleges in Florida are exposed to art, ballet, modern dance, poetry, theatre, and musical compositions, and participate in international debating exchanges with debating societies from around the world.

 

Dr. Smaw’s commitment extends beyond his students and the young debaters to the broader communities of health care professionals and scholars in his roles as medical ethicist and philosopher-practitioner, and further to national forums of public discourse and the international partnerships he has fostered between Rollins College and universities abroad. 

 

He is an inspiring example of the public intellectual who is deeply engaged in what Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay “The American Scholar,” called “the resounding tumult” of the world that lies around us and who, again in the words of Emerson, “raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts.”

 

Through his public service as a national member of the board of the American Civil Liberties Union and the President of the ACLU of Florida, in his scholarship and writings, and in his numerous articles, talks and interviews in regional and national media, he has contributed significantly to informing public dialogue on important issues of our times. Questions such as, what does it mean to be a member of a democracy? How ought we promote civil discourse across political differences? How can we foster in our schools a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive community where all can feel that they belong? 

 

For Dr. Smaw, these questions are not only matters of inquiry but also occasions for advocacy and action. As a Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow, awarded in recognition of outstanding humanities faculty, Dr. Smaw also serves as Special Assistant to the Provost where he will be overseeing the implementation of the college’s strategic initiatives. 

 

The spectrum of topics that Dr. Smaw addresses in his articles and essays reflects his broad intellectual repertoire in both his academic and public scholarship. He has written on issues ranging from the ethics of pediatric heart transplants and philosophy of law to political philosophy and human rights. Dr. Smaw earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Law and Human Rights from the University of Kentucky, where he received the University of Kentucky Outstanding Research Award.  Afterward, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship in International Human Rights at the University of Massachusetts. He also holds an M.A. in History of Philosophy and a second master’s degree in the Philosophy of Science and African Philosophy from Ohio University.  He earned his bachelor’s degree in humanities from the Pennsylvania State University.