Maguire Ethics Center 30 Year Anniversary

The Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics & Public Responsibility was established in 1995 following several years of planning by visionary SMU faculty and leadership. Dr. William F. May was appointed the Center’s first director and the inaugural holder of the Cary M. Maguire University Chair in Ethics, launching programs that continue to shape the Center’s mission today. That same year, the Center was formally funded through a $2.5 million endowment from its namesake, Cary M. Maguire. University leaders—including then-Provost Ruth Morgan, President ad interim James Kirby, and President Gerald Turner—envisioned the Center as a hub for intentional reflection and ethical inquiry, grounded in the belief that addressing society’s most pressing challenges requires thoughtful moral engagement. In June 1995, the Center’s charter was published, formally outlining its mission, objectives, organizational structure, and activities, marking the official foundation of the Center as a permanent institution at SMU.

The Maguire Center created the Maguire Scholar Program to highlight the work of SMU and regional faculty and to encourage scholars to engage ethical issues in ways accessible to a public audience. The program was intentionally designed to avoid functioning solely as a host for outside speakers, instead prioritizing faculty whose scholarship could inform public discussion and connect academic research to civic life. The inaugural Maguire Scholar lecture was delivered by Associate Professor James Hopkins of the SMU History Department, whose work exemplified the program’s goals. Hopkins’s lecture, “The Rise and Fall of the Public Intellectual,” examined the diminishing role of scholars in public discourse and the ethical implications of that shift. By addressing how intellectuals engage—or withdraw from—public life, Hopkins set a clear tone for the series: rigorous scholarship presented in a form intended to reach audiences beyond the academy.

The Maguire Center’s Public Service Fellowship program was created to provide essential gap funding for students pursuing public service and ethics-related work that financial circumstances might otherwise make inaccessible. The Public Service Fellowship program began by funding paid summer positions for SMU students engaged in public service and ethics-related research. Undergraduate students were compensated at $7 per hour and graduate students at $10 per hour, typically completing between 120 and 200 hours of service or research. Early Fellows worked with organizations such as the American Diabetes Association in Houston, the Jeffries Street Learning Center in Dallas, the SMU Law School Criminal Justice Clinic, and the ProBAR Asylum Representation Project in Harlingen, Texas. This hourly, service-based funding model later evolved into today’s Maguire Public Service Fellowship, which now provides fixed summer stipends of $2,000 for undergraduate students and $2,400 for graduate students who complete 200 or more hours of public service or ethics-related research with nonprofit organizations, research institutions, and community partners worldwide.