Preventing Existential Risks and Other Disasters

Peter Singer; Vojin Rakić; Vardit Ravistky; Roger Crisp

doi:10.55613/jeet.v35i2.174

Authors

Peter Singer Princeton University
Vojin Rakić University of Belgrade
Vardit Ravistky Hastings Center
Roger Crisp University of Oxford

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55613/jeet.v35i2.174

Keywords:

existential risk

Abstract

On 30 and 31 May 2025, The Center for the Study of Bioethics, The Hastings Center and The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics organized in Montenegro a conference: “Existential Threats and Other Disasters: How Should We Address Them?”. The conference built on the Center for the Study of Bioethics’ tradition of bringing together top experts in the field of (bio)ethics and other disciplines in order to discuss novel issues. This time it partnered with The Hastings Center and The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Author Biographies

Peter Singer, Princeton University

Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. After teaching in England, the United States and Australia, he has, since 1999, been Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. His other books include: Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, Pushing Time Away, The Life You Can Save, The Point of View of the Universe (co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek), Ethics in the Real World, Animal Liberation Now, and The Buddhist and the Ethicist (co-authored with Shih Chao-Hwei).

In 2012 Singer was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation’s highest civic honor. He founded the charity The Life You Can Save(Link is external) and is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. In 2021, he was awarded the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, and in 2023, he shared, with Steven Pinker, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences.
Vardit Ravistky, Hastings Center

Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, is the President and CEO of The Hastings Center, an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute that is among the most prestigious bioethics and health policy institutes in the world. Ravitsky joins the Center from the University of Montreal where she was Professor at the Bioethics Program, School of Public Health. She is also a Senior Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She received her PhD from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, her MA from the University of New Mexico, and her BA from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France.

Ravitsky runs an active research program and holds several positions on advisory boards. Her research in bioethics focuses on ethical, legal, and social implications of genomics and assisted reproductive technologies, with an emphasis on emerging biotechnologies and their implications for women’s autonomy and for disability rights. She also studies the ethics of AI in biomedicine.

She is immediate past President, and currently Vice-President, of the International Association of Bioethics; a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and of the Hastings Center; and a 2020 Trudeau Foundation Fellow, where she Chaired the Foundation’s COVID-19 Impact Committee. Ravitsky’s research is funded by Canada’s leading funding agencies (CIHR, FRQSC, SSHRC, Genome Canada, and Genome Quebec) and the NIH. She published over 200 articles and commentaries on bioethical issues, has given over 300 talks world-wide, and contributed to hundreds of media interviews.