Philip Cushman Research and Educational Fund
Philip Cushman, a moral and political luminary in the field of psychology, died on August 22, 2022, the victim of a hit-and-run accident.
A beloved teacher, scholar, and clinician, Phil is remembered for his rich analysis of how the self has been conceptualized in the field of psychology, along with his historical and critical exploration of the moral and political horizons of psychotherapy.
With the establishment of this endowed Fund, created to honor Phil and foster his moral imagination for the field of psychology, we will continue this critically important work for generations to come.
About the Fund
Through Philip Cushman’s teaching, research, mentorship, and practice, he called for a rigorous interrogation of the relationship between our configurations of self and the socioeconomic and political realities which they frequently reflect and reinforce. He called for psychology to develop the capacity to more closely consider fundamental human questions of justice and morality in its descriptions of human identity and its treatments for psychological suffering. Phil’s passion for teaching had everything to do with his belief that future generations must receive the type of investment, care, and challenge which would enable them to rise above being “maintainers of the status quo.” For good to be done in this world, particularly through the field of psychology, we must be engaged in a multigenerational project that upsets the complacency of and complicity of this helping profession and calls it to a deeper and greater standard.
Toward this end, and in honor of Phil’s memory, the members of the Cushman family established the Philip Cushman Research and Educational Fund. Housed in the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, the Fund fosters the work to which Phil dedicated his life. Aiming at significant impact upon clinical training programs, academic departments, and the formation of a next generation of clinicians, the Fund supports academic scholarship and develops offerings which examine the moral, socioeconomic, and political questions at play within the field of psychology.
The goal of the Fund is to carry forward Phil’s commitment to theoretical, interdisciplinary, and moral inquiry through public facing offerings and student-oriented training programs. Several examples include the Center hosting an annual Philip Cushman Lecture, offering public lectures and workshops engaging areas of inquiry aligned with Phil’s aims, supporting students on an interdisciplinary research team dedicated to scholarship kindred to Phil’s work, and funding the dissemination of students’ research at conferences which are impactful upon the field of psychology. We anticipate these activities and offerings will reach a minimum of 8,000 students per year, carrying forward the concerns that Phil explored in his scholarship, teaching, and practice.