Thomas I. White is the Founder and Executive Director of IBECC: The International Business Ethics Case Competition. He is also Conrad N. Hilton Professor in Business Ethics Emeritus at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. Professor White received his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University and taught at Upsala College and Rider University in New Jersey before moving to California. His publications include six books (Right and Wrong, Discovering Philosophy, Business Ethics, Men and Women at Work, In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier and Socrates Comes to Wall Street) and numerous articles on topics ranging from sixteenth-century Renaissance humanism to business ethics. He currently lives in Amherst, MA.
His work has two emphases: business ethics and animal ethics. His research in the latter focuses on the philosophical implications–especially the ethical implications–of the scientific research on dolphins. His book on this topic (In Defense of Dolphins) addresses the ethical issues connected with the deaths and injuries of dolphins in connection with the human fishing industry and the captivity of dolphins in the entertainment industry. (See his website www.indefenseofdolphins.com for details.)
Professor White is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and a Scientific Advisor to the Wild Dolphin Project, a research organization studying a community of Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas. He served as U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations’ Year of the Dolphin Program in 2007-8. He was one of authors of the “Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans: Whales and Dolphins,” and a member of panels at the 2010 and 2012 meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that discussed the scientific evidence for the idea that dolphins are ‘nonhuman persons.’
He has just completed the first draft of his next book: Prospero’s Staff: A Utopia.
For information about IBECC: The International Business Ethics Case Competition, see ibecc.net.