Luis E. Perez is the first Deputy Director for Conscience and Religious Freedom in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Mr. Perez has been a career member of the Senior Executive Service of the United States since July 2016. In May 2018, he transferred to OCR from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), where he worked for 16 years in the Civil Division, serving as Trial Attorney, Senior Litigation Counsel, Assistant Branch Director, and Deputy Branch Director. Mr. Perez has briefed over one hundred civil appellate cases on behalf of the United States before eleven United States Courts of Appeals and argued thirty cases before seven United States Court of Appeals. As Deputy Director for Conscience and Religious Freedom, Mr. Perez has overseen the human capital development of the new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division (CRFD), shaped CRFD’s high-impact national education, outreach, policy, compliance, and enforcement programs, and laid the blueprints for CRFD’s long-term sustainability and credibility within HHS. He also has led CRFD in achieving numerous unprecedented programmatic accomplishments.

Mr. Perez began his career with DOJ through the Attorney General’s Honors Program, following a federal judicial clerkship in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences magna cum laude from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez in 1996 and a Juris Doctor magna cum laude from the University of Puerto Rico School of Law in 2000. Mr. Perez is the recipient of two Special Commendation Awards for outstanding service in DOJ’s Civil Division as well as two Director Awards for outstanding service in OCR. Teresa

Teresa W. Murray serves as a Civil Rights Analyst in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights, Conscience and Religious Freedom Division’s Coordination and Compliance Section. Her work includes-

• case management and investigations that encompasses early case resolution;
• compliance and enforcement involving coordination with Operational Divisions for enforcement actions if violations of law are found;
• government affairs; and
• policy and regulatory development and review.

Gabriela Weigel is an attorney and Civil Rights Analyst with the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services. Gabriela is a graduate of Notre Dame Law School and has been with the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division since its inception in January of 2018. Steven Schaefer

Steven Schaefer is a civil rights analyst in the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to government service, he worked as a commercial litigator in Michigan. He earned his J.D. from Wayne State University Law School, where he served as an Associate Editor on the Wayne Law Review, while teaching full-time. He holds a B.A. in History from Michigan State University. He is currently pursuing a M.A. in Government as a member of the inaugural class of Hillsdale’s School of Government in Washington, D.C. He enjoys watching college football and college basketball.

Suzanne Beecher is an attorney and civil rights analyst in the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS. Originally from Chicago, she received her bachelor’s degree from Baylor University and her law degree from the University of Notre Dame. Prior to joining HHS, Suzanne served as associate counsel at a non-profit law firm that focused on First Amendment litigation.

Michael Worley is an attorney with Cerebral Palsy working as a Civil Rights Analyst in the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights. Prior to joining HHS, Michael served as a member of the inaugural class of law clerks for Judge Howard C. Nielson, Jr., of the District of Utah. Before that, Michael worked for a DC-based Supreme Court boutique, litigating disputes regarding the First Amendment, Title VII, and other issues. A graduate of Brigham Young University's Law School, Michael also spent time working for that school's International Center for Law and Religion Studies and interning in the chambers of Justice Christine M. Durham of the Utah Supreme Court.

Madeline Lear is a civil rights analyst at the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights. Before joining OCR, Madeline worked on civil rights issues at the U.S. House of Representatives. Madeline received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and is originally from Los Angeles, CA.

William A. Estrada is a civil rights analyst in the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He came to CRFD in March of 2018, after spending 14 years in the nonprofit world. He received his law degree in 2006 from Oak Brook College of Law & Government Policy. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the State of California Bar, and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. He and his wife and two sons live in Northern Virginia.

Dr. Mekhjian, among many other things, was the long-time Chief Medical Officer for the Ohio State University Medical Center. In his decades of leadership, he impacted multiple areas. Throughout his career and even in his retirement, Dr. Mekhjian shares a passion for virtuous medicine. Before his retirement, he championed medical ethics and professionalism. Through his efforts and the generosity of several of his friends (including George and Tina Skestos), he formed the annual Institutional Grand Rounds in Medical Ethics and Professionalism and an Endowed Chair in Medical Ethics and Professionalism, both which now bear his name. Dr. Mekhjian helped recruit and mentor the first Mekhjian Chair and founding director of the Center for Bioethics, Dr. Nash.

For more on Dr. Mekhjian, please explore the links below:

https://www.dispatch.com/article/20130728/news/307289842

Journey to Innovation: Dr. Hagop Mekhjian (VIDEO)

Chauncey Leake was a leader at OSU’s College of Medicine from 1956-1962. He has a remarkable career at OSU and beyond. A pharmacologist by training, he pioneered departments of pharmacology. He was a successful research scientist. But in this lectureship we remember his contribution to medical ethics, history of medicine, and medical humanities. This lectureship and essay award was established shortly after Dr. Leake’s death in 1978. Notably, Dr. Leake died doing one of the things he loved – he was reading original poetry on stage at a gathering in his honor.

To learn more about Dr. Leake, explore the links below:

https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/13/archives/dr-chauncey-d-leake-dies-at-81-pharmacologist-and-administrator.html

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/541959

http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v3p411y1977-78.pdf

https://calisphere.org/item/888d91b6-c2e2-40f3-b6a3-8c11c1112be3/

H. Tristram Engelhardt, MD, PhD was never student, trainee, nor faculty at OSU. Why then is he remembered annually here? He was the primary mentor for Dr. Nash, the founding director for the Center. As such, he helped guide the Center’s formation and he influenced all of the early members of the Center (even those who disagreed with him). In the formation of this Award and lecture the Center furthers 1) that one does not know bioethics without knowing the work of Engelhardt, we thus show gratitude for his contribution and 2) that we must take ethical diversity seriously and not pretend that all issues are settled or agreed upon. Engelhardt was an unparalleled scholar and great thinker. While having command over procedural and policy issues of bioethics, he demanded considerations at the foundational level. He did not shy away from controversy but instead leaned into it. He included robust considerations of ethics from theological or religious perspective as well, a perspective our Center explicitly engages.

http://www.bioethics.net/2018/06/a-tribute-to-professor-h-tristram-engelhardt-jr-phd-md-1941-2018/

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/h-tristram-engelhardt-jr-md-phd/2002-02

https://www.youtube.com/user/ndethics/search?query=engelhardt

Founded in 2012 in Chicago, The Conference on Medicine and Religion has become annual conference drawing participants from across the country and around the globe. The OSU Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities is among the list of prestigious institutions that sponsors and hosts the event.

http://www.medicineandreligion.com/

The OSU Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities works closely with and partners with the OSU Center for Ethics and Human Values. While CEHV has a broader scope than biomedicine, they help the conversations in bioethics reach across our campus and community.

https://cehv.osu.edu/

Hagop Mekhjian Grand Rounds speakers

2000 Edmund Pellegrino “Human Dignity and Bioethics”
2010 Ellen Wright Clayton “Genetic Testing: Ethical Dilemmas”
2011- Mark Siegler “Should Elective Surgical Patients be invited to Serve as Living Kidnery Donors?”
2012 Robert Troug “Talking with Patients and Families About Medical Errors”
2013 Jeffrey Bishop “Popular (NEURO)Science and other Political Schemes”
2014 John Lantos “Family Requests for Futile Treatment”
2015 Lauris Kaldjian “Concepts of Health and Goals of Care in Shared Clinical Decision Making”
2016 Farr Curlin “What Does Religion Have to Do With Medicine?”
2017 David Casarett “Is medical marijuana really ‘medical’?”
2018 Abraham Nussbaum “An Attempt to Speak to a Broad Medical Crowd While Addressing a Current Issue (Physician Resiliency) and Using an Approach Appropriate for the Setting (Medical Humanities)”
2019 Joseph Fins “Disorders of Consciousness, Past, Present and Future: Clinical, Neuroethical and Legal Implications of Medial Progress”
2020 Darrell Gray “Bringing the ‘Moral Determinants of Health’ to the Bench, Bedside and Community”

Chauncey D. Leake Lecture

2015 H. Tristram Engelhardt “Professional Moral Conscience in an Age after Morality”
2016 Rabbi Samuel E. Karff "The Re-emergence of the Healer in an Age of High-Tech Medicine"
2017 Kevin Sabet “Is Marijuana the next Big Tobacco?”
2018 Lydia Dugdale “Pros and Cons of Physician-Assisted Suicide (Aid in Dying)”
2019 Timothy Murphy “The Ethics of Body Modification for Gender Expression”
2020 Dónal O’Mathuna “Allocating Resources Ethically during COVID-19 - From Ventilators to Vaccines”

Chauncey D. Leake Student Lecture

2015 Mark Wells “Orthopedists and Traditional Bonesetters: Managing Interprofessional Tensions in International Medicine” 2016 no award winner
2017 Ethan Schimmoeller “Cannabis and the Cult of the Body”
2018 Molly Larson “Implications of Personhood Following Traumatic Brain Injury: Use of an Integrated and Evolving Model”
2019 Phillip Wozniak “Of Artificial Wombs and Actual Births: A Defense of the Biobag”
2020 no student winner this year due to COVID-19

H. Tristram Engelhardt Award Lecture

2015 Ruiping Fan “Conscientious Objection to VSED: What can China Learn from American Bioethics?”
Dr. Fan was the first recipient of this award. Dr. H. Tristram Engelhardt was present and received an honorary award as well.
2016 Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes “‘Foundations’ of Bioethics? How they float on a moral choice
2017 John F. Peppin “The Death of Pain Medicine: The Case of Marijuana”
2018 Mark Cherry “Should Adolescents be Permitted to Consent to Medical Research on Their Own Behalf?”
2019 Ana Iltis “Health Inequities as a Research Ethics Problem”
2020