The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society’s Board of Trustees has formally confirmed that Professor Daniel Barbezat will be the center’s new executive director.
Barbezat succeeds Arthur Zajonc, who has recently been appointed as the President of the Mind & Life Institute and will remain on the center’s board of directors. Mirabai Bush will continue in her role as the center’s Associate Director.
Daniel Barbezat, PhD, is Professor of Economics at Amherst College. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University, Yale University and has taught in the summer program at Harvard University. In 2004, he won the J. T. Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History from the Economic History Association.
Over the past decade, he has become interested in how self-awareness and introspection can be used in higher education and economic decision-making. Barbezat was recently a speaker on mindfulness and contemplative education at the Creating a Mindful Society conference in New York. For more information on his work in this field, click here.
From Barbezat:
“At a time when education and training are vitally important and the demand for education services is ever growing, there are threats on all fronts. Students face the pressures and grimness of labor markets; staff and administration are stretched beyond their capacity and the faculty is asked to carry an ever-increasing load. Sustained engagement with our ideals and one another is increasingly difficult. Like never before, this is a time for us to attend closely to ourselves and our relationship to others in a deep reflection into what each of us values most deeply. I believe very deeply that the work of the center can supply essential resources to support and sustain this kind of meaningful inquiry.I am very excited to have the opportunity to direct the Center of Contemplative Mind in Society and to continue working, albeit in a new capacity, with the center’s fantastic staff and Board of Trustees. Above all, though, I am especially grateful to Arthur from whom I have learned so much. I wish him the very best at Mind & Life.”
