Faculty of the PCC PhD and MA Programs

PCC curricula were designed in the early 1990's by a group of distinguished scholars, teachers, and activists who shared a sense of the unique gravity and promise of our moment in history. Several of those original founders are still teaching in our programs; all faculty members embrace and support the overarching goals of the PCC programs from their unique areas of expertise.

Core Faculty

Elizabeth Allison, PhD received her PhD (2009) in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School, and a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

She has taught environmental studies in academic settings at UC Berkeley, Yale, and Williams College, and through experiential modes in youth development programs in Vermont and California.

Elizabeth's current research explores the role of religious and spiritual discourse and practice in environmental action through case studies of natural resource management in the Himalayas, where she has lived and conducted field research for more than two years. Additional research interests include environmental ethics, political ecology, religion and ecology, the politics of knowledge, biodiversity conservation, and climate change.

Her writing has appeared in Mountain Research and Development, The Progressive Christian, and The Spider and the Piglet, an anthology of studies of Bhutan. She was a Fulbright fellow in Nepal in 2003-04, conducting research on natural sacred places in the Khumbu region near Mount Everest.

Previously, she directed a national program called Experience Corps, which mobilizes retired people to share their skills and wisdom with needy schoolchildren, coordinated a California- wide AmeriCorps program focused on environmental education and restoration, and led teams of young people restoring parks and trails in California and Vermont.

Elizabeth can be contacted at 415.575.6482 or eallison@ciis.edu.

Read an Interview of Elizabeth Allison>>

Sean Kelly, PhD received his PhD (1988) in Religious Studies from the University of Ottawa and has taught in the departments of Religious Studies at the University of Windsor, the University of Ottawa, and Carleton University. He has published articles on Jung, Hegel, transpersonal theory, and the new science and is the author of Individuation and the Absolute: Hegel, Jung, and the Path toward Wholeness (Paulist Press, 1993).

Sean is also coeditor, with Donald Rothberg, of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers (Quest Books, 1998) and co-translator, with Roger Lapointe, of French thinker Edgar Morin's book Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium (Hampton Press, 1998).

Sean recently published a book entitled Coming Home: The Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era (Lindisfarne Books, 2010). Along with his academic work, Sean has trained intensively in the Chinese internal arts (T'ai Chi, Pa Kua, and Hsing-I) and has been teaching T'ai Chi since 1990. His current interests focus on the intersection of consciousness and ecology in the Planetary Era.

Sean can be contacted at 415.575.6271 or skelly@ciis.edu.

Watch Sean lecture at the Esalen Institute>>

Robert McDermott served as president of CIIS from 1990 until 1999. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Baruch College, C.U.N.Y., where he was chair of the philosophy department and of the program in religion and culture. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston University in 1969, an M.A. in philosophy from Emory University in 1965, and his B.A. in classics from Queens College, CUNY, in 1962. Prior to his coming to CIIS, he taught philosophy and comparative religion for 27 years: seven years at Manhattanville College (1964-71), and 20 years at Baruch College (1971-90).

Robert has been the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships, and professioal honors, including a Fulbright grant for study and travel in India (1966) and a position as senior Fulbright lecturer at the Open University, England (1975-76) where he was advisor and contributing editor to sixteen films on "Man's Religious Quest." With the support of Laurance S. Rockefeller, he co-directed a four-year project, "The Recovery of Thinking in Philosophy, Science, and Education" (1988-1992).

Robert is editor of The Essential Aurobindo (1988) and The New Essential Steiner (2009).
Robert can be contacted at 415.575.6137 or rmcdermott@ciis.edu.

Read selections from Robert McDermott's publications>>

Brian Swimme,PhD, received his PhD (1978) from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon for work in gravitational dynamics. In his books, courses, and international lectures he explores a meaningful interpretation of the human within an evolutionary universe.

He was a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, from 1978 to 1981, and at Holy Names University in Oakland, CA, from 1983 to 1990.

He is the author of The Universe Is a Green Dragon (Bear and Company, 1984); The Universe Story (Harper, 1992), in collaboration with cultural historian Thomas Berry; and The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos (Orbis, 1996).

Brian produced a 12-part video series, Canticle to the Cosmos (Tides Foundation of San Francisco, 1990); participated in the BBC television series Soul of the Universe and the PBS series The Sacred Balance; and most recently produced the DVD series The Powers of the Universe (Center for the Story of the Universe, 2005). A new film, Journey of the Universe (co-written with Mary Evelyn Tucker) was released in 2011.

Brian can be contacted at 415.575.6272 or bswimme@ciis.edu.

Richard Tarnas is the founding director of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program. A graduate of Harvard University (AB, 1972) and Saybrook Institute (PhD, 1976), he was formerly director of programs and education at Esalen Institute.

He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind (Random House, 1991) and Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View (Viking, 2006), which received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network in Great Britain.

Richard's research interests include the history of Western thought and culture, the evolution of consciousness, the interface of philosophy and psychology, epistemology
and cosmology, new paradigm studies, depth psychology (psychoanalytic, Jungian, archetypal, transpersonal), psychedelic research, and astrology.

Richard can be contacted at 415.575.6273 or rtarnas(at)ciis.edu.

Selected Adjunct Faculty Profiles

Christopher Bache received his PhD (1978) in Philosophy and Religion from Brown University. He is the author of Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life, and Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind. He has also published numerous articles on consciousness studies, the psychology of mysticism, and near-death studies.

Blair Carter, who received his MA (2003) from CIIS, is currently a doctoral student in the PCC program. He is a certified Permaculture teacher and designer, environmental educator, wilderness guide, and experienced deep ecology workshop leader.

Stanislav Grof received his MD (1956) from Charles University, Prague, and completed his in Medicine (1965) from the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences. He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology, and founding president of the International Transpersonal Association.

For the past 35 years he has conducted research on therapeutic and heuristic aspects of non-ordinary states of consciousness; experiential psychotherapy using psychedelics and nondrug techniques; alternative approaches to psychoses; the problem of spiritual emergencies and treatment of transpersonal crises; and the implications of new developments in quantum physics, information and systems theory, biology, brain research and consciousness studies for psychiatric theory and the emerging scientific paradigm.

He is the author of Realms of the Human Unconscious (Viking Press, 1976), Beyond the Brain (State University of New York Press, 1985), The Holotropic Mind (Harper Collins, 1992), The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (SUNY Press, 1998), and Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research (SUNY Press, 2000).

Joanna Macy received her PhD (1978) from the State University of New York, Syracuse. She is a visionary activist and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology.

Weaving these threads together, she has created both a groundbreaking theoretical framework for a new paradigm of personal and social change, and a powerful workshop methodology for its application.

Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science.

This work is described in her books Despair and Empowerment in the Nuclear Age; Dharma and Development; Thinking Like a Mountain (coedited with John Seed, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess); Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory; World as Lover, World as Self; Rilke's Book of Hours (with Anita Barrows); and Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (with Molly Young Brown).

Jacob Needleman was educated in philosophy at Harvard, Yale and the University of Freiburg, Germany. He has also served as Research Associate at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, as a Research Fellow at Union Theological Seminary, as Adjunct Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of California Medical School and as guest Professor of Religious Studies at the Sorbonne, Paris (1992).

He is the author of The New Religions, a pioneering study of the new American spirituality, The Wisdom of Love, Money and the Meaning of Life, A Sense of the Cosmos, Lost Christianity, The Heart of Philosophy, The Way of the Physician, Time and the Soul, Sorcerers, a novel, The American Soul , Why Can't We Be Good? and The Essential Marcus Aurelius.