At the start of winter break (Nov. 18, to be specific), Jeffrey and Misha had the opportunity to interview Professor Craig Klugman, a tenured health science professor and co-director of the bioethics and society minor at DePaul. Readers and listeners might recognize him from the plethora of press coverage he has gotten during the COVID-19 pandemic, or maybe you’ve read his expansive number of academic articles.
In our first interview with Prof. Klugman, we discussed the importance of pre-death planning with advance directive forms, pre-need funeral planning and talking with loved ones about your plans. We also discussed the process to become an organ donor. It’s important we discuss how we want our afterlife care to be planned as a majority of people don’t plan for their deaths, leading to conflicts after the fact.
“This is your time of grieving, right, your loved one has just died and now you’ve got to find the funeral home, you have to find a plot, you have to decide what casket you want, what clothes you want them dressed in, how you want them disposed of, what food you want to serve to the people who are going to come to the funeral, what kind of chairs, like you’re not in a position to really be making those choices and if they’re all made ahead of time, it allows you to just experience your grieving without feeling like ‘is this the right send-off? Is this what this person would want?”
A self-portrait of Prof. Klugman
In the second interview, we asked Klugman about his academic career from working in journalism to earning his favorable reputation as a tenured professor at DePaul. One of his earlier projects in studying death such as having conversations with people about their experiences with post-death contact. We also got to ask him about some other topics he has written about including mental health services being digitized and climate change, as well as his blog Bioethics TV, and art project “Graphic Bioethics.”
Towards the end, we also talked about DePaul’s response to the pandemic, especially the need for more mental health resources for DePaul students. Throughout the pandemic, DePaul has been struggling to find counselors, and has instead advised students to use an app called My SSP for counseling services instead. “Natural disasters and unnatural disasters have a way of showing the weaknesses in your systems,” Klugman said after we discussed students approaching him for counseling while services weren’t available.
Both interviews are equally insightful and we’re excited for our listeners to hear. From earning his degrees in Texas to becoming a voting member of the National Biodefense Science Board, Klugman’s contributions to bioethics and his knowledge on deathcare are more relevant than ever.
The first interview was played on Jan. 18th, and is available via Spotify. For more information on Prof. Klugman, his personal website is craigklugman.com, and his Twitter profile is @CraigKlugman.