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A year after police pulled Lawrence Kohlberg's body from Boston Harbor, 600 people gathered at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) on April 151. 1988, to commemorate -Lawrence Kohlberg Day." The event's speakers sought to understand the sudden loss of a man who had made a profound impact on the fields of moral psychology and moral education.
Professor Howard Gardner, co-founder of Project Zero at HGSE, called the day "inspiring- in dealing with the "unfinished business of a figure who was larger than life." William Damon, a scholar of human development from Clark University (now at Stanford University), summed up the mood of speakers, students. and other participants: "It's going to take a long time to figure out what [Kohlberg's] work meant in all of its implications," he said.
Many attendees expressed disappointment over the absence from Lawrence Kohlberg Day of HGSE professor Carol Gilligan, who had been unable to attend because of an illness in her family. After publishing her 1982 book, In a Different Voice, Gilligan had become perhaps the most famous questioner of current psychological theories of human development, including Kohlberg's. Gilligan had analyzed the voices of women to argue that theories, like Kohlberg's, that were developed from studies of boys and men did not fully "encompass the human condition." The absence of her voice from a celebration that included such prominent figures as German philosopher Jurgen Habermas added to the poignant sense of "unfinished business," inevitable for an event so close in time to Kohlberg's death.
Only in 1997-more than 10 years after Kohlberg committed suicide by walking into the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean on a January day--did Gilligan speak publicly for the first time about her relationship with the late moral educator. Reflecting recently on her speech, "Remembering Larry," which received a standing ovation at the 1997 Association for Moral Education conference, Gilligan said that she welcomed the chance to honor Kohlberg, and to quell rumors and revisit the past.
"Something of a false story had been circulating, that I was Larry's student, that we were involved in a war," she said. "So the news that, for example, we taught together about our disagreements, and that what was at stake were real and serious issues on both...