A UT Ethics Center? The Oxford Ethics Centre in Comparison – Round Table Discussion

Hey, we’re glad that everyone has had the opportunity to see these works

of art by the undergraduates who have produced

maps of the British Empire. Some people have been talking

on a about a few curious features of them.

The Argentines and perhaps even some of the British would be a little bit surprised to

see Argentina painted red. But there is a reason for that.

And that is because in one of the books we discuss Argentina’s

part of the informal empire.

We will. This is a discussion that Paul Woodroofe will chair.

I want to introduce Robert Prentis

and Steve Sonnenberg just to get a discussion

going. Paul, since you’re the chairman, I will say

while Paul is finding his way back up here, I’ll say a word about the problem of plagiarism.

Just to get us started, I’ve always been impressed with the Oxford Don,

who listens very tentatively to the essay being written by a student.

After the student finished the essay, the Oxford Don said That is a very

impressive, well-reasoned and informative essay. Now, what I’d like for you to

do is to go back to your room and put it in your own words. And

I think that’s really a good way to deal with the problem of one way of dealing with problem plagiarism.

Paul, would you like to get started here? Yes. Thank you, Roger. And thank you all for being here

and showing interest in this topic

of an ethics center. Many of the great

universities of the world now have major ethics centers.

The most impressive of these is that my alma mater, Oxford

and I have given you a hand out about that. The reason

that we’ve been talking about this at U.T. is not simply

that we want to keep up with the Joneses, which we do, of course,

but that we we’re aware of a serious deficit

on campus in the area of support for research

and teaching in practical ethics. We have no tenured faculty

in bioethics, 0 0. We have some good people teaching,

but we have no tenured faculty, no tenured lines in that area. There’s

not much support for ethics of a practical nature in

any of the colleges, even in

liberal arts. This may surprise you, but in

my department, where course ethics is a subject, we teach the

history of ethics and we teach something called meta ethics, which is about

the nature of ethical theory. Rencher or thought branch

chair. Yeah, well, I

hold the Darrell K Royal chair at Ethics. I want you to know there is there

is an ethical example for you. Take that. Yeah,

but yeah. And we do have a number of people who would like me

to write a little bit and teach practical ethics, but

we don’t have with such courses as we teach in my

department on medical ethics are generally taught by graduate students or adjuncts

because we don’t have professionals in the area. And this goes for business

ethics as well. So a

group of us, about 40 faculty members from all over the university,

the LBJ School Communication Business, Liberal Arts

and so on, we’re gathering to talk about ethics and health. And out of those conversations,

a strong interest in developing a formal ethics center

bubbled up to the surface. And there seemed to be a consensus

that I should be leading the charge, which I was a little reluctant to do.

But here here I am. We have established something

we’re calling the ethics project, which is not a center. It’s. Just

a bunch of us. In fact, the three of us here. Stephen,

Robert and I are are among those who are on the steering committee for this,

which will sponsor discussions on on ethical issues. But mostly

our goal is to try to create awareness of

the need that we feel we have for an ethics center in the hope that we can

draw the lightning strike of a major donor,

because the ethics centers that we are looking at, that we are comparing

to what our dreams are, are in doubt in the 20 to 50

million dollar range. And they mostly are the result of lightning

strikes. Nobody went out and said, we need an ethics center to some

billionaire with a bad conscience and the billionaire with a bad conscience

said here by 50 million dollars, go off and spend it on ethics. It

wouldn’t didn’t work that way. In fact, what happened is that

people with resources and an interest in ethics and in some cases had consciences,

came to the universities and said we we would like to start something along

these lines. Interestingly enough, the center at Princeton,

which is one of our models, called that the Center for Human Value was

funded by Lawrence Rockefeller, who came to the university and said, I’d like to start

a center for parapsychology. And the university said, no, we

don’t do that. And there were further discussions and he’d

already given quite a lot of money to the philosophy department. But he was disappointed that the philosophy department

didn’t do anything practical. And so he funded this the center, which does

the as I said at the beginning, the most impressive

center that I have looked at on

the web is that you a hero center for Practical Ethics at Oxford.

It’s yeah, I have a hand out in front of you. Notice certain things about it.

First of all, they are in their mission explicitly

not a missionary, but a Socratic operation.

That is, they’re not trying to convert people to behave more ethically.

And that’s not what the center that I have in mind would be doing either. It’s not a missionary

center. It’s a center for asking questions. You know, fostering research,

improving the teaching of ethics

across the curriculum, but especially developing ethics

in some professional areas. I will say more about that in a moment.

This center has five faculty members, all

publishing scholars who publish extensively in ethics. Who are directors of various

sorts of the. Of the program. It has twenty two research

fellows who are also publishing scholars. This is an enormous number.

It is astounding. And according to my contacts,

Oxford, this is overwhelmed. The philosophy seen at Oxford and the people

who don’t do practical ethics are feeling a bit swamped by

the rising tide of those who do. So

this is something that I would actually like to see

here, though I don’t want it to swamp other efforts in philosophy. But I think it could

could make a profound difference. Obviously, this is very well funded. I don’t know what the endowment

is. They don’t advertise it on the web. But to support an effort of this kind, it must

be humongous. This is the sort of thing

I I would be thinking of that is. I would like to see us with

a center that could either endow or cause

to be endowed chairs or professorships in medical

ethics, business ethics, bioethics, environmental ethics, just war theory

and so on. There’s a long list of areas in which we might be able to interest

specialized donors to to establish chairs, or if we

were able to attract the lightning strike, then we could use the funds

to establish chairs in various different departments. It’s important.

That the center not be owned by one college

here at at U.T. because the

need for the center and the interest in the center spreads across the campus.

Right now, I’m aware the most interest in practical ethics in this

and in the Moody College of Communication. Actually, there’s a very substantial

business in the business school. Thank you, Robert. There is a little

bit in liberal arts and there’s some in the LBJ

school. There’s there’s

hardly a well, a pharmacy nursing officer very much interested for obvious reasons.

We haven’t attracted much interest from the Dell School. Although there

are a few people in the Dell School are interested. But the management is not as far as we can tell.

But they ought to be. And if we have the funds, we can we can help them.

I think one reason why they’re not interested in bioethics in the Dell

School right now is that their funding model is that all of their faculty are clinical

and support themselves through clinical practice. And people who do bioethics

do not have a clinical practice and don’t bring in any money. So until their funding

model changes there, there’s a problem that is also

I hope I don’t offend anybody by saying this. There’s also the problem that the

ethics that the Dell School is required to teach by

the Seton Medical Enterprise is guided by the Catholic directives,

and they are required to introduce their doctors to that because

that’s what their student doctors have to. Those are the rules I have to follow in

at Seton Hall. And we would, of course, would like to have

a broader view in which different questions,

questions can be asked. It can’t be asked in the context of those directives.

The one of the things that I especially like about the Hero Center,

in addition to its size and influence, is the degree

that they offer master studies and practical ethics.

I would like to know more about the nuts and bolts of how this

works, but this is it strikes me as being something rather like

the executive MBA or the HDL program for mid-level

managers. This is a program for people who are in the professional world who can

study part time to get a master’s degree in ethics.

They they take these six modules, which seem to be

pretty well chosen, and then they write a dissertation and then they get the degree

of what I think this means is something like this.

Setting this aside, I have been fortunate enough

to be among those who taught a number of

military officers in m.a or p_h_d_ are m.a

or p_h_d_ program in philosophy who were going to go on to teach ethics to the

man who started the ethics program at West Point, Tony hertl, and wrote the textbook

that I think they’re still using. There was one of our p_h_d_ students.

I’ve had students who’ve taught at the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy

and so on. What I like

about these people is because they all have combat experience. They have

credibility on ethical issues that most

of us would not have. You know, we’re just intellectuals

who live in an ivory tower. What do we know about the ethical decisions you have to make in a combat situation?

But the people I am talking about have been in serious combat.

They have degrees in philosophy and they speak with credibility

about the hard choices that their students will have to make when they’re in the field.

I have been wanting for a long time to see if we could expand this

model. There was for a few years a program at the University of Oregon.

Rather like what I’d like to be doing. That would be. Root

out, say, doctors and lawyers and of.

Professionals from the business world, professionals from

any profession you can think of and offer them a program

like this which would give them credentials in ethics in addition

to their professional experience. They then would be able to use

their their education that we have given them.

Match that with their professional credibility and make a difference in the practical world.

So that this is one of my dreams is to be able to do something like that.

If we ever reach that point. So that’s the basic introduction

to the history of our interest in the medical and the ethics center and what it would

look like. And I think we’ll just go across Steve and then Robert

speak about this, OK? Well, some of

you may actually know the person I sat next to at dinner last

night. Lloyd Lockridge, a wonderful legal

icon in Austin. He’s

just celebrated his 100th birthday.

He’s quite impressive. And he said to me, well, I’m a medical

doctor, I should say. And he said to me, someone said, well,

what do you teach at u._t? And I said, I teach medical humanities and medical

ethics to undergraduates. So Lloyd said,

well, can you define or describe what medical ethics is?

And I said that medical ethics

was the way a doctor was supposed to think every minute

of the day. And that and

and and it is an example of practical ethics, because there’s nothing you do in medicine.

Believe me, the city, what you might think of as the simplest of things

like giving a tetanus shot to a child,

which is just about as routine in this country as anything there is. But

but there are ethical implications there because a certain number of children

are going to have very bad reactions to that. And rarely very, very rarely.

But some child might die. And when you give the shot or when

you ask your your assistant, perhaps a nurse, perhaps

a technician to give the shot, you better be thinking about that. You don’t have to

obsess about it. You don’t have to never give a tetanus shot. But you better know that you’ve

made an ethical decision and why you have. And

one of the problems that we’re facing today in in

health care education is that there’s so

much technical material to master that the

art of medicine, which no one could even say was a branch of practical ethics,

one one could make that argument is is being

lost. And there’s just so

much to learn and so much to teach. Now,

I had the good fortune of of becoming a doctor

more than half century ago. I graduated from medical school in 1965

and there wasn’t so much science to learn. And I was also

taught by many, many and mentored by many people

who had been educated in Europe and really came to the United States because

of the Holocaust. And

what I was taught was that my most important skill was to be able to listen well and think

well and and not make fast decisions

and certainly not use much technology because we didn’t have it.

The reason I teach at this point in my life, the reason I’m not retired and teach full time

here at the university, is that I think by the time students get into medical

school, it’s too late to really teach them ethics.

And I get them as freshmen in a large signature course,

which which is really has an ethics flag. And it really is a medical ethics

and medical humanities course. And probably that’s

maybe bordering on the edge of being too late as well. But

it’s because they’ve or already fought their way

through the education system to get into this university. And I think they’ve already

perhaps lost perspective in certain ways about what learning is about. That

it’s not getting a high score on an AP test, that it’s about learning to think.

But in any event, I’ll just say one more thing

about Dell, because because

of the Catholic directives for a long time, I did not choose

to have a faculty appointment there.

And I’ll say I hear most of my teaching is in the School of Undergraduate Studies

and plan, too. And

the Human Dimensions of Organizations program. But I got

to know the dean. And that was that was hard to get to know because

like everybody else at Dell, everybody’s doing too much. And but I got

to know the dean, and he’s a really exceptional person. And I might add, a person

who really cares about ethics. And

I changed my mind and I took a faculty appointment there.

I didn’t take it in psychiatry, which is my specialty. I took it in population health

and medical education. And I didn’t

really want to be affiliated with a clinical department. I wanted to

be affiliated more with the world population. Health

would argue that its clinical. I certainly

never would have signed a contract with Seton. As many of the faculty members have,

because they are bound to follow the directives. And I do

want to say it’s not that I disrespect people who choose to follow those

directives. I mean, that’s that’s fine. But I don’t think

imposing those directives on other people, particularly during medical education, is acceptable.

But I have learned to compromise. And I just want to say that from a practical point of view

and Paul and I and Bill Sage were on a panel at the

McCollum’s health care initiative the year or so ago. And I think the theme

of what I had to say was compromise, compromise, compromise. I mean, health care

is incredibly complicated and you’re constantly balancing pros and cons with

everything you do. To me, that means you have to you have to constantly think ethically

and you have to be willing to make the best choice among choices,

none of which are perfect. And I decided once I was

solidly established here in the undergraduate level that I could stick my

nose into things that with maybe make a difference. And I think I’m starting to. But it’s very,

very difficult in an organization like that to really create

an an an ethical culture. Hello there.

Yeah. So I apologize for not knowing anything about our subject here today.

I had been a dredgers much, really don’t know anything about ethics centers. I have ethics center envy. I would love

to have one, but I’ve never been with one or worked with one. But I do think that they could play

a wonderful role on our campus. When you think about what a university does, it seems to me that a university does three major things.

One, we produce knowledge to we disseminate that knowledge. And three, we stand as a symbol

of the value of knowledge. We stand as a symbol for darkness

over light and knowledge, over ignorance, in science, over dogma. And I think that an ethic center

placed on a university can’t in the ethics realm of trying to make the world a better place. And

people better people can serve all three of those roles. I think if we had an ethics center that was well-funded,

we could create research, we could create knowledge of a form that would be

incredibly valuable in my little area of interest, which is behavioral ethics.

I think there’s some really significant research being done and really interesting questions being asked

for the last 15 years or so, people in behavioral psychology and evolutionary biology

and cognitive science and a whole number of disciplines which study the brain

and how people make decisions have focused on how people make the decisions, ethical

and unethical that they do. And from that information,

we can learn, I think, how we can improve people’s decision making

in part by changing the structures of organizations that are in in ways that will make it easier for people to

act ethically rather than harder for people to act ethically. We can nudge them in the right direction.

That in itself opens up a whole new field of how ethical is it to nudge people

to act ethically, which is something I find endlessly fascinating.

So that’s it’s just an exploding area, an area that

I think the possibilities are unlimited. And if we could fund some research in that area, I think would be great. And then if

we could disseminate that information, I think that would be wonderful as well. If I can put it in just

a small plug over in the business school, we have a project called Ethics Unwrapped, which is a

video ethics program. We also have case studies and and

all sorts of other things going on. But it’s primarily a video project. We’ve got more than 100 videos

that we have placed on our Web site, Ethics and wrapped up your Texas studied you also available

through YouTube for anybody the entire world to use to teach these behavioral

ethics concepts. Primarily, that’s what our videos are about. And they’ve been used all across the world.

More than a thousand colleges and universities use them all. The top 20 research universities

in the United States use them, et cetera. And that’s how if we had the supportive of

an ethics center, we could do an even better job of pushing that out across the globe and

across our campus. And we’ve got lots of ethics initiatives, lots of which have been started by

Paul Woodruff and people in the undergraduate college. And we’ve got the ethics flag

all across the university. And so we can take this knowledge that we create and push across

the university, across the world. Never a bad day to talk about it. When the Texas Tribune announces former

University of Texas law school official arrested as part of ongoing fraud investigation, that was today.

This is Jason Schumaker. The law school’s former facility’s director was arrested Thursday. The alleged fraud

could involve several billion dollars of questionable expenses. It turns out he was supposed to be working

here, but was in Las Vegas, in Mexico, with all sorts of other places running up credit card bills,

trump administration. I will tell you, I give lots and lots of ethics

talks and there’s virtually never a day when I can’t pull something off the newspaper asked about. Look what’s

in the headlines today. We need to be talking about ethics. As I said, what universities

do is create knowledge and disseminate knowledge and then stand as a symbol. And I think that

to get back to it. DJR, Texas Memorial Stadium, what you build in

the university signals what you think is important. And obviously we think football is important.

And I have no problem with that because I love football. But I also think it’d be a great idea

if we had an ethics center that would send a signal that that’s also extraordinarily important

to the University of Texas. You know, I want to add something where

I got distracted when Paul was making those comments about the med school,

though I had intended to say something about it, but I didn’t get to the punch line. I think one of the

reasons we need an ethics center is that actually in spite

of of the seating problem and it is it’s

a very, very real problem in spite of that. I think this medical

school has a chance to be very innovative. And

I know, for example, that the dean spent his undergraduate

years studying art history and after medical school went

to Florence to study art and architecture. And

in a story somewhat familiar to my generation and his family, pressure

resulted in becoming a medical doctor. David knows

my story. So let me just say, I think if we had an ethics

center, it would affect the unit. It would affect the medical school. The medical school,

in turn would affect what was going on at the ethics center. There would really be a feedback loop.

We would have a chance to influence health care, ethics in a unique

way. That’s not the only reason we should have an ethics center, but that’s one reason we should.

Let me mention something else. You know, people have been asking me what sorts

of ethical issues are practical issues that I’m interested in. And I

I’m impressed to hear Steve say that everything a doctor does as a doctor

involves ethics. I want to say on

point to an analogy there. I think everything a teacher does as a teacher involves

ethics because we’re dealing with human beings. We’re we’re giving them assignments

which may contain incentives for academic dishonesty.

We may be nudging them in bad directions. We can also nudge them in

good directions. We don’t think about that every time a teacher as an authority.

Figure interacts with a student. That teacher is setting an example

of how a person in authority should treat another. We have.

So I’ve coined this motto, Every teacher teaches ethics,

whether whether you know it or not, when you teach, you are teaching

ethics along with neuroscience or mechanical engineering or bridge building or

or Greek or whatever it is. You teach your teaching ethics as well. And I think it’s important

that we be aware of this. And I I would be

interested in developing some kind of focus through a center like this

on ethics in education. Meaning the ethics of teaching.

And I find a number of faculty members who are interested in that around the campus.

I would just like to add that I hope that there will be a historical dimension to all of this

dimension. Only one of my interests of Nazi genetics, for example, that

had a parallel in American thought and practice in the nineteen

thirties and on up through the 1950s. So these sort of things I think are very important

for the historical background for all of this. And I think that it’s, you

know, very important to build that into the program to the center. Similar things

were going on in the United States during that same period. You know, that’s what I mean. Yeah. It isn’t just Nazi.

No, no, no, no. It’s an American. Trends in America as well as know

another interesting aspect of this, legal questions with

it. During Watergate, I was struck by how many lawyers were involved in very

questionable behavior. And so I went to law school and I looked at the call

of the law school catalogs of all the law schools in the country. And no one

was teaching legal ethics. No law school in the United States, at least

they never listed a legal ethics course in their catalog. Now, that has changed.

Now it’s changed a little. Julius Glickman, who is a lawyer and a graduate

of this school, gave a professorship or a chair to the law school

in legal ethics. I don’t believe it has been filled

with a person in that area. Did he give it? Oh, 20 years ago or so?

I don’t mean to bash my colleagues too much, but the law school. Yeah, but I don’t mean to bash

them at the law school. Had an expert on

bioethics. John Robertson, whom some of you may have known, who was his specialty was

was medical law and bioethics. And he was actually one of

the leading pioneers in publishing in the field of bioethics. He died

last year. And there is no plan to replace him.

And I actually think the reason for this is important for this whole discussion.

Hiring a person in that field will not advance the rank of a law school. And in general,

hiring people in practical ethics in any field does not

affect positively the rank of a department. Oh, by hiring top people in better

ethics, we shoot up hiring people in practical ethics. You know

nothing. Either we stay the same or drop. I hope we can get Jamie Galbraith to comment

on how this might play out and the LBJ School. But in the meantime, Sam Sam Baker

founded it. Presentation. And

I have a question. Two questions. A few points in information.

This question is OK. I might have missed the beginning, but I’m curious to hear

where you’re at, your discussions of this project.

President proposed our development. Where were you at the process?

And in particular, I’m curious about how you’d explored

relations between this project. Initiatives

working various religious themes, which is good systems, which

is, you know, right now development still

has some really exciting

energy around technologies. We’re looking for technology in this

discussion, particularly the location where they’re working

on. Google’s driverless cars would

find campus problems,

high science. But ten years

ago on a campus, there was a center site and

it was disbanded. The whole

problem was that

this team was decertified university, which is

not really a question of where you’re

at. OK, OK. If

you don’t mind, I’ll I’ll launch into this. We actually do have some centers.

There’s the new Center for Leadership and Ethics in the McCombs School. We don’t know exactly

where that’s going to head in communication. There is. I think it’s an

Institute for Media Ethics, which is doing some interesting

work involving technology. Where are we? About four years ago, the Ethics and Health

Working Group decided that it wanted to move forward

towards an ethics center and instructed me and other

people who were leading the charge to speak with the provost. Well, at the time there was no provost.

So we had to wait for the process to be appointed. When the provost was appointed, I wrote

and said, may I meet to talk about this important interdisciplinary endeavor?

Well, two years passed. This is a provost who doesn’t meet with faculty members.

As far as I can tell. But eventually, she said the person

you should meet with. We have not yet appointed. That’s going to be the

the senior vise provost and dean of graduate studies. And I thought, well, that’s

not a bad idea. This is, I think, a good home for the center would

be the the Office of Graduate Studies. And

when he came on board last fall, we indeed met with

him. The committee met with him and had a very positive discussion. He’s very supportive.

So that’s where we are with the administration. I am in touch with

central development. I

have got a small grant. I have a donor who’s very interested

in this and has given us a grant to sponsor a conference on designing

an ethics center and may give us more. I mean, he certainly has the capacity to give us more

depending on what happens with this grant. We’re

scheduling a conference on November 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

So far, we’ve got the keynote speaker. It’s all being built around the keynote speaker.

The keynote speaker is a celebrity ethicist, Anthony Appiah

Beer, November 1st. And we’ll be we’ve booked the

Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium for this event and we plan to fill it.

Yes, I think so. He’s written a really good book called The Code of Honor. He’s interested in how

ethical codes change as culture changes. He’s a very

interesting man and well-regarded in the fellows in the philosophy community as well as

a celebrity. I can’t talk to him directly. I have to talk to him through an agent.

Yours or his? His. Yeah, yeah.

And. But in any case, the point of this is to get as much publicity

through his visit as we possibly can in Austin and Texas

to call people’s attention to the possibility of an ethics center. And we’ll be

bringing other valuable people, but less famous. I haven’t

lined them up yet that weekend to talk about the design of an ethics center.

And the point is going to be to try to address the question, what should an ethics center at

U.T. be? You know, do we want the Oxford model? Do we want the

the model of a Powerset or North Carolina? Do we want the software center in Harvard or Duke?

What is the unique Texas center that we should be developing?

So that’s where we are with that. We have also

some possibilities of getting operating funds from a local foundation.

I don’t know how how certain that is. But if if I could get,

say, a hundred thousand dollars a year, I could hire a permanent staff member

and have some money perhaps left over for events that would make a huge difference

to getting that momentum to pay

for the project. The project is to lay the foundation for a center.

That’s basically it. So that’s where we are. Jimmy Galbraith Yeah, well, as someone who was

for one semester a major, it strikes me as passing. Strange that a university

which has fine arts majors is one major dean robots can’t wrap his mind

around properly financed arts library

average day only J-school. And you may have heard of the School of Public Affairs.

I you don’t know and you may have heard. That’s what we do

know. This subject came up with the phrase I jotted in my notebook was

white collar criminology, part of

ethical research program. We did have a faculty member for

a number of years who specialized in that. His name was William

Black. He was the whistleblower on the Keating Five.

And the person who figured out what savings, the criminal,

the criminal underpinnings he came

for, which nobody would know. On the contrary, I believe this was a different

era. The era of Bush Senior and the late Reagan period. And

in those days, they did have actual an actual Department of Justice,

admittedly under Republicans. And a thousand officers

of the criminal arsenals were indicted, convicted in prison, federal prisons, the

largest criminal cleanup on the financial sector

in history. It was a contrast to the more recent period when the number of senior bankers

charged in prison financial debacles approximately zero, including

bankers who were involved in laundering the hundreds of millions

of dollars of Mexican drug cartel money. So any event

I just put that on the table is something which ought to be part of an agenda.

And with the warning that to do this seriously matters

a great deal of courage because there’s a lot of money

flowing in the other direction. You can ask ask you if you think that that one

is the bullet points might be.

And I’m thinking about de Tocqueville and all that. But the ethics of democracy. Yes.

Well, I think there is a question that is raised by the Information

Society, the Digital Information Society, which is about

the nature of search for truth. Discussion

of public affairs is an issue which we’re where we see the

traditional business of muddying the waters has become sort

of combinatorial that much harder to work your way through.

Is something that you can positively believe in a whole range of historical and political questions.

Yes, ethics required caused for fresh e.g.

Second is the replay. No.

But what is required is that every student take a course

with a substantial ethics component, which we call the ethics flag

and. We also

try to teach in the signature course, so I hope we do it in most of the city, which is

a freshman course, required freshman course. The

academic ethics of of of proper citation and

attribution and generally the virtues of academic honesty are,

I hope, being reinforced through the signature course. That’s one

of his goals. Over here. And we haven’t heard from George

Christian. Go ahead. So thank you all for opening this question. I’m

very, very interested in this. I’m glad other people are, too. So I’m visiting from Berkeley,

which has a bit of a bias on it. That’s towards bioethics, where dogma

just came up with Christopher and so forth. And Silicon Valley right

there. So very much so algorithmic ethics, computing and so forth.

So I think these biases are in this particular era,

especially given some of the things they’re finding. And I wanted to share some of the conversation with you and

see if these are on your radar at all, because it seems to say

that we’re finding. I love your perspective on that. Many of the

ethical decisions that are coming out are being decided right now, are being done by people

who don’t have college degrees anymore. Some of the people that we’re thinking about that we’ve been

negotiating with and investigating are coming out with high school degrees and making six

figures and going into Silicon Valley right away. This makes

to various areas that we’ve identified that

scrambling to keep up with. The first is teaching ethics. And I think your comment is so incredibly important.

Think teaching and thinking about where this teaching happens, especially in schools of which

there are rules about teaching ethics in most of the state states

stand and so forth, but very few support mechanisms to do so. And the second

is being a resource for people who are policy writers

in the expertise of both ethics and STEM, especially to stem an industry

that. Especially as I came here, because

you keep the nation wide known for its you teach program.

It’s an instruction and starting one of the only programs

that disseminates ethical teaching. You’ve been on your radar.

But one of the centers that we’re looking at as a model of the power center in North Carolina has a high school

outreach program, which is very interesting. And that’s something we might do if

we developed a, uh, a wing of the ethics

center that focused on ethics in education. I would hope

that we would be talking about K through

Karl Schmidt, I have a series of questions I think are somewhat related.

Let me go through them and then respond. First of all, in a center

like this. Dealing with ethics. What is the ground above your ethics? Where do you start from?

And do you see a difference between morals and ethics?

Aren’t ethical questions by their nature matters of value and therefore controversial?

I heard you, Professor. Would you say that you did not want the center to be a missionary enterprise,

but then you would not associate with C? You’ve made a decision

that you would not. You don’t want to accept their position on this.

Would you respond? Well, first, the last question

of yes. The mission is more Socratic is Socratic rather than missionary.

That is the Socratic mission is

prepared to ask questions about anything. And the problem with Seton is their questions you can’t

ask. So that’s that’s the problem with them.

They’re the. You ask about

grounds of ethics. That’s a

verges on being a meta meta ethical question and something

that is is is much debated. There is a debate among practical ethics

people as to the relevance of ethical theory to ethical decision

making. And I think there’s a growing interest in what Robert was talking about

of ethical decision making, what what what’s involved in making

an ethical decision and in a practical and a practical way,

rather than the more heavily theoretical interest

in what grounds? Ethics.

Then you asked about whether about values. Are values

controversial? Some are. Obviously, there’s

there’s a there’s some controversy about the values behind that. The Catholic

directives. But there is a I think in ethics

of a remarkable consensus on on most issues. I think the

the the problems that that we in

practical ethics are most interested in, I have to do with the conditions

under which people make good or bad ethical decisions by their own lights. I mean,

it’s a. That’s that’s a long,

long story. But we do know how easily it is, how easy it is

to be deterred by temptation

or fear or anger somehow led astray from what one’s

value commitments really are. And if you if you look at ethics unwrapped,

I think they’re really elegant videos that deal with issues like

this. You know, it’s

we don’t really need to have a discussion about whether it’s good or bad

to lie. Generally, we agree it’s bad to lie and we agree on why.

But the interesting thing is to look at the circumstances in which we live because we do lie a lot.

You wouldn’t argue it’s bad under all circumstances. Well, that’s

that’s something we could discuss this. Exactly. And that’s

something we do discuss. Walter and then George Christian. And I want

to mention that we have a couple of Arabists here. I would very much interested in how this appears

from an Arab US perspective on Ashley and Kat. Let’s say Albert

Wolter really steady. It’s been around for years and

it seems to me practical be

worthwhile. And yet your mission statements

seem that it’s not actually an oxymoron

would be something that we could work on applying. So why is

missionary not you? Well, this is

the Oxford Center. And I like that statement

that since we don’t have a center yet, we don’t have a statement as to what its goal is.

But I think it would be unsuitable for our university

to decide in advance what

ethical values it was going to promote and set out as a missionary.

Along those lines, if we were a Catholic university, that would be

different. But we’re not. We’re a university that should be open to inquiry.

And the Socratic method is all about asking questions and helping people uncover

what their deepest value commitments are. And then I

think the kind of behavior or ethics that Bob was talking about have to do with

figuring out how to how to live by the values that we find. We have

George Christian. And then, you know, as somebody that’s very professional

liability insurance.

I do. What do you think about everything I do?

Under a professional force. I mean, you do have to

worry about. I’m curious. Part of this.

I wonder why university faculty never really got

any of these little modules. So, yeah,

I tried out the rules. And I know I only get emails when of course

I’m overdue.

It’s hard. Could participate for more

extreme spitefully would actually get together

and frankly

are changing in nature, increasing

security of our society. And I’m not

sure I’m totally trained in

how much how much can center vs. just study

more concentrated focus on dealing with the mental health

developmental problems,

teach it to or, you know, a lot of undergraduates

really are pretty substantially.

There’s a brand new chief compliance officer at U.T. and he, I believe, is aware of the

inadequacy of the online education. So he’s putting a lot of thought

into how we could improve that. I’ve had some conversations with him. He might use Savar if they said

rep videos, but he is aware of the inadequacy. And bless you for bringing

that up, because that’s something that you teach way behind the curve on that. Steve, could you respond

to the medical dimension of the question? Well, I think

I. I think you’ve responded already. You

know, I do, because what you said was that

that you every every decision you make involves thinking about

ethics. And and I think that’s

what we need to train ourselves to do. You know, actually,

I I just finished teaching a capstone course for

a group of human dimensions of organization students. And I want to mention something

that one of the groups came up with. They actually

were had a field placement working with the Merck organization

that just came to Austin. And Merck asked them to advise them

on how they could become involved in the community. This goes back to Silicon

Valley and Berkeley. And, you know, they came up with an idea

because Merck was very interested in developing a training program for young

women in STEM. Maybe a high school based program

outside of classes, extracurricular program. And

this group of three women said, well,

what we should do is change stem to steam. You’ve

heard that. I’m sure you haven’t. I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe they invented it. The H

stands for the arts. So it’s so we rejoin science,

technology, engineering, the arts and

mathematics. And I

I really believe that what we need to do is really train

people to keep steane in mind and not separate

stem from the. I think that’s what we’re trying to do and plan to. I think

really under Paul’s leadership for a very long

time and some other people, that’s what we’re trying to do here. You take changing the core curriculum,

I think reflected really trying to create steam. So

I think you answered your own you answered the question. You have to keep thinking.

I said before that one of the things I learned from these wonderful European scholars

in medical school was to listen. I think you have to learn to talk with yourself

and be very, very self-reflective and and very introspective

and really take time to stay in touch with yourself and the way you make decisions.

I also think, by the way, that the decision making approach

that that the ethics and wrapped project

is designing is superb. I’m not saying we can’t use technology and we can’t

use good teaching to promote this. But I think the most important thing

is creating a culture that really promotes a recognition

of how complicated the world is and how we have to keep thinking about everything we do.

So maybe my three wonderful students invented something. I thought they must

have gotten it off the net. Yeah. No, outcall. I was going to work

following up on this. And then took

two to the greatest ethical thinkers in the Western tradition, or Socrates and Emmanuel Khan.

Both of them said the cornerstone of ethics is self-knowledge.

But which is why I don’t like the word training. You know, there’s compliance

training and there’s ethics education. Thank you.

Several times. No, the expression Catholic directives

apply to hospitals. I take that to be coded

language, meaning an anti-abortion and anti-contraception division.

Is there anything else to it? Or is that the whole thing? Well,

the term Catholic directive is is a term of art that was

created by the Catholic Church, so it’s not

it’s not a term of disapprobation, it’s the term that’s that’s used. As I understand

it. And. It really

has to do with women’s health. Yes. But also, you can’t

terminate a life into a under a lot of other issues.

Yes. Yes, there are. But I’m I. From a practical point of view,

it has to do with women’s health that we’re all. Well, that’s a good point. Well, no.

Germany. All right. Now, let let me let me say, from a practical point of view, when I say it has to do

with women’s health, I’m including the issue of termination of life, because while

physician assisted suicide is obviously something of

an issue, the issue of termination of life before

a human being leaves its mother’s body is also a women’s health

issue. And that, I think, is in terms of just in terms of sheer impact,

most of the impact has to do with women’s health. There are other things about the Sweden

contract that doctors sign that prevents them from thinking and acting

with good conscience. There is also non-disclosure in that in their contracts,

which means that they can’t be shown to anybody. And there’s also a non-compete

clause. Join me and then we’ll collect a few concluding comments and questions. I

wanted to follow up on George’s point about ethics because there actually never has been

one for economists anything

with predictable consequences. If there’s a point

of information, there is an effort now spearheaded by a professor at Denver University

named George demartino to develop a code of ethics for economists.

And needless to say, it raises a very important question about the role that economists play

as consultants and advisers in finance, which,

needless to say, has meant that the profession has been exceedingly reticent

to embrace the notion that it should have a code. And that’s also something

I think I suggest would be very usefully put on the agenda again, at the risk of

developing yet another core of determined opposition to the existence,

an Arabist perspective. Actually, I was wondering about

in terms of funding and who I wrote, if I were to invest

in this center, especially if it deals with issues like terrorism or just war,

you have like governmental interests here and then also wealthier nation states,

kingdoms abroad that would be interested in this kind of research. So would there be any like blocks

in place for that or would that be taken into consideration?

Would there be any place like and not blocks? But is that would there be like Disclosure’s

or something like terrorism and say, OK, this is funded by this

if it’s resources raisers, it’s funded by the Department of Defense or et cetera?

Oh, I don’t know. One of the leading practical ethics professors. Oxford

is an expert on just war theory has published. I think he’s probably

published more than anyone on that. He’s actually not listed as part of the center, but he’s there because

of the center. And I don’t believe there are any obstacles to anything

he’s says. Right. I don’t see why there should be an academic operation.

I hope we of friction. Come on. I can certainly see the need for ethics training for

teachers and lawyers and doctors and a lot of other people’s accounts.

You know, they’re getting sued all the time. There’s nothing inappropriate or whatever

unfair to people. So I can see a real need for ethics training in almost

all the tools. David Lee Oldham concluding

comment. Well, is there any research evidence that ethics classes make people more ethical?

There’s there’s there’s not a lot, but there is evidence that, again, from the behavioral ethics

research that is being done, there are things you can do that do improve the chances that people will do the right thing.

And among those happen to be. People on the top doing the right thing.

Rewarding people do the right thing and punishing people who do the wrong thing. Reminding people.

They of the standards of the profession and do that on a regular basis and reminding the people of

the importance of their own moral identity and doing that on a regular basis. There are things that

can not turn anybody, not turn people into perfect people that can give

people a fighting chance to live up to their own standards on a more regular basis. But surely that’s one of

the enormous problems that different people have, very different ideas about what

the right thing is. And so I may think I am complying with my

own ethics and you may think I’m an ethical disaster. And

so this is, you know, for the kinds of issues we’re talking about, this point really is largely irrelevant.

You know, for what Bob is is dealing with. What you could be. Yeah.

When you look, if Catholics or evangelicals or I don’t know of a religion

that that encourages fraud. Well, but they’re not that practical

case. I was suggesting earlier where lying, for example, to save

hundreds of having to save people. You are hiding from the Nazis, for example.

I mean, there are situations where people feel that there is

a conflict between. Right. One ethical principle and another.

Moral dilemmas are really interesting subject about which a great deal has been done. And of

course, part of our ethical education, I think, is to help people

think through ethical dilemmas, but their ethical dilemmas because people

feel the force on both sides. So this is a huge subject. But

obviously, it’s one that we philosophers who deal with practical ethics

have a lot to say about it in the business school. We’re more concerned with the people you see

in the paper every day who go to jail for fraud, who go to jail for insider trading, who go to jail

for tax evasion and on and on down the line. Every one of those people knows that’s wrong.

And yet every one of them did it. Virtually everyone, when they’re at their sentencing, will have people testify

on their behalf, saying they’re a wonderful father, which they probably were a wonderful parent, which they probably were

a wonderful neighbor, which they probably were active in their church where they probably were. Why did they do

this bad thing even though they’re good people? That’s what the research that I’m interested in focuses

on. How can we allow people to live up to their own standards? It is definitely true that

on the edges we run into situations where we have disagreements as to what’s the right thing to do. But

I bet if you and I sat down and talked about things. Ninety five percent of the top ethical issues that would come up. You

and I would agree on. And the five that we didn’t probably wouldn’t happen very often. Donald Trump

would agree with that. We’re calling on Sam Baker present for their concluding

comment goes by. Sounds like what Donald Trump thinks of passing right through

your water to shop for the fighter. In

any event, that’s why for not tax deductible

shop. But I to

point out the need to recognize some

diminution of just the very possibility of ethical discourse. So

many decision makers, an actor decides to stay on.

I mean this in a good way, working with technologists on campus, people

in STEM fields who were trained in the area

in engineering departments. Really? Did you fire every last credit hour?

And you haven’t had undergraduate ethics training. So they tried to write

about to their fields and they’re pulling together the most basic utilitarian.

Right. And I think that’s interesting stargaze

argument. And I recognize. But beyond my capacity to help them get to where

they want to be and we need a way to actually help you get to the possibility

to have a discussion. So just one last

question. Just the idea that we could just do so much more as

a university to foster warm ethical discussions with

vocabularies than we do to help people away from the recourse to

spheres of law and religion. The only place in society supposedly discourse,

which in fact it will come to religion. It certainly was a place. Stop it.

That’s a very eloquent statement, Sam. Let’s thank our panel for a very interesting.