We have another update from Jonathan Brockopp about his three-person-team bike ride to Washington to raise awareness of the ethical dimensions of climate change. Click here to find out how things are going.

On April 27th, Jonathan Brockopp, director of the religion and ethics initiative at the Rock Ethics Institute, started off with a three-person team on a bike ride to Washington in order to raise awareness about the ethical dimensions of climate change.

"Most people know the scientific and political dimensions of climate
change," he said, "but few have thought deeply about the moral implications."
According to Brockopp, these are among the most important climate issues:
"People right now are suffering from changes in our climate, and the floods and
droughts we have seen recently are only harbingers of what may be coming down
the pike."

The trip is sponsored by Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light , a state-wide non-profit that has its main offices in State College. The bikers are staying overnight in church basements and giving talks to colleges and religious communities along the way. Click here for an update on days one and two of the four-day trip.

Penn State Rock Ethics Institute Director Nancy Tuana offers the following reflections on Teaching 'The Kite Runner' at Penn State, an article recently published in The Chronicle Review by our colleague Sophia A. McClennen about her classroom experience in the first days of the current crisis: One theme of The Kite Runner is moral failure. It includes the story of Amir who witnesses the rape of Hassan, his friend, but fails to intervene and later to even acknowledge the rape or apologize for his inaction. 

This summary was provided by Rock Ethics Graduate Student Fellow David Agler

Introduction Mayes began the workshop with a brief overview of his paper. Mayes claimed that the theoretical framework of "pre" is general notion used to capture preemptive, precautionary, and preventive principles that aim at predicting and pre-empting threats prior to their actualization. A key theme of his paper (drawing from Diprose, Francois Ewald, and others) is the shift from a perception of risk that is naturally occurring and calculable to one that is incalculable and the result of human agency, particularly with respect to how the latter can lead to catastrophe.

In an interview with The Atlantic, investigative journalist Jason Berry discusses the parallels and differences in the way the Catholic Church and Penn State responded to allegations of sexual abuse. See the interview here - What the Catholic Church Can Teach Us About the Penn State Scandal

In this interview Jason Berry raises a number of key themes for ethical deliberation in an institutional context:

1)  1. The relationship between knowledge of ethics and ethical practice.

a.     How can highly educated people who have received training or instruction in ethical thinking fail to act in accordance with this knowledge?

b.     What factors can wedge between knowledge and practice to create a situation where knowing the right thing doesn't lead to doing the right thing?

c.      Is there something intrinsic to institutions such as a Church, University or Company, that create the conditions in which ethical practice is determined by the institution rather than what is considered right beyond the institutional boundaries?

2)   2. The value of leadership

a.     Leadership is valued in the sporting arena, boardroom and ER. In these situations the leader leads towards victory, profit and success. These are valuable goals in society, but what of ethical leadership?

b.     Does ethical leadership lead toward a goal? If so what is it?

c.      If the goals of doing the right thing conflict with the goals of success or profit how are these reconciled - which yields?

3) 3.  The role of cultural sensibilities

a.     How do cultural sensibilities, as sources of identity and meaning, shape ethics?

b.     If these cultural sensibilities are criticized or dislodged what impact can this have on ethical deliberation?

c.      What is place of the individual within the culture? Is it possible to stand up for what is right and remain loyal to that culture?

Jason Berry addresses a range of ethical issues for the individual and institution. What aspect of Berry's perspective did you find helpful in thinking through the ethics of what occurred at Penn State? Where there parts that you thought were unhelpful or misguided? - we would like to discuss your thoughts and ideas.

In August of 2011, when Dean Daniel Larsen asked for volunteers to attend a workshop on integrating ethics into technical courses from each of the departments in the Eberly College of Science, I was a bit nervous about signing up. I am a geneticist by training. I had always raised potential ethical issues when genetic information was discussed, but I was really a novice with respect to using the language of ethical arguments. I decided to volunteer to be a participate in the workshop to see if I could learn about how to more effectively integrate the language of ethical thinking into my Advanced Genetics course.

 

During this time of unprecedented crisis within the Penn State community, the Rock Ethics Institute remains committed to fostering careful reflection and dialogue concerning the many ethical challenges facing our community.  We acknowledge our responsibility to participate in addressing the particularly difficult challenges that recent revelations have raised by initiating and lending our support to programs that aim both to increase awareness of and to foster careful reflection concerning issues such as:

• ethically appropriate responses to the spectrum of harms done to children who have been sexually assaulted 
  
• the interrelations between individual and institutional ethical responsibility, and   
• the requirements for a diverse and multi-faceted organization like Penn State both to advocate for and to exemplify integrity in all aspects of its mission.

The Penn State Rock Ethics Institute will draw on the expertise of members of the community, on the Institute's existing resources in the areas of ethical leadership and moral literacy, as well as on the resources that are emerging from our current examination of institutional corruption in support of this reflection and dialogue. We appreciate input from anyone in the community concerning how we might best facilitate this challenging process. Please leave your comments below.  

The Rock Ethics Fellows recently met to discuss ethical issues related to sustainability, particularly the sustainability of certain human practices and systems. In general, a practice is thought to be sustainable if it does not compromise the ability of future generations to lead economically, socially, and environmentally decent lives.

The discussion focused on what is required in order to live sustainably. This included questions about human population. Although it is unclear what the "carrying capacity" of the planet is for human population, there is presumably some limit to how many humans can live sustainably on the Earth. However, it is unclear whether or how population growth should be curbed, as doing so might involve violating certain rights of various persons.

The topic of how to manage finite resources was also considered. It was suggested that transitioning to renewable energy sources would be much more sustainable than current energy sources, most of which rely on limited stores of fossil fuels.

Finally, the issue of sustainability was connected to social justice. In particular, ethical sustainability seems to depend on the notion that present persons have duties to future generations. These duties are thought to require currently living persons not to deplete the resources that might be needed by future persons, as well as to protect the environment from degrading in ways that could harm the well-being of such future persons.

On October 24^th, the Rock Fellows Seminar took part in a workshop for Luvell Anderson, the Alain Locke Post-Doctoral Fellow in Philosophy at Penn State. Luvell's paper, "Why So Serious? An Inquiry into Racist Jokes," considers the relationship between race and humor, offering a rubric for determining the appropriateness of a racial joke. Rejecting the simplistic view that a joke either is or is not racist, Luvell suggests a tripartite distinction whereby a given joke may be classified as "merely racial," "racially insensitive," or "racist."