Results for ETHICSOC

How ethical is networking? Is there a difference between being a good Facebook friend and being a good friend? What should dating look like at Stanford? Is there really a hook-up culture on campus? How should parents fit in my life? Is it important to go into the lockstep march to adulthood immediately after college? Are you David Brooks' quintessential Organization Kid? Personal growth questions through discussion and dialogue. Student-initiated course. (AU)

This class is a lecture series featuring guest speakers from various academic departments, the Stanford Law School, and public interest organizations from around the Bay Area. Issues that will be addressed include prison reform, capital punishment, education reform, and other issues. Some of the speakers will include Professors Larry Marshall and Richard Ford of the Stanford Law School, as well as Richard Lee (Prop 19 advocate).

Weekly talks by Stanford faculty on important questions of ethics that arise in private and public life. These questions arise in all disciplines and are central to many of the main problems confronting humanity today. Such questions include: what is our obligation to future generations? are there any human rights? what is the appropriate role of religion in politics? is capital punishment ever justified? what are the ethical obligations of a researcher? should the university teach moral values? what principles of justice should govern the distribution of K-12 education?nnnClass meets Fridays from noon to 1:05. Format is an informal talk of about 35- 40 minutes, followed by discussion.

Short novels and plays will provide the basis for reflection on ethical values and the purpose of life. Some of the works to be studied are F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara, Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, Jane Smiley's Good Will, Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. We will read for plot, setting, character, and theme using a two-text method- looking at the narrative of the literary work and students' own lives-rather than either deconstructing the literature or relating it to the author's biography and psychology. The questions we will ask have many answers. Why are we here? How do we find meaningful work? What can death teach us about life? What is the meaning of success? What is the nature of true love? How can one find balance between work and personal life? How free are we to seek our own destiny? What obligations do we have to others? We will draw from literature set in the United States and elsewhere. Both secular and religious world views from a variety of traditions will be considered. The authors chosen are able to hold people up as jewels to the light, turning them around to show all of their facets, both blemished and pure, while at the same time pointing to any internal glow beneath the surface. Classes will be taught in a Socratic, discussion-based style. Study questions will accompany each reading and provide a foundation for class discussion. Grading will be based 50 percent on class participation, 25 percent on one-page reflection papers on reading assignments, and 25 percent on a four-page final paper due on September 15. Field trips will include an overnight camping experience.

What is the basis of moral judgment? What makes right actions right and wrong actions wrong? What makes a state of affairs good or worth promoting? What is it to have a good or virtuous character? Answers to classic questions in ethics through the works of traditional and contemporary authors. Fulfills the Philosophy ethical reasoning requirement.

Ethical and political questions in public service work, including volunteering, service learning, humanitarian assistance, and public service professions such as medicine and teaching. Motives and outcomes in service work. Connections between service work and justice. Is mandatory service an oxymoron? History of public service in the U.S. Issues in crosscultural service work. Integration with the Haas Center for Public Service to connect service activities and public service aspirations with academic experiences at Stanford.

Recent work in political theory on global justice. Topics include global poverty, human rights, fair trade, immigration, climate change. Do developed countries have a duty to aid developing countries? Do rich countries have the right to close their borders to economic immigrants? When is humanitarian intervention justified? Readings include Charles Beitz, Thomas Pogge, John Rawls.

Focus is on theories of justice. How the core ideals of freedom, equality, and security animate theories which John Rawls considers the first virtue of social institutions. Topics include the U.S. Constitution as a legal framework for the operation of these ideals, civil rights legislation and litigation as the arena of tensions between those ideals, and how ideas of justice function both at home and abroad to impact civil liberties in today's war on terror.

Preference to sophomores and juniors. An interdisciplinary examination of alternative and largely incompatible twentieth-century defenses of the morality of capitalism, with a concentration on economic, Objectivist, and Christian arguments, considered historically, economically, politically, and philosophically. Readings from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, authors for and against slavery, John Maynard Keynes, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Austrian School economists, Milton Friedman, Dinesh D'Souza, and George Gilder. A reading of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". A concluding application of studied theories to a few recent public policy issues.

Major strands in contemporary ethical theory. Readings include Bentham, Mill, Kant, and contemporary authors.

Focus is on the ideal of a just society, and the place of liberty and equality in it, in light of contemporary theories of justice and political controversies. Topics include protecting religious liberty, financing schools and elections, regulating markets, assuring access to health care, and providing affirmative action and group rights. Issues of global justice including human rights and global inequality.

Morally controversial uses of markets and market reasoning in areas such as organ sales, procreation, education, and child labor. Would a market for organ donation make saving lives more efficient; if it did, would it thereby be justified? Should a nation be permitted to buy the right to pollute? Readings include Walzer, Arrow, Rawls, Sen, Frey, Titmuss, and empirical cases.

Issues both in contemporary just war theory and political philosophy. Relevant questions include: Can conscription ever be justified? If not, is there anything wrong with targeting poor people as part of efforts to recruit a 'volunteer' military? If, during war itself, combatants act in ways prohibited by the moral requirements governing war's conduct, then does it make any moral difference whether they were acting as ordered? And how do we identify these moral requirements in the first place? For example, what distinguishes a legitimate target from an illegitimate one? What determines whether military action is disproportionate? What, if anything, is morally distinctive about terrorism? Explores the complexities behind these questions and others, with a view to evaluating the potential answers to them.

The proliferation of human rights in the discourse of international justice has raised a number of important questions in both moral and legal theory. What are human rights? How should they be conceptualized? Who ought to bear the duties associated with them? Can their protection justify military interventions into sovereign states? This course will cover topics in moral and legal theory surrounding human rights. The course has three main focuses. The first concerns the question of what these rights are. The second focus is on the various substantive moral justifications for the protection of human rights. The third is on the moral issues raised by the dominance of human rights in international law and relations: can any rights be universal? How are these rights to be framed in the light of cross-cultural values and claims about cultural dominance? A theme throughout will be the connections between these questions. The way we answer the question of what human rights are, and how they can be morally justified, will substantially determine the way we assign duties in respect of them.

Explores the normative questions that arise in environmental policy debates, including arguments over pollution permit markets, conservation regulations, and global warming mitigation efforts. What are the morally relevant ways in which the environment is different from other economic resources? How should the environment be valued? What are our obligations to conserve for future generations? How should the burdens of conservation be distributed? Engages with a variety of philosophical traditions including utilitarianism, deep ecology, liberalism, and communitarianism.

As individuals and as members of societies, we make choices that can be evaluated from a moral point of view. What choices should we make, and how should we justify these choices? For example, can we justify buying expensive sunglasses or MP3 players when the money could instead be given to provide others with basic nutrition? Does a preference for the taste of meat over that of other proteins justify killing animals? Focus is on our obligations to aid, and to avoid harming. Topics include aid and its allocation, abortion, animal rights and euthanasia.

For students planning honors in Ethics in Society. Methods of research. Students present issues of public and personal morality; topics chosen with advice of instructor.

Restricted to Ethics in Society minors with the citizenship option. Opportunities for students to engage in community work via the Haas Center for Public Service. Students work with Haas Center staff to design an internship involving community-based research or supported by a Haas Center fellowship or community service work/study, or to serve for an academic year as a tutor in one of the Haas Center's several K-12 programs in East Palo Alto. May be repeated for credit.

May be repeated for credit.

Limited to Ethics in Society honors students, who must enroll once in A and once in B.

Limited to Ethics in Society honors students, who must enroll once in A and once in B.

Students taking this course for a WIM, register for PoliSci 132S. The historical development and modern structure of civil society emphasizing philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. What is the basis of private action for the public good? How are charitable dollars distributed and what role do nonprofit organizations and philanthropic dollars play in a modern democracy? How do nongovernmental organizations operate domestically and globally? Readings in political philosophy, political sociology, and public policy.nnnInterested students must submit a one paragraph statement that contains three things: (1) frosh/soph/jr/senior, (2) your major(s) or prospective major; and (3) your reasons for wishing to enroll in the class to hmeckler@stanford.edu by Monday, March 21st at 5pm.

The proliferation of human rights in the discourse of international justice has raised a number of important questions in both moral and legal theory. What are human rights? How should they be conceptualized? Who ought to bear the duties associated with them? Can their protection justify military interventions into sovereign states? This course will cover topics in moral and legal theory surrounding human rights. The course has three main focuses. The first concerns the question of what these rights are. The second focus is on the various substantive moral justifications for the protection of human rights. The third is on the moral issues raised by the dominance of human rights in international law and relations: can any rights be universal? How are these rights to be framed in the light of cross-cultural values and claims about cultural dominance? A theme throughout will be the connections between these questions. The way we answer the question of what human rights are, and how they can be morally justified, will substantially determine the way we assign duties in respect of them.

Explores the normative questions that arise in environmental policy debates, including arguments over pollution permit markets, conservation regulations, and global warming mitigation efforts. What are the morally relevant ways in which the environment is different from other economic resources? How should the environment be valued? What are our obligations to conserve for future generations? How should the burdens of conservation be distributed? Engages with a variety of philosophical traditions including utilitarianism, deep ecology, liberalism, and communitarianism.

Historical backdrop of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals. The creation and operation of the Yugoslav and Rwanda Tribunals (ICTY and ICTR). The development of hybrid tribunals in East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia, including evaluation of their success in addressing perceived shortcomings of the ICTY and ICTR. Examination of the role of the International Criminal Court and the extent to which it will succeed in supplanting all other ad hoc international justice mechanisms and fulfill its goals. Analysis focuses on the politics of creating such courts, their interaction with the states in which the conflicts took place, the process of establishing prosecutorial priorities, the body of law they have produced, and their effectiveness in addressing the needs of victims in post-conflict societies.