November 8, 2007
Ethical Challenges for the Legal Profession
William H. Neukom, Stanford Law '67, President of the American Bar Association, Partner with the firm of K&L Gates, and former Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Microsoft, addressed challenges for the legal profession. Topics discussed included social justice, the rule of law, access to legal services, and information management.

To download an audio streaming of this event, please click here.
To read the Stanford Daily report on this event, please click here.

January 29, 2008
Beyond Band-Aids: Curing the Sick American Health-Care System


Photo: Amelia Aboff

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Chair of the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, argued that the current proposals for health-care reform fall far short of what the nation urgently needs. His alternative of universal health-care vouchers, which he developed with Stanford medical professor Victor Fuchs, would provide what he argues is missing from prevailing approaches: comprehensive, affordable, and quality care for all Americans.

February 25, 2008
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World

Photo: Stuart Brinin

In collaboration with international studies and human rights programs, the Ethics Center co-hosted a lecture by Pulitzer Prize recipient Samantha Power, Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Power touched briefly on her former book, A Problem from Hell: America at the Age of Genocide (Harper Perennial, 2003), and discussed themes related to her newly published book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (Penguin, 2008), a comprehensive biography of United Nations official Sergio Vieira de Mello who was killed in a terrorist attack on the United Nations Headquarters in Iraq in 2003. The book explains how Vieira de Mello’s personal evolution paralleled that of the United Nations and how his contradictions and failures were rooted in those of the institution he so loyally served.

To listen to an audio re-broadcast of this event on Stanford on iTunes U, click here. After the program launches, follow the link to "Stanford Power Search" and type in the Description box "Samantha Power".

March 6, 2008
The War on Terror is No Metaphor
Philip Bobbitt, Thomas C. Macioce Professor of Law at ColumbiaUniversity and one of the nation’s leading constitutional theorists, discussed topics related to his new book, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century (Knopf, 2008). His lecture brought together historical, legal, and strategic analyses to understand how a “war on terror” might actually be won and the role of international law for democracies caught in such a struggle.

April 8, 2008
Medicine and the Public Trust
In collaboration with the School of Medicine, the Haas Center for Public Service, and the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, the Ethics Center hosted Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London and Director of UCL International Institute for Society and Health. For the past twenty years, Marmot has been at the forefront of research on health inequalities. His path-breaking research exposes the role of socio-economic factors in increasing the risk of life- threatening diseases.

April 23, 2008
All Animals Are Equal – But in What Sense of Equality?

Peter Singer, the Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton’s University Center for Human Values, explained what he means by the claim that “all animals are equal.” Singer first broached this claim in Animal Liberation (Random House, 1975), a book sometimes credited with starting the modern animal rights movement. The claim is often misunderstood and sometimes used to caricature the animal movement. Singer discussed why it is something that we all ought to accept and what its implications are for our everyday life. 

To listen to an audio re-broadcast of this event on Stanford on iTunes U, please click here. After the program launches, follow the link to "Stanford Power Search" and type in the Description box "Peter Singer".

May 8, 2008
Campaign Ethics: The Vices of Misinformation and Manipulation
Dennis Thompson, Harvard University’s Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy, Professor of Government and of Public Policy, and the founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics looked at examples of political campaign practices in the past to develop principles for judging campaigns in the present and the future. According to Thompson, when assessing the conduct of political campaigns, we should care less about fair competition among the candidates and more about the ability of voters to exercise free choice. Campaigns, he said, are not great moments of civic education, but neither should they be occasions for misinformation and manipulation.

To listen to an audio re-broadcast of this event on Stanford on iTunes U, please click here. After the program launches, follow the link to "Stanford Power Search" and type in the Description box "Dennis Thompson".