Political and Social Justice

Progressive Social Movements and the Ethics of Engagement

Todd Gitlin, noted social critic and Professor at Columbia University School of Journalism, discussed ethical issues related to social movements and political engagement, with particular focus on the Bush administration’s exercise of executive power. (Spring, 2007)

Consequential Moral Reasoning and Social Problems
Cornell economist Robert Frank led an interdisciplinary dialogue on the contributions and limitations of consequentialist moral theory in addressing social problems. (Spring, 2006)

Ethics in Lobbying: A Contradiction in Terms?
Alan Morrison, Stanford Law Professor and former Public Citizen Legal Director, and David Brady, GSB and Political Science Professor, explored the regulatory challenges raised by recurrent lobbying scandals. (Spring, 2006)

How Should the Media Cover Politics?
Theodore Glasser, Stanford Professor of Communication and Director of the Graduate Program in Journalism, John McManus, Director of Grade the News, a Stanford affiliated media research organization that focuses on the quality of the Bay Area’s news media, Robert Rosenthal, Vice President and Managing Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and Jim Sanders, News Director at the NBC affiliate KNTV, focused on journalistic ethics in political coverage. (Fall, 2005)

Bury the Chains: Anti-Slavery Activism as a Case Study in Ethical Engagement
Adam Hochschild, author of the Booker Prize winning history of the British anti-slavery movement, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), focused on the role of academics in launching the eighteenth century British abolitionist campaign. His chronicle revealed how the ethical commitments of a few leaders, such as Thomas Clarkson and William Pitt, altered the moral landscape of human rights. (Winter, 2005) 

The Psychology of Evil and the Politics of Fear 

Philip Zimbardo, internationally acclaimed Stanford Professor of Psychology and author of The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence (McGraw-Hill, 1991) and The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007) discussed how the “good go bad” in circumstances like Abu Ghraib. (Fall, 2004)

Most of us take comfort in the illusion that there is an impermeable boundary separating the evil (them) from the good (us). That view leaves us with less interest in understanding the motivations and circumstances that contributed to evil behavior. But in fact, the line between good and evil lies in the center of every human heart… We are not born with tendencies toward good or evil but with mental templates to do either, more gloriously than ever before, or more devastatingly than ever experienced before – as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, revealed. It is only through the recognition of our shared human condition that we can acknowledge vulnerability to situational forces… If we want to develop mechanisms for combating transformations of good people into evil perpetrators, it is essential to learn first the causal mechanisms underlying those behavior changes.

-- Philip Zimbardo, “The Psychology of Power: To the Person? To the Situation? To the System?” in Deborah L. Rhode (ed.), Moral Leadership: The Theory and Practice of Power, Judgment, and Policy (Jossey Bass, 2006).

Law and Human Rights

 

International Human Rights and Privatization

Laura Dickinson, University of Connecticut Professor of Law and one of the nation’s experts on privatization, discussed the legal and ethical implications of relying on private contractors in international conflicts such as the war in Iraq. (Spring, 2007)

Four Kinds of Truth: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Justice Albie Sachs of the South African Supreme Court and former leader of the nation’s anti-apartheid campaign surveyed the role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the ethical commitments of activists in promoting racial justice. (Winter, 2007)

Can Lawyers Produce the Rule of Law?
Yale Law Professor Robert Gordon discussed the American bar’s involvement in social justice and rule of law initiatives abroad, and their likely political, legal, and economic impact. (Spring, 2007) 

Judges as Politicians: Judicial Ethics and Campaign Finance

Does the role of money and endorsements in the election of state judges threaten ideals of impartiality and fairness? In a forum co-sponsored by the Gunther Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law Professors Deborah Rhode and Kathleen Sullivan joined former judges LaDoris Cordell, currently Special Counselor to the President at Stanford, and Roger Warren, currently the Chairman of the Justice at Stake Campaign and President Emeritus of the National Center for State Courts, to discuss ethical issues posed in judicial election campaigns. (Winter, 2007) 

Diamonds, Desire, and Bloodshed: Ethics and International Trade

Tom Zoellner, author of The Heartless Stone: A Journey through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire (St. Martin’s Press, 2006) described how the growing global market for diamonds has increased conflict in producing countries, and created new challenges for regulators seeking to make courtship rituals free of “blood diamonds.” (Fall, 2006) 

 [The Central African Republic’s] eighty thousand miners still managed to find the retail equivalent of $2.5 billion in gemstones in the sand every year. With shovels and sifts and sweat, they made the

Central African Republic the tenth biggest diamond-producing country in the world. And for all of it, their pay was miserly, their days long and hot, and their country so poor that two-thirds of the population live on an income of less than a dollar a day. According to the government, about 90 percent of the nation’s diamonds were found by “artisans” – a euphemism for hired labor crews from rural villages. The work is dirty and miserable. The mines usually go no deeper than five meters underground, but the soil is unstable and walls often collapse, killing miners. There are no statistics to show how many are killed in mine accidents each year, but nearly everybody in the fields has heard stories of people dying this way. For almost everyone who lives in this part of Africa, however, this is the only kind of work that results in anything other than sustenance wages. It is the only real dream in sight. 

-- Tom Zoellner, The Heartless Stone

What Does Lawyer Humor Tell Us about Legal Ethics?
Wisconsin Law Professor Marc Galanter, author of Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006) explored, through the lens of legal humor, the uneasy co-existence of society’s increased reliance on litigation and its anxiety about the “legalization” of society. (Fall, 2006) 

Terrorism, National Security, and Civil Liberties

Stanford Professors James Fearon (Political Science and the Center for International Security and Cooperation), Jennifer Martinez (law), Stephen Stedman (international policy studies), and Allen Weiner, (international law and diplomacy), discussed the national security and civil liberties issues raised by the Bush administration’s military policies and war on terror. (Fall, 2006)  

The Ethics of Surveillance
Chip Pitts, Visiting Law Lecturer and Chair of the Board, Amnesty International USA, outlined the risks to privacy and security posed by new surveillance technologies. (Fall, 2006)   

Legal Responses to Domestic Violence

Rosemary Hunter of GriffithUniversityLawSchool in Australia discussed her research on gender inequality, focusing on issues in domestic violence, access to legal services, and family law. (Spring, 2006) 

Historians and Tobacco Litigation

A mini-symposium co-sponsored by the Humanities Center and the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology addressed academic ethics in the context of the tobacco litigation. Allan Brandt (Harvard), Louis Kyriakoudes (University of Southern Mississippi), and Robert Proctor (Stanford) discussed the role of scholars who served as expert witnesses in the litigation, and the ethical implications of such testimony, including issues of peer review, objectivity, and conflicts of interest. (Winter, 2005) 

Historians who render expert advice to the tobacco industry are playing a dangerous game. The industry may not ask them to lie, but it may well ask them to confine their research to only such topics as will be useful in the industry’s defense… I am not suggesting that historians have deliberately misrepresented history; their usefulness to the industry lies more in what is not presented. They will never be asked to explore those areas of history that could show the industry in a disadvantageous light, and when asked on the stand what they might have to say about such topics (eg, the long record of claims of “no harms proven”), they usually respond that they have not researched that topic… I think it is remarkable that none of our leading journals of medical history—or history more generally—require disclosure of funding support for research or stakes in past or ongoing litigation. The American Medical Association in 1996 adopted an even stronger policy, urging scientific journals to reject for publication research funded by the tobacco industry. Is it time for historians to consider some of these options?

-- Robert Proctor, “Should Medical Historians Be Working for the Tobacco Industry?,” The Lancet, Vol. 363, April 2004.

National Security and Human Rights: Striking a Just Balance in the Global Environment

Paul Collier, Oxford University Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies, and former Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank, discussed ethical issues in promoting effective economic development and international security policies. (Spring, 2004) 

The Foundation of Human Rights

In a lecture co-sponsored by the Program in Ethics in Society, economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and of Philosophy at Harvard University, explored global challenges in promoting human rights (Spring, 2004). 

When Rights Collide: Journalistic and Legal Ethics in High Profile Trials
Gerald Uelmen, Santa ClaraLawSchool and defense lawyer in the O. J. Simpson case, together with Tony Marcano, Ombudsman at the Sacramento Bee and former New York Times Editor, discussed ethical issues for prosecutors, defense counsel, and reporters in high visibility cases. (Spring, 2004) 

The Ethics of File Sharing
Lawrence Lessig, internationally renowned Stanford Law Professor and founder of the Center on Internet and Society, joined Ethics Center Director Deborah Rhode to explore the ethical and regulatory issues raised by electronic peer-to-peer file sharing. In 2001, Lessig founded the nonprofit Creative Commons, which allows content creators to mark their works with varying degrees of freedom for use by others, and he continues to emphasize the need for an overhaul of copyright laws in light of new technologies. (Winter, 2004) 

The practice of peer-to-peer file sharing has reached a crossroads and has the potential to take off as an increasingly popular and vital method of sharing information. Or it could collapse under the weight of its own controversy as lawyers and politicians try to negotiate the intricacies of copyright protections and the legality of certain file-sharing networks… File-sharing technology is expanding in creative and intriguing ways that could allow an almost limitless ability to obtain and manipulate just about any kind of electronic content and then redistribute it. But that technology is threatened by the recording industry's stepped-up efforts to crack down on illegal file-sharing networks and individuals who engage in such practices, Lessig said. He said the recording industry is engaged in a war of prohibition with escalating penalties and has put too much emphasis on stigmatizing those who engage in illegal downloads as criminals... Lessig said copyright laws that were created more than 25 years ago­ – long before anyone had a sense of recent technological advances that allow mass manipulation and redistribution of online content – are in dire need of an overhaul. He didn't advocate doing away with copyright laws altogether, but he expressed support for loosening up the rules to allow for “private, noncommercial ventures.”

-- From the Stanford Report, March 17, 2004, by Ray Delgado.

Who’s To Blame: Abu Ghraib, Prisoners of War, and Personal Responsibility

Stanford Law Professors Helen Stacy and Jennifer Martinez were joined by Geoffrey Mohan of the Los Angeles Times in a forum that focused on human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and the need for more effective oversight structures. (Winter, 2004) 

 

Medical Ethics and Health Policy

End of Life Choices
Barbara Coombs Lee, Professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine and the President of Compassion in Dying Federation, was joined by Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely to outline the issues posed by physician-assisted suicide and other death-with-dignity initiatives. (Spring, 2007)

 Prisoner Abuse and Medical Ethics 
Minnesota Professor of Medicine and Bioethics Steven Miles discussed his widely acclaimed book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror (Random House, 2006). It documents the role of health professionals in military interrogations and analyzes the ethical challenges raised for medical associations and disciplinary boards. (Fall, 2006)

Children’s Health in International Context
Stanford Professor of Pediatrics Paul Wise discussed global inequalities in child health and the ethical as well as economic imperative to address them. As he noted, modest investments in prenatal care could result in dramatic improvements in quality of life and productivity. (Fall, 2006) 

Immigration and Community Health
Stanford Law Professor Jayashri Srikantiah and Medical School Professor Marilyn Winkleby joined medical students Dora Castenada and Erik Cabral for a panel discussion focusing on the effect of immigration reform proposals on the health care needs of undocumented residents (Spring, 2006). 

Hurricane Katrina and Health Care

Stanford Professors Samuel LeBaron (Family and Community Medicine), David Magnus (Director of the Center on Biomedical Ethics), Julie Parsonnet (Medicine and Health Research and Policy), and Paul Wise (Pediatrics and Child Health and Society) discussed the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the health-care system in New Orleans and the medical profession’s response in relief efforts. (Fall, 2005) 

The Ethics of Aging

Stanford Anthropology Professors Ronald Barrett and Clifford Barnett, Sociology Professor Donald Barr, and Medical School Professor Carol Winograd focused attention on the challenges raised by the rapidly increasing population of aging Americans, the socioeconomic effects of increased longevity, and difficulties in assessing treatment options for the elderly. (Spring, 2005) 

When Does Life End and Who Decides? The Case of Terri Schiavo 
Stanford Bioethics Center Director David Magnus, Ethics Center Director Deborah Rhode, and Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education Julie Parsonnet identified the legal, medical, and ethical dimensions of end of life decisions and examined the case of Terri Schiavo as it reflects on clinical practices in treatment of terminally ill individuals. (Spring, 2005)  

 

Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Finding Your True North: Leadership in the Twenty-First Century
William George, Harvard Business School Professor and former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, and co-author Peter Sims discussed the findings of their bestselling study of effective corporate leadership, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2007). (Spring, 2007)

Hewlett Packard as a Case Study: The Legal, Ethical, and Governance Dimensions
In a forum co-sponsored by the Rock Center for Corporate Governance, the Program in Law, Economics and Business, and the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, Law Professors Joseph Grundfest, Deborah Rhode, and Robert Weisberg addressed issues of criminal liability, corporate governance, and professional ethics in the HP pretexting scandal, in which investigators obtained personal information through fraudulent means. Topics included the ethical and legal implications of pretexting, the appropriate responses to boardroom leaks, and the accountability of individual directors and officers. (Fall, 2006) 

Corporate Social Responsibility in International Contexts

Philip H. Rudolph, a specialist in corporate social responsibility issues and partner with DC law firm Foley Hoag LLP, discussed challenges for global corporations in enforcing adequate health, safety, and environmental standards. (Winter, 2006) 

Sarbanes-Oxley: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly  

In a forum co-sponsored by the Rock Center for Corporate Governance and the National Law Journal, Stanford Law Professors Deborah Rhode and Joseph Grundfest, and Jordan Eth, Partner at Morrison Foerster, focused on ethical issues in corporate governance and the challenges for practitioners raised by the federal legislation codified as the Sarbanes-Oxley act. (Fall, 2005) 

The SEC wanted an objective standard [to assess liability for fraud]. Evidence that would cause a lawyer to reasonably believe a violation is occurring [would be sufficient]. That, from the public standpoint, would seem to me the most reasonable. Nearly all practicing lawyers thought that that was way, way too demanding. And they wanted a subjective-knowledge standard. Only if the lawyer knew that the violation was occurring[could he be liable]. So you’ve got this mishmash middle ground and it’s quite unclear exactly what it means. So I think the jury’s still out on how really bad the standard is, and there’s not a track record yet of any kind of compliance efforts, or even civil liability actions against lawyers, to know how this is really playing out.

-- Jordan Eth

Holy guacamole! The rules send the auditors out looking for processes that sit at the verge of a “remote likelihood” of something that is “more than inconsequential.” We’re talking about setting armies of auditors to work looking for things that have low probabilities of causing material events.

-- Joseph Grundfest

From the panel’s transcript as published by the National Law Journal, December 12, 2005. 

Leadership and Corporate Accountability: Educating MBAs for a New Era
Lynn Sharp Paine, author of Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance (McGraw-Hill, 2003) and leader of HarvardBusinessSchool’s ethics curriculum, addressed core issues in teaching and research on corporate social responsibility. She described HarvardBusinessSchool’s newly designed interdisciplinary curriculum that assists students to understand their interrelated ethical, legal, and economic responsibilities. (Fall, 2005)

The Market for Virtue
David Vogel, UC Berkeley’s Haas School Professor of Business, discussed current controversies in corporate ethics described in his influential book, The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility (Brookings Institution Press, 2006). Vogel sorted through the complexities and critiques of corporate social responsibility, and suggested a need for greater public regulation and consumer awareness of business conduct. (Fall, 2005)

Environmental Ethics

A Sustainable Global Environment
A workshop co-sponsored by the Woods Institute for the Environment featured Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute Co-Founder and CEO, and internationally prominent environmental experts, who discussed what a sustainable energy future might look like on a global scale, and what it will take to get there. (Spring, 2007) 

Ethical Challenges for Environmental Organizations

Frances Beineke, Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, discussed ethical challenges for environmental groups, such as how to balance competing intergenerational interests in resolving cost/safety tradeoffs, and how to partner with private corporations without “greenwashing” questionable practices. (Spring, 2007) 

Stanford Environmental Consortium

An interdisciplinary working group co-sponsored by the Woods Institute for the Environment and supported by the Hewlett Foundation brought together Stanford faculty from law, biology, engineering, earth sciences, psychology, and political science to discuss a research and policy agenda on key issues of environmental management. (Fall, 2005 and Spring, 2006)

 

Ethics in Engineering

Workshop on Teaching Engineering Ethics 
Stanford Professors Deborah Rhode and Robert McGinn led a workshop series on integrating ethical issues in the engineering core curriculum and introduced engineering faculty members to the Center’s online website of engineering ethics materials. (Fall, 2005)

Workshop on Ethical Issues in Engineering and Computer Science 

This workshop series addressed ethical issues in engineering, robotics, and human enhancement, as well as strategies for teaching ethical issues as part of the core curricula. Speakers included Stanford Professors of Computer Science Oussama Khatib, Eric Roberts, and Terry Winograd; Engineering Professors Tom Byers, Richard Dasher, Robert McGinn, Leonard Ortolano, and Sheri Sheppard; and Law Professor Deborah Rhode. (2004-05) 

 

Gender Equity

The 51% Minority
In a program co-sponsored by the Women of Stanford Law, attorney Lis Wiehl, former federal prosecutor, Fox News radio co-host and legal analyst, and author of The 51% Minority: How Women Still Are Not Equal and What You Can Do About It (Ballantine Books, 2007), surveyed persistent forms of gender discrimination and outlined the individual and policy responses that they require. (Spring, 2007)

Keeping Women on the Path to Success 
A panel co-sponsored by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research and the Center on Leadership, Development and Research of the Graduate School of Business featured Sylvia Ann Hewlett, President of the Center for Work-Life Policy and Director of the Gender and Policy Program at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. Hewlett, author of the widely circulated study “On Ramps and Off Ramps,” presented her research on the exclusion of qualified women and minorities from leadership positions. In discussing best strategies for keeping women on leadership tracks, Hewlett was joined by a panel of Bay Area women executives that included DeAnne Aguirre, Senior Vice President and Managing Partner in Booz Allen Hamilton’s San Francisco office; Noni Allwood, Senior Director of Worldwide Diversity and Inclusion at Cisco Systems; and Rosalind Hudnell, Director of Corporate Diversity for Intel Corporation. (Fall, 2006) 

What are the implications for corporate America? One thing at least seems clear: Employers can no longer pretend that treating women as “men in skirts” will fix their retention problems. Like it or not, large numbers of highly qualified, committed women need to take time out. The trick is to help them maintain connections that will allow them to come back from that time without being marginalized for the rest of their careers.

-- Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Caroline Buck Luce, “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,” Harvard Business Review, March 2005 Issue.

Women Mean Business
Kara Helander, Catalyst Vice President of the Western Region, shared insights from the organization’s recent research findings on barriers facing women in corporate management and strategies to address them. (Fall, 2006)  

Gender and Politics

In collaboration with the Stanford Faculty Women’s Forum, the Ethics Center hosted Patricia Ireland, former President of the National Organization for Women, who discussed challenges for women seeking to exercise political power. (Fall 2005) 

The Opt Out Revolution and Gender Equity in the Workplace

A panel on the opt out revolution was moderated by the Ethics Center’s Director and Law Professor Deborah Rhode. The panelists were Martha Burk, Chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations and author of The Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It (Scribner, 2005); and attorney Patricia Gillette, Co-Chair of Labor and Employment Practice Group at Heller Ehrman. The panelists focused on reasons why talented women are opting out of paid work and what gender equity strategies might prevent it. (Spring, 2005)

 

Ethics in Athletics

Work, Family, Excellence, and the Female Coach
With co-sponsorship from the Bay Area Women’s Sports Initiative and Stanford Athletics, the EthicsCenter hosted a day-long symposium on the issues facing professional women in collegiate athletics. Researchers, coaches, administrators, and leaders of women’s sports organizations, addressed the challenges in realizing Title IX’s commitment to gender equity. (Spring, 2006) 

Title IX and Gender Equity in Athletics
Leading Stanford coaches Dena Evans (former Track and Field Coach), Dick Gould (Men’s Tennis), Kerry McCoy (Men’s Wrestling) and Tara VanDerveer (Women’s Basketball) offered compelling perspectives on the role of Title IX legislation and the challenges of achieving gender equity in college sports. (Winter, 2006)

In essence, Title IX requires that institutions either fund male and female athletic programs in proportion to their male/female student body enrollments, or provide opportunities that accommodate the interests and abilities of the disadvantaged sex. The question is whether there is any alternative to reach that result in a context of limited resources without reducing men’s opportunities. For example, might there be some “excess” in the best-funded male programs? Is it fair, asked VanDerveer, for the men's basketball team to charter flights to its away games while her players fly steerage on budget carriers? Is it fair, Gould countered, for the women's tennis team to have more scholarships than the men's, even though more men have the interest and ability to play competitively? Should football remain in the equation for purposes of measuring gender equity, or would it be fairer to require proportionality in sport-by-sport expenditures?

-- Deborah L. Rhode, “Vantage Point: Gender Equity in Sports – More Candid Dialogue Needed,” Stanford Report, March 1, 2006.

Ethics in Sports
This event, co-sponsored by the Program in Ethics in Society and the Office of Religious Life, brought together Ted Leland, former Stanford Athletics Director, Ramón Saldivar, former Faculty Academic Representative to the NCAA, and Joanne Sanders, Associate Dean for Religious Life and former Collegiate Tennis Coach. The three well-known campus leaders offered their views on a variety of ethical issues involving college athletics, including academic performance of student-athletes, admissions standards, drug-testing, and gender equity. (Fall, 2005)