- Monday, November 23, 2009
- 8:45 PM (PST)
2007-08 Ethics Center's Public Events
Fall 2007
Surgical Volunteerism: My Experience in Conflict Zones in Africa
October 18, 2007
Sherry Wren, MD, Professor of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine, reflected on her recent missions to war-torn regions of Africa on behalf of Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières). Working with very limited resources and extremely challenging conditions in an urban area of Cote d'Ivoire as well as in a more rural setting in the country of Chad, Dr. Wren related her efforts to make an impact in an environment completely different from the first world medical conditions in which she had been trained.
Dr. Wren encouraged the audience of medical students, physicians, and undergraduate students to seek ways in which they can integrate public service into their professional lives, and offered strategies by which medical schools and health providers can promote more effective care through training, education, and sabbatical leaves for volunteer activity.
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The Art and Ethics of the Internal Investigation
October 30, 2007
Presented by the Stanford Center on Ethics and the Rock Center for Corporate Governance
Participants:
Francis S. Currie, Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell;
Joseph A. Grundfest, William A. Franke Professor of Law and Business and Co-Director, Rock Center for Corporate Governance;
Michael Holston, Executive Vice-President and General Counsel, Hewlett Packard;
Adam A. Reeves, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Department of Justice, Northern District of California;
Deborah L. Rhode, Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and Director, Center on Ethics.This panel explored a series of difficult legal, ethical, and strategic issues that commonly arise in connection with the conduct of internal investigations of large publicly traded corporations, including questions of privilege, independence, cooperation with governmental authorities, and warnings to employees subject to interview. The panel also addressed pragmatic considerations such as techniques for identifying circumstances in which it may be unnecessary to retain outside counsel, responsible strategies for controlling the cost of these investigations, and methods for addressing differences of opinion regarding the implications of an inquiry’s findings.
To download the audio and video streaming of this event, please click here.
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California Energy and Climate: Making a Difference in Real Time
October 31, 2007
Speaking to Stanford energy community, NRDC Co-Director of Energy Program Ralph Cavanagh described the implementation of the landmark California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, by which California seeks to mitigate the risks of global warming and to become the home of the fast-growing clean technology industry. Cavanagh focused on Assembly Bill 32 (also known as AB 32), the most ambitious global warming solutions law in the nation that makes California the first state to firmly limit statewide emissions. The law commits California to reduce its global warming pollution emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020, or nearly 30 percent below forecasted levels. He also discussed the legislation that puts AB 32 into action, namely, the landmark Senate Bill 1368 (also known as SB 1368), which establishes the first minimum emissions standard in the world for any new long-term utility investments in baseload power plants.
To read a report on California's solutions to global warming, please click here.
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The Devil Came on Horseback: Film and Discussion on the Crisis in Darfur
In honor of International Human Rights Day, the Ethics Center joined with Amnesty International Palo Alto and San Jose Local Chapters for a special screening of Ricki Stern's and Anne Sundberg’s acclaimed documentary “The Devil Came on Horseback” that exposes the genocide raging in Darfur, Sudan as seen through the eyes of a former U.S. marine who returns home to make the story public. The film was followed by a discussion led by Stanford Law Professor and Director of the Ethics Center Deborah L. Rhode.
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Doping in Sports: The State of Play
January 17, 2008
A panel discussion on both long standing ethical questions and current controversies surrounding athletics and performance enhancing drugs. This event was co-sponsored by the Barbara and Bowen McCoy Program in Ethics in Society and the Department of Athletics.
Carl Djerassi, Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, Stanford University;
Tara Kirk (Stanford '04, MS '05), 2004 Olympic Silver Medalist, swimming;
Dan Pfaff, Coach of 33 track & field Olympians;
David Shaw (Stanford '95), Offensive Coordinator, Stanford Football, and Former NFL Assistant Coach;
Lance Williams, Investigative Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle, and Co-Author of the book Game of Shadows.From the Stanford Report, January 23, by Shelby Martin:
[...] The insights provided by the cross-section of panelists transported those in the audience on to the field. Shaw, a former assistant coach in the National Football League, described how it felt to be surrounded by super-human athletes. Shaw said he suspected that some of those über-athletes were using performance-enhancing drugs, although broaching the topic at the time might have gotten him fired. Shaw said that, sometimes, he experienced moments of panic as players on his team lined up to be tested. "I would say, 'Oh my god, we need that guy—I hope he doesn't test positive.'"
Meanwhile, Kirk, who won a silver medal in the 2004 Olympic Games, described what it feels like when you're the one under investigation. "It's easy to accuse someone," Kirk said, adding that once an athlete's name is smeared, "no one reads the retraction."
Kirk also stressed that athletes can excel without steroids—and Djerassi agreed. A steroid chemist for half a century, Djerassi argued for the need to preserve the integrity of athletics. "There will always be new drugs, but there will also be new detection methods," said Djerassi, adding that the solution lies in more rigorous testing.
His thought addressed the question Rhode asked at the outset: Did the panelists think it was possible to manage the race between drug making and drug testing—and how to achieve a level playing field in athletics?
Pfaff said he thinks one way to end doping in athletics is for governing bodies to devote more resources to the effort: "The NFL gave just a few million dollars—they spend that much on a weekend conference."
To read the full Stanford Report article covering this event, please click here.
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Identity Politics and the Presidential Election
February 4, 2008
On February 4, 2008, in anticipation of a major decision-making day on Super Tuesday, Stanford's Center on Ethics, together with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Feminist Studies Program, and African and African-American Studies Program co-hosted a panel discussion entitled “Identity Politics and the Presidential Election.” The panel featured Stanford professors Clayborne Carson, Michele Elam, Paula Moya, and Deborah Rhode, who spoke to a large audience of faculty, students, and community members on the ways in which gender, race, religion, and class have impacted the 2008 presidential campaigns and debates.
“Never in American history have race and gender played such a prominent role,” said Law Professor and Director of the Center on Ethics Deborah Rhode in her opening remarks. English Professor Paula Moya argued that the debate about race, gender, and other identity aspects of the presidential hopefuls “says a lot more about us as a nation, rather than about the candidates.” The candidates or their campaigns are not, for the most part, the first ones to invoke identity politics components such as race or gender, she said. Rather, these issues have been invoked by the media that is concerned “on behalf of the people” about whether Hillary Clinton would be a strong enough Commander in chief, or Barack Obama a president who can represent everyone equally. “Identity,” Moya added, “is a concrete symbol of ongoing, changing social relations. It is not something that we are or that we have, but rather it is what we do as members of a complex society in which struggles for power are ongoing.”
History Professor Clayborne Carson, an expert on Martin Luther King Jr., said that race and racial fears have always been part of America's political culture and national elections: “race has been the elephant in the room, whether mentioned or not, during every presidential election in American history.” He noted that “we shouldn't assume that simply discussing ‘the race of Obama' or ‘Hillary's gender' leads us anywhere closer to revealing the impact of these two issues on our society and on American politics.” Carson concluded his remarks by saying: “I hope that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton can be the candidate that will at last get us to a new era of discussion about race and gender.”
In her analysis of mixed race, English Professor Michele Elam observed that Senator Obama, born to a black Kenyan father and a white American mother, faces a difficult balancing act and a “question of authenticity:” while many people are excited about his biracial, mixed identity that seems to transcend boundaries, many others have been anxious about his authenticity, and so he has been criticized by some for not being “black enough” and for “being too black” by others.
“He has not brought up his blackness, except as a response,” Moya added. “He has also invoked his white racial heritage. There's a very clear message, saying, ‘I'm not just black. I have Midwestern values.' Now what are Midwestern values? It's a code word for white values.”
Elam also noted the balancing act that the media faces: Obama captures and excites many younger voters and the media makes frequent references to his youth and sex appeal, but at the same time “the media is very cautious here, for its portrayal of black men and women has always been hypersexual.”
Putting the presidential campaigns in terms of “gender vs. race,” the panelists all agreed, equals portraying a complex phenomenon in an all too monolithic way. After all, as Moya remarked, both Hillary Clinton's race and Barack Obama's gender are as equally as unremarkable to us, and we have yet to see news articles and analyses of these identity aspects of the candidates.
To read the Stanford Daily's report on this event, please click here.
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The Ethics of Social Networking
February 14, 2008
Has online privacy become an oxymoron, or are we bound to develop a new privacy concept that prioritizes nuanced control of personal information? Is this new concept tenable? What are the benefits and risks of the standardization of social networking? What impact does social networking technology have on interpersonal virtues? Are we witnessing the flattening of social landscape by online networks? And can one be a college student without Facebook?
The Stanford Center on Ethics and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society co-hosted a discussion of a range of ethical and social concerns generated by the evolving culture of social networking, particularly by Internet users' habits and Web 2.0 sites' practices and strategies.
Moderator:
Dean Eckles, Research Scientist and Designer at Nokia Research Center.Panelists:
Dr. BJ Fogg, Director of Research and Design at Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, and lecturer at the Computer Science Dept;
Jia Shen, Co-Founder and CTO of RockYou;
Shannon Vallor, Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University.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 "Center on Ethics".
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Distinguished Practitioner Speaker Series
February 19, 2008
Kate Kendell, Esq.
Executive Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights
Co-sponsored by the Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest LawKate Kendell is Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a progressive, feminist, multicultural legal center devoted to advancing the rights and safety of lesbians and their families. Under her leadership, NCLR's budget, programs and national impact have expanded significantly, and lesbian family issues have taken center stage in the national discussion of civil rights and justice. Ms. Kendell will discuss her distinguished career, share advice about how to thrive as a public interest lawyer, and advise students on the steps to take in that direction.
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Women of Color in the Legal Profession
March 19, 2008
This panel of four outstanding legal professionals examined their experiences in widely varying career paths as attorneys.
Panelists:
Hon. LaDoris H. Cordell, Antioch '71, Stanford JD '74 (moderator)
Special Counselor to the President, Stanford University
First African-American Judge in Santa Clara County
Palo Alto City Council MemberAndrea Evans, Stanford '91, Harvard JD '94
Former criminal defense litigator, Steptoe & Johnson LLP, Keker & Van Nest LLP
Regional Director, Savvysource.comKim Rivera, Duke '91, Harvard JD '94
Vice President & Associate General Counsel, Clorox CompanyCecillia Wang, UC Berkeley '92, Yale JD '95
Senior Staff Attorney, Immigrants' Rights Project, ACLU
Former Clerk for Supreme Court Justice Henry BlackmunThe Event was co-sponsored by Women of Stanford Law.
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Spring 2008
Women on Board: How Women Are Gaining Ground in Corporate GovernanceApril 7, 2008
While the press has frequently noted that CEOs of large companies are mostly men, what about their boards of directors? Recent research has suggested that multiple women serving on a corporate board can be tied to better financial performance among the Fortune 500. What makes women strong contributors to corporate boards and has this changed how companies view gender balance in their organizational leadership?
This forum examined the impact that women are having in the board room of corporations, as well as how professional women in their early and mid-career can prepare themselves for roles as corporate directors.
GSB faculty member, Evelyn Williams, moderated a panel of board members and board advisors, among them two former CEOs of public companies.
PANELISTS:
Elizabeth Davila, Consultant and Former Chairman and CEO of VISX, Inc. Serves on the boards of Accuray, Inc. and Nugen, Inc.
Patti Hart, Former Chairman and CEO of Pinnacle Systems and Excite@Home. Serves on the boards of Korn Ferry International, Spansion Inc., Lin TV Corp. and International Game Technology, and previously served on the boards of Plantronics Inc., Vantive Corp., Earthlink, and Premisys Corp.
John Thompson, Vice Chairman of Heidrick & Struggles
Recognized as one of the most respected CEO and Board recruiters in the nation.Debra Zumwalt, Vice President and General Counsel for Stanford University
Formerly a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop LLP, managing partner of the Silicon Valley office and member of the firm's governing board.Sponsored by: GSB Center for Leadership, Development and Research; Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance; Stanford Center on Ethics; GSB Women in Management; Women's Initiative Network.
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Ethical Issues in the Design of Entrepreneurial Ventures in the Developing World
May 14, 12pm
Jim Patell, Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management, Stanford's Graduate School of Business
Todd Johnson, Founding partner of the Northern California corporate legal practice of Jones DayNow in its fifth year, “Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability” is a graduate-level course taught in Stanford's d-school (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design). It is an intensive, two-quarter, hands-on, project course in which graduate students apply design, engineering, and business skills to create comprehensive solutions for challenges faced by the world's poorest families. Multi-disciplinary teams collaboratively design product prototypes, implementation plans, and user experiences for entrepreneurial ventures in developing countries. Students teams have developed both industrial products (e.g., water pumps, irrigation systems, solar lights, food processing equipment), and medical products (neo-natal incubators, an asthma medication device), some of which already are being distributed by partner organizations around the world, including organizations founded by course alumni. Professor James Patell and Mr. Todd Johnson, legal counsel to the course, discussed ethical issues they have encountered in this process, such as role of intellectual property, the question of what might constitute unhealthy dependence, and the interaction between the course and the governments of the host countries.
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Women as Leaders: Negotiating the Labyrinth
May 15, 12pm
In many nations, women have gained considerable access to leadership roles and are increasingly praised for having excellent leadership skills. In fact, women, more than men, manifest leadership styles associated with effective performance as a leader. Nevertheless, more people prefer male than female bosses, and research has demonstrated that women can still face impediments to attaining leadership roles and barriers to success as occupants of these roles. This mix of women's apparent advantages and disadvantages reflects progress toward gender equality as well as the lack of attainment of this goal. Alice Eagly, James Padilla Chair of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, addressed these and other current issues related with women and leadership based on her recent co-authored book, Through the Labyrinth: the truth about how women become leaders (Harvard Business School Press, 2007).
This event was co-sponsored by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research and the Stanford Faculty Women's Forum.
