Ethics@Noon
On Fridays, from noon to one o'clock Ethics in
Society sponsors a series of weekly conversations, led by invited
faculty members and students on topics of their own choosing.
These lectures are intended for the Bay Area community, faculty,
staff, graduate and undergraduate students. Ethics at noon is
a brown-bag forum whose purpose is to provide an informal and
ongoing forum for discussion of ethical issues, particularly
as they relate to current events at the local, national, or
international level.
If you are interested in receiving more information about Ethics@Noon
subscribe to the ethics@noon email list by emailing
(joanberry@stanford.edu).
Fall 2007
October 5
Peter Stone, Political Science
"Why Not Toss a Coin? Lotteries and Justice"
There are many situations in which one can imagine employing a lottery to make a decision. Many of these situations
involve questions of distributive justice. There are people who have equally valid claims on a good, and not enough
good to go around. Justice requires the use of some sort of random procedure, such as a coin toss, to "break the tie."
The reason for this is that justice demands impartiality, which requires that no one be discriminated against for bad
reasons. Lotteries favor some people over others for no reason, and this is often the only way to avoid bad reasons.
The lottery thus provides the sanitizing effects of ignorance. In principle, all valid arguments for the use of a lottery
have a similar form. When deciding whether or not to use a lottery in a particular situation, the difficult question is not
coming up with reasons for or against its use; it is deciding whether those reasons are valid in that situation.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/polisci/faculty/stone.html
October 12
Michelle Mello, Ethics in Society alumni, currently Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management
"Obesity and Public Policy"
Two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Although 85% of the American public believes that obesity is an "epidemic,"
there is great controversy over what role the government, public policy, and the law should play in addressing the problem. This
session will discuss philosophical and economic justifications for treating obesity as a public health problem meriting
government intervention and explore possible legal and policy solutions.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/michelle-mello/
October 19
No Ethics@noon.
October 26 - Bldg 110, 1st floor seminar room
Paul Ehrlich, Biological Sciences
"Environmental Ethics and Should Rummy Be Invited to Campus?"
Professor Ehrlich will point out the vast array of ethical issues raised by the deepening environmental crisis.
He will discuss topics ranging from population and consumption control, resource wars, the decay of the epidemiological
environment and antibiotic use, economic equity, choice of academic research topics, governance of a global complex
adaptive system, and freedom of speech.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/CCB/Staff/Ehrlich.html
November 2 - Bldg 110, 1st floor seminar room
Bill Koski, Stanford Law
"Equity vs. Adequacy: The State and the Distribution of K-12 Educational Opportunities"
In the wake of recent school finance litigation and in response
to demands for greater accountability for student outcomes,
many states have begun to develop policies and educational finance
mechanisms that will ensure that all children receive an "adequate"
education. Though prompted by pragmatic political concerns and
frequently touted as creating greater equality of educational
opportunity, such adequacy-oriented reforms may not ensure educational
equity and may not fulfill the obligation of the state to provide
equality of educational opportunity. This discussion considers
the purposes of education both as a public good from which all
derive benefit and a private good from which its possessor derives
benefit. This analysis suggests that the state’s interest in
providing education as a public good to ensure social cohesion,
a vibrant economy, and a civic-minded populace would require
that all receive an adequate education and that an equal education
may indeed be inefficient. On the other hand, given that education
is also a private good with strong positional and competitive
aspects, one might argue that the state has an obligation to
ensure that education is provided in such a manner to ensure
equality and fairness in competitions for postsecondary admissions
and the labor market. This real tension between adequacy and
equity from the state’s perspective will be the focus of the
conversation.
http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/36/William%20Koski/
November 9 - Bldg 110, 1st floor seminar room
Philip Pizzo, Dean of the Medical School
"The Personal and Professional Ethics of Physicians: Engaging the Public Trust"
http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/Philip_Pizzo/
November 30 - Bldg 110, 1st floor seminar room
Monica McDermott, Sociology
"Unstable Hierarchies: Race, Class and Immigration to the Southeastern US"
During the last 15 years, the Southeastern US has received large
numbers of Mexican immigrants, a development that is challenging
traditional understandings of race and racial hierarchies. In
order to study the effects of this demographic shift, I spent
a year conducting covert participant observation research in
the Carolinas and Georgia, living and working among local residents
to assess their attitudes towards the immigrant newcomers.
http://home.comcast.net/~monica.mcdermott/default.htm
Winter 2008
All talks given in Bldg 110, 1st floor seminar room.
January 18, 2008
Paul Wise, School of Medicine/Health Research and Policy
"Discovery and Justice: The Impact of Medical Innovation on Social Disparities in Health"
The session will address the question of whether medical discovery is truly relevant to social
differences in health outcomes. Evidence from the United States and from around the world will
be used to explore this issue and identify the mechanisms by which engines of innovation such as
Stanford are influencing the health of different social groups. In this manner, the presentation will
outline how medical discovery speaks to questions of social justice and the requirements for researchers
and public policy to ensure greater equity in health outcomes during a period of unprecedented medical innovation.
http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/Paul_Wise/
January 25, 2008
Christine Min Wotipka, Education/Sociology
"Beyond Female Access to Education: A Feminist Cross-National Perspective"
Women now comprise over half of those enrolled in higher education in many countries around the world, including the
United States. American girls are out-performing their male counterparts to such a degree that many are calling for
ways to address the crisis in boy’s education. Female participation in education in developing countries, likewise,
has grown so much that what matters more is the level of development of one’s country rather than one’s gender in
determining the likelihood of being enrolled in primary and secondary school.
With much of the attention on access in education, what is being missed by our inattention to experience in and
opportunities from education for girls and women? What is our responsibility as educators and as a society when
women experience discrimination and some would say “hostile environments” when they do enter male-dominated fields
of study or work? Or when women can still expect to only make 80 cents for every dollar men earn? What does the
future hold when advocacy has evaporated from many campuses and college students today resist being called feminists?
http://www.stanford.edu/~cwotipka
February 1, 2008
Insoo Hyun, Ethics in Society alumni, currently Case Western Reserve Dept of Bioethics
"What You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About the Ethics of Stem Cell Research."
Much of the ethical discourse on human stem cell research has
centered around the moral status of early human embryos. As
this debate rages on, however, human stem cell research has
been proceeding vigorously around the world in the hopes of
generating clinical applications of stem-cell-based therapies.
This march toward the clinic has raised many new important ethical
issues which tend to get overshadowed by the attention drawn
to the moral status debate. The purpose of this presentation
is to provide an overview of some of these emerging ethical
issues and the ethical implications of recent developments in
stem cell research.
http://www.case.edu/med/bioethics/ixh14.htm
February 8, 2008
Stephen Schneider, Woods Institute / Biological Sciences
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/
February 22, 2008
Martha Crenshaw, Professor of Political Science/Senior Fellow at CISAC and FSI
"Ethics and Counterterrorism"
http://fsi.stanford.edu/people/marthacrenshaw/
Feb 29, 2008
Josh Cohen, Political Science/Philosophy/Law
"What Kant Learned From Rousseau"
http://politicalscience.stanford.edu/faculty/cohen.html
March 7, 2008
Andrew Cantor and his team from Stanford's GSB, winners of the Bank of America Low Income Housing Challenge.
"Developing Affordable Housing: Ethical Issues and Other Challenges"
The challenges of designing, financing and developing affordable housing are many and complex. As participants in the 2007 Bank
of America Low Income Housing Challenge (a real estate case competition), our team set out to create an innovative, sustainable
and viable proposal for an affordable housing development in San Francisco. Come hear about the challenges we encountered along
the way, ranging from NIMBYism and local politics to zoning and land use considerations.
Housing Design Earns Victory
Spring 2008
April 11, 2008
POSTPONED UNTIL FALL Chris Scott, School of Medicine - Biomedical Ethics
April 18, 2008
Meg Caldwell, California Coastal Commission / Stanford Law
"Ethics at High Tide: Life on the California Coastal Commission"
The combined forces of multi-million dollar properties and projects, high-roller commissioners, local politics,
and a statewide mandate to protect California's coastal resources and the public's access to the shoreline often create
an ethical rip tide. What motivates commissioners to draw lines in the sand on key ethical choices? And where do
those lines get drawn?
http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/10/Margaret%20%22Meg%22%20Caldwell/
April 25, 2008
Kara Dansky, Law School
"Ethics and the Politics of Incarceration in California"
After 158 years of statehood, California finds itself in a precarious position with respect to its system of punishing
criminal offenders its prisons are dangerously and unconstitutionally overcrowded, its recidivism rates are extraordinarily
high, its corrections budget is enormous, and its sentencing system is incoherent. Many intelligent and competent people are
working to alleviate this predicament and have proposed several remedies to the problems listed above. What is missing, however,
is a careful review of California’s approach to punishment over the centuries. When one traces California's experience with
punishment, a few interesting themes emerge. The most important theme is that California has always incarcerated more people
than its correctional apparatus can handle put simply, California got itself into a prison overcrowding crisis in the 1850s
and it has been trying to deal with it ever since.
The second major theme to emerge is the fact that California has never engaged in a serious and genuine examination of
why and how it chooses to deal with people who violate the criminal laws. California’s punishment system has never been,
and is not now, guided by any particular principle or philosophy.
The third and final theme to emerge is that throughout California’s history, there has existed a tug of war between the
legislative and executive branches of government over who is responsible for reducing excessive sentences and alleviating
overcrowding, with each branch hoping another will win. Many of California’s lawmakers have believed that the sentencing system
in place at the time was unfair, that punishments imposed have been unjustly disparate and often excessive, and that an over-reliance
on incarceration is unwise as a matter of public policy. Responsibility for dealing with this problem, however, has been a bit
of a political hot potato. California has no choice but to alleviate prison overcrowding, and its options for doing so in
the long term are dwindling.
One possible approach and the one that California might decide is necessary to protect public safety is to adopt a policy of
building more prisons indefinitely. Another option is to decrease the number of people going to prison and the amount of time they
spend there by adopting a policy of reducing our reliance on incarceration as an instrument of punishment. The state can take either
of these approaches, or it can take both simultaneously. If California is to make sensible choices about how to alleviate its
prison-overcrowding problem, it has to do the hard work of weighing the alternatives.
http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/151/
May 2, 2008
No talk is currently scheduled.
May 9, 2008
Seema Jayachandran, Economics
"Loan Sanctions: A New Tool for Diplomacy?"
Many developing countries are carrying debt that was incurred by rulers who borrowed without the people's consent and used
the funds either to repress the people or for personal gain. A new approach is warranted to prevent dictators from running
up "odious debts" looting their countries, and passing on their debts to the population.
As it stands now, countries repay debt even if it is "odious" because, if they failed to do so, their assets abroad could
be seized and their reputations would be tarnished, making it more difficult for them to borrow again or attract foreign
investment. Suppose instead that the major powers imposed a "loan sanction" on an illegitimate government. Concretely,
governments could institute legal changes that prevent seizure of a country's assets for non-repayment of debt if the debt
was incurred after the sanction was imposed. They also could commit to lending to successor governments that repudiate odious
debt inherited from a predecessor; that is, they could encourage repudiation of odious debt. These steps would reduce
creditors' incentive to extend loans to sanctioned regimes, and the loan sanction would be self-enforcing, unlike most
existing economic sanctions, which are difficult to enforce.
However, assessments made after loans are issued would be subject to bias if the deciding body valued the welfare of
debtor countries over the welfare of their creditors, or vice versa. Restricting loan sanctions to cover only future
lending would help avoid this problem.
http://www.stanford.edu/~jayachan/index.html
May 16, 2008
Avia Pasternak, post-doctoral fellow in the Program in Ethics in Society and the Program on Global Justice
"Sanctioning Democracies: Should International Economic Sanctions Be Imposed Against Unjust Liberal Democracies?"
In this talk Pasternak will discuss the legitimacy and necessity of imposing international economic sanctions on liberal
emocracies which violate democratic norms. She will examine the problem from a 'nationalist' point of view; a view which
questions both the right and the obligations of states to get involved in each other's internal affairs. She rejects the
nationalist objection to sanctions, by arguing that the special relations that often develop between democracies in the
world give them an additional right, and an obligation, to interfere when one of them behaves unjustly.
http://avia.pasternak.googlepages.com/
May 23
Bill Barnett, Graduate School of Business
“Ideological Competition in the U.S. Environmental Movement”
https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/facultybios/biomain.asp?id=03698206
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Information on Past Ethics@Noon Speakers
2006-2007 Ethics@Noon
speakers
2005-2006 Ethics@Noon
speakers
2004-2005 Ethics@Noon
speakers
