Programs and Events at the Mudd Center

The layered and productive relationships of ethics, medicine, and narrative are at the heart of this year's examination of the four pillars of western medical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. With an emphasis on narrative and testimony, the series will offer a multidisciplinary inquiry-from the fields of anthropology, art, ethics, law, medicine, and religion-into poignant questions and dilemmas related to medical research, care, and access. For instance, what happens when the harms of a medical experiment are not conveyed to its subjects? What does it mean to die with dignity? What are the conflicting social values and personal beliefs around such a practice? Why do specific diseases disproportionately affect indigenous populations in the Americas? Who has the moral responsibility to respond to such endemic disease and how? Is there a social obligation to provide healthcare to all? These questions and others bear directly on how we conceive of notions of autonomy, beneficence, non-harm, and justice, which in turn affect how we live and die.

Design thinking shapes our experiences in fundamental ways, even when it is essentially invisible to us. The Ethics of Design series will investigate the roles and processes of design with respect to products, programs, technologies, and systems. We will consider how design thinking might address modern ethical dilemmas that we collectively face and what methodologies might allow professionals across disciplines to meaningfully assess the ethical contexts and implications of their work.

How should we think about our responsibilities to care for ourselves, for people that we know and love, and for others whom we don't know, disagree with, or have been harmed by? If we aspire to practice beneficence within our personal, public, and professional lives, how can we translate these values into actions? The Mudd Center’s 2022-23 program will feature public lectures addressing concepts of beneficence as well as an interactive series of events - CareLabs – through which we will explore the practice of care.

We have shared a year in which rhythms of our daily lives were deconstructed. What has this experience helped us to understand about our values and priorities? What new perspectives has the past year offered regarding the kind of world we want to live in? How will we use these insights to craft our lives, moving forward?

As the COVID-19 pandemic works its way across the globe, few if any nations are immune from unprecedented threats to health and economic stability. One commentator posits that the crisis is forcing us to “rethink how the world works together.” And other daunting questions arise: What ethical, political, and economic questions about the international world order were being framed before the pandemic, and have those questions changed in nature or become all the more important? In 2020-21, the Mudd Center for Ethics and the Center for International Education will collaborate on a vital series exploring the nature of ethical responsibilities in international relations pre- and post-pandemic, the moral consequences of various approaches to foreign policy, and the potential replacements for the post-World War II liberal international order. Speakers from different perspectives and disciplines will probe the implications of the crisis for public health, the global economy, and continuing concerns over climate change and food shortages. We hope to prompt serious discussion of these and other issues that appear to have put “global ethics” at the top of the current policy agenda.

Technological change is everywhere, sparking basic questions: Where are these changes taking us? What values should inform society's choices? In 2019-2020, the Mudd Center will engage a host of questions about "the ethics of technology." How should we think about developments in CRISPR technologies for editing human DNA, what ethical guidelines should apply, and what vision of humanity should the guidelines reflect? In the realm of robotics and artificial intelligence, what ethical considerations should inform the practices of designers, builders, and users? As governments and businesses increasingly use digital decision-making systems, what duties arise to prevent unfair treatment of citizens? As surveillance technologies become ever more pervasive and effective, how should privacy be understood, and what rules should protect it from invasion by the state or private entities? Should the practices of big tech companies - including unprecedented gathering and selling of information about individuals - be regulated, and if so, how? What benefits and risks are associated with Big Data algorithms, and how can the technological revolution be harnessed to contribute to the public good? The aim of this year's series is to explore these and related questions.

What is, and is not, a part of our “identity”? Can we choose our identities, or are our identities given to, or imposed upon, us? How do our identities constrain our freedom, and how do they enhance it? What role (if any) should our racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, biological, national, religious, cultural, and/or professional identities play in our individual and collective decision-making? Can our identities generate ethical obligations for us? What should we do when our identities come into conflict? Should the government play a role in fostering or supporting the development of (particular) identities? The aim of this year’s series is to explore these and related questions about “the ethics of identity.”

Equality is an ideal that is widely embraced yet deeply contested. What does, or should, it mean to treat one another as “equals” in moral, social, or political life? Is there a tension between respect for individual differences and equality of treatment? Do groups or cultures, as well as individuals, have a claim to be treated equally? What happens if formal equality and substantive equality conflict? What is the relation between equality and justice? The aim of this year’s series is to explore these and related questions about “equality and difference.”

Our economic life raises a number of important ethical questions: What commodities should (and should not) be exchanged in the market? What is the relationship between a thing’s price and its value? Is voluntary exchange always just? What are the moral obligations of producers and consumers? What, if anything, is owed to those who lose out in market competition? Are corporations moral agents? How does the operation of the market impact behavior and character, and is this a good or bad thing? The purpose of this year’s theme is to examine these and other issues relating to “Markets and Morals.”

In a world marked by increasing globalization, transnational migration, and political, religious, and identity-based conflict, how should we understand the concept of "citizenship," and what role should this concept play in our thinking about questions of political membership and civic responsibility? Should our central understanding of citizenship remain state-based, or should we adopt more global or cosmopolitan conceptions of citizenship? What are the virtues that define, or ought to define, the good citizen? The purpose of this year’s theme is to examine various issues surrounding "the ethics of citizenship."

Fifty years after the landmark passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the United States is still a country marked by pervasive racial inequalities – in the areas of education, employment, health care, incarceration rates, and household wealth, among many others. What explains these continuing racial inequalities, and how, if at all, should a just society respond to them? We will explore this topic throughout the year through a series of speakers and events.