Come out to the Prindle Institute on Wednesday, September 17 at 8 PM for an outdoor screening of the 2014 documentary The Trials of Muhammad Ali. Movie snacks will be provided including apple cider and DIY s’mores around Prindle’s fire pit. Bring blankets to enjoy this film on the Prindle Courtyard lawn as you get a closer look at the … Continue reading "Prindle and Conflict Studies to host ‘The Trials of Muhammad Ali’ outdoor screening on September 17"

The Prindle Institute is excited to welcome Dr. Dorothy Edwards, founder of Green Dot Strategy to DePauw for a lecture this evening in the Green Center for the Performing Arts, Kresge Auditorium at 7 PM. Dorothy will discuss Green Dot and ways that campus communities can work towards a healthier, safer social environment. This event is presented by the Delta … Continue reading "‘Green Dot’ Methods Reduce Power-Based Violence"

Wayne Hsiung, co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere, spoke at DePauw University this past Wednesday, September 10. Wayne Hsiung calls himself a “Journeyman”. He advised Depauw students that you learn a whole lot about yourself and the world through diverging from a path with which you are not happy or satisfied. After studying law and working … Continue reading "Wayne Hsiung of DxE Inspires Student Activism"

A few weeks ago Spring-Serenity Duvall, an assistant professor of communications at Salem College, banned student emails. It began with a syllabus policy identifying when students could email her for things, the idea being that students simply shouldn’t email for things that they could easily find out for themselves. But the list became complicated, and … Continue reading "Should Professors Ban Student Emails?"

The politics surrounding treatment of homeless populations has long been an area of ethically problematic legislation. The latest conflict in this trend can be seen in Hawaii, where officials are considering legislation that will move the homeless away from tourist areas. The proposals will also criminalize “sitting, lying down, defecating and urinating on sidewalks in … Continue reading "Trouble in paradise? Hawaii’s homeless population faces problematic legislation"

At 1:00 AM on September 8 TMZ posted a disturbing security video showing Ray Rice, formerly of the Baltimore Ravens, punching his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, rendering her unconscious. At 11:18 AM the Ravens tweeted that Rice’s contract had been terminated. At 11:41 AM, the NFL tweeted that Rice had been suspended from the league indefinitely. … Continue reading "What the Ray Rice Video Suggests About Our Moral Thinking"

“I really should read the news, but I _______”. Insert excuse here. This might be a direct quote from myself this morning at breakfast. We’ll admit it. We’ll even take pride in it: We’re busy, we’re caught up, and we’re stressed. Yes, Iraqi citizens are getting bombed and victims of the Ukraine conflict are losing family … Continue reading "TheSkimm: Is “Reading the News” Overrated These Days?"

Hurricane Sandy, the 2012 disaster that devastated large swathes of the East Coast, haunts the area even now. Many of the families who were forced to move into temporary rental housing have not yet returned to their homes, the New York Times reports. The situation is a matter of ethics, a basic good of the many versus … Continue reading "Hurricane Sandy Victims Still Await Aid"

Don’t be fooled by the (sometimes) off-color nature of this examination of the student loan problem. Through the humor, Oliver identifies some serious moral worries about the nature of what we might call the student loan problem. Highlights include: Total student loan debt is more than auto-loan debt and more than credit-card debt. Student loan … Continue reading "Humorous (but Serious) Critique of Student Loan Problem"

There is no question that, in many cases, it is ethically wrong to kill. But is it possible for it to be ethically wrong to save a life? In an “ethically troubling” situation in November 2013, death-row inmate, Ronald Phillips, requested to donate his organs (his kidneys to his mother, and his heart to his sister), … Continue reading "Can Death Row Inmates Save Lives?"

This past weekend marked the beginning of the National Football League’s regular season schedule. Jeb Lund of The Guardian decided to commemorate the opening with an article entitled, “Does watching the NFL make you evil?” His op-ed is an eye opening collection of ethical criticisms concerning America’s favorite game. Lund points to examples of racism, … Continue reading "Unrighteous Sundays: Is the NFL unethical?"

By taking on a voice of its own, performance art often eclipses the common perception of art as simply inert. Emma Sulkowicz, a senior Visual Arts major at Colombia University, is doing just this by protesting her rapist’s presence on campus for her senior thesis. In the above video, Sulkowicz shares that she was raped on … Continue reading "Emma Sulkowicz Protests Sexual Assault with Performance Art"

Today, Former Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia and his wife of 38 year, Maureen, were convicted of 14 counts of conspiracy, bribery, extortion and other related charges that point to a scheme to sell the Governor of Virginia’s office which McDonnell held up until January of this year. Evidence shows that the McDonnell’s accepted over … Continue reading "Political Offices for Sale?"

There is a battle going on in passenger airplanes all over the country between passengers who think they have a right to recline their seat and the people in the seats behind them. The story broke last week when a man installed a new invention, The Knee Defender, to prevent a woman from reclining her seat. … Continue reading "Who Owns the Space Behind an Airline Seat?"

In this video, Kate Manne, a philosophy professor at Cornell University,  offers a critical examination of the traditional notion that stealing is inherently wrong. She focuses on the case of The Barefoot Bandit. He grew up in dire straits, and he worked his way up from stealing bread to stealing planes. He committed over 100 burglaries, but … Continue reading "Is Stealing Really Wrong?"

The Prindle Institute is excited to welcome Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black, to campus in February as part of the Ubben Lecture series. Stay tuned for programming that we are putting together to lead up to her visit!

By now, most people have heard that nude photos of nearly 100 celebrities, including actress Jennifer Lawrence, were stolen and posted to the internet by a hacker. The resultant leak has sparked both an FBI investigation and significant public outcry. On one hand, it is relatively easy to evaluate the morality of the hacker’s actions. But do … Continue reading "The Celebrity Nude Leak: What’s in a View?"

This article, by DePauw History professor David Gellman, originally appeared in Historians Against Slavery on August 15, 2014. If all the great abolitionists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were cryogenically frozen, who would you reanimate to help liberate the world from the scourge of slave labor and human trafficking today? Frederick Douglass? William Lloyd … Continue reading "Abolitionists Unfrozen"

If you have scrolled through any social media newsfeed in the past few months, you’ve probably watched your share of ALS Ice Bucket challenge videos.  Hilarious, but heartfelt, this viral phenomenon raises awareness for ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), which is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and … Continue reading "Will you join the ALS Bucket Brigade?"

The shooting of Michael Brown and the aftermath of unrest in Ferguson raises a host of obvious ethical issues. One that isn’t so obvious is that it highlights the potential importance of knowing about net neutrality and algorithmic filtering. As Zeynup Terfecki has recently argued, what happened in Ferguson is a way to illustrate how net neutrality … Continue reading "Ferguson and Net Neutrality"

According to this study, social media may have a negative impact on political debate. As the opening of the study notes, in the pre-internet era, there is a well documented phenomenon called “The Spiral of Silence” in which people tend not to voice opinions that differ from their friends and family. The intro also notes that: … Continue reading "How Social Media Might Silence Debate"

Whatever your views about affirmative action are, this is well worth watching. Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, a philosophy professor at University of British Columbia, argues that recent psychological evidence about implicit bias may yield an argument in favor of affirmative action policies that is purely merit based. What is interesting and novel about his argument is that affirmative … Continue reading "Epistemology and Affirmative Action"

A few weeks ago, Brian Crecente asked me to comment on whether or not I thought video game designers had a moral obligation to think about how they design games in light of recent evidence that some video games seem to be addictive. You can read the full article here, but here’s what I said: … Continue reading "More Thoughts on Designing Addictive Video Games"

Consent may be important in the dating world, but not so much to online dating site, OkCupid. Christian Rudder, CEO of OkCupid, admitted in a blog post that the site had run several experiments on its users over previous months, without their knowledge. Perhaps the most controversial of these experiments was one in which the site … Continue reading "Social Media Experiments: Where Should We Draw the Line?"