By Agence France-Presse
The Raw Story
Friday, January 10, 2014
Sexual assault cases have declined at two of the three US military academies but students still worry they will suffer social retaliation if they report an incident, officials said Friday.
The students also say they are reluctant to confront sexist behavior by a small number of cadets and athletes, underscoring the need for commanders to improve the climate at the academies, according to a Pentagon report.
Students believe their leaders take sexual assault seriously but “also identified peer pressure as a barrier to reporting,” said Major General Jeffrey Snow, director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.
The entire story is here.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Judge rules patients in New Mexico have fundamental right to get aid in dying
By Susan Montoya Bryan
Associated Press
Originally posted January 13, 2014
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A New Mexico judge has ruled some patients can choose a physician's aid in getting prescription medications to peacefully end their lives.
Second Judicial District Judge Nan Nash ruled Monday that the ability of competent, terminally ill patients to choose aid in dying is a fundamental right under the state constitution.
The entire article is here.
Associated Press
Originally posted January 13, 2014
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A New Mexico judge has ruled some patients can choose a physician's aid in getting prescription medications to peacefully end their lives.
Second Judicial District Judge Nan Nash ruled Monday that the ability of competent, terminally ill patients to choose aid in dying is a fundamental right under the state constitution.
The entire article is here.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Research: We Should Speak Up About Ethical Violations More Often
by Joseph Grenny
Harvard Business Review
Originally published on January 8, 2014
Whistle-blowing reveals not just acute misdeeds, but chronic and longstanding patterns of misconduct. For example, Edward Snowden’s bombshell release of more than 200,000 documents revealed questionable government surveillance programs that existed for years. Miami Dolphins player Jonathan Martin withdrew from play, alleging more than a year of emotional abuse from teammate Richie Incognito. These high-profile cases are just a few examples of what happens in organizations large and small every day.
And yet, many leaders wrongly believe the path to consistent, proper conduct is special methods to reward whistle-blowing — offering incentives to truth-tellers who report major lapses. The SEC, for example, offers up to 30 percent of recovered funds as payment to those whose testimony aids in prosecution of corporate wrongdoing. One payment recently topped $14 million. Is a multimillion-dollar payday the key to corporate ethics?
The entire article is here.
Harvard Business Review
Originally published on January 8, 2014
Whistle-blowing reveals not just acute misdeeds, but chronic and longstanding patterns of misconduct. For example, Edward Snowden’s bombshell release of more than 200,000 documents revealed questionable government surveillance programs that existed for years. Miami Dolphins player Jonathan Martin withdrew from play, alleging more than a year of emotional abuse from teammate Richie Incognito. These high-profile cases are just a few examples of what happens in organizations large and small every day.
And yet, many leaders wrongly believe the path to consistent, proper conduct is special methods to reward whistle-blowing — offering incentives to truth-tellers who report major lapses. The SEC, for example, offers up to 30 percent of recovered funds as payment to those whose testimony aids in prosecution of corporate wrongdoing. One payment recently topped $14 million. Is a multimillion-dollar payday the key to corporate ethics?
The entire article is here.
In Life and Business, Learning to Be Ethical
By Alina Tugend
The New York Times
Originally published January
Here is an excerpt:
Trying to become more ethical — or teaching people how to — would seem doomed then. But that’s not true. It’s just that how we teach ethics has to catch up with what we know about how the human mind works.
One area clearly in need of attention is business ethics, especially given the transgressions in the financial world in recent years. Some of the nation’s top researchers think so too. Next week, a group of them — most based at American universities — will officially introduce a new website, EthicalSystems.org. The site is the first to pull together extensive research and resources on the subject of business ethics with the aim of making the vast trove available to schools, government regulators and businesses — especially their compliance officers.
“It used to be business ethics grew out of philosophy, with a focus on the right thing to do,” said Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. “In the last 10 years there’s been an explosion of research in behavioral economics” and the underlying reasons people act the way they do.
The entire article is here.
The New York Times
Originally published January
Here is an excerpt:
Trying to become more ethical — or teaching people how to — would seem doomed then. But that’s not true. It’s just that how we teach ethics has to catch up with what we know about how the human mind works.
One area clearly in need of attention is business ethics, especially given the transgressions in the financial world in recent years. Some of the nation’s top researchers think so too. Next week, a group of them — most based at American universities — will officially introduce a new website, EthicalSystems.org. The site is the first to pull together extensive research and resources on the subject of business ethics with the aim of making the vast trove available to schools, government regulators and businesses — especially their compliance officers.
“It used to be business ethics grew out of philosophy, with a focus on the right thing to do,” said Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. “In the last 10 years there’s been an explosion of research in behavioral economics” and the underlying reasons people act the way they do.
The entire article is here.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Moral luck: Neiladri Sinhababu
Published on Dec 2, 2013
A talk on moral luck that will examine when blame and virtue can be assigned to human actions through a number of examples. Neil Sinhababu is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore. His research is mainly on ethics. His paper on romantic relationships with people from other universes, "Possible Girls", was featured in the Washington Post on Valentine's Day.
A talk on moral luck that will examine when blame and virtue can be assigned to human actions through a number of examples. Neil Sinhababu is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore. His research is mainly on ethics. His paper on romantic relationships with people from other universes, "Possible Girls", was featured in the Washington Post on Valentine's Day.
At Issue in 2 Wrenching Cases: What to Do After the Brain Dies
By BENEDICT CAREY and DENISE GRADY
The New York Times
Originally posted January 9, 2014
In one way, the cases are polar opposites: the parents of Jahi McMath in Oakland, Calif., have fought to keep their daughter connected to a ventilator, while the parents and husband of Marlise Muñoz in Fort Worth, Tex., want desperately to turn the machine off. In another way, the cases are identical: both families have been shocked to learn that a loved one was declared brain-dead — and that hospital officials defied the family’s wishes for treatment.
Their wrenching stories raise questions about how brain death is determined, and who has the right to decide how such patients are treated.
The entire story is here.
The New York Times
Originally posted January 9, 2014
In one way, the cases are polar opposites: the parents of Jahi McMath in Oakland, Calif., have fought to keep their daughter connected to a ventilator, while the parents and husband of Marlise Muñoz in Fort Worth, Tex., want desperately to turn the machine off. In another way, the cases are identical: both families have been shocked to learn that a loved one was declared brain-dead — and that hospital officials defied the family’s wishes for treatment.
Their wrenching stories raise questions about how brain death is determined, and who has the right to decide how such patients are treated.
The entire story is here.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Tweet Police
Kansas’ ability to fire professors for posting on social media is bad news for academic freedom—and may not even be legal.
By Frank K. LoMonte
Inside Higher Ed via Slate
Originally posted January 3, 2014
For decades, the Supreme Court has kept vigil over the campuses of state universities as, in the words of one memorable 1995 ruling, "peculiarly the marketplace for ideas." No opinion, the Supreme Court has emphasized, is too challenging or unsettling that it can be banned from the college classroom.
Forget the classroom—professors today are fortunate if they can be safe from punishment for an unkind word posted from a home computer on a personal, off-campus blog.
The Kansas Board of Regents triggered academic-freedom alarm bells across America last month with a hastily adopted revision to university personnel policies that makes “improper use of social media” grounds for discipline up to and including termination. (While the board this week ordered a review of the policy, it remains in place.)
The entire story is here.
By Frank K. LoMonte
Inside Higher Ed via Slate
Originally posted January 3, 2014
For decades, the Supreme Court has kept vigil over the campuses of state universities as, in the words of one memorable 1995 ruling, "peculiarly the marketplace for ideas." No opinion, the Supreme Court has emphasized, is too challenging or unsettling that it can be banned from the college classroom.
Forget the classroom—professors today are fortunate if they can be safe from punishment for an unkind word posted from a home computer on a personal, off-campus blog.
The Kansas Board of Regents triggered academic-freedom alarm bells across America last month with a hastily adopted revision to university personnel policies that makes “improper use of social media” grounds for discipline up to and including termination. (While the board this week ordered a review of the policy, it remains in place.)
The entire story is here.
Introducing Empowerment Ethics
By Daniel Fincke
The Secularite
Originally posted on January 3, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
What is “Empowerment Ethics”?
The gist of what I am dubbing “empowerment ethics” is simple.
I think I can argue in objectively factual terms that there is an overriding good that all humans should be concerned with. The good we should all strive for is to be as powerful according to our potential abilities as we can be. Every human being is made up of a set of powers. We do not just have our powers but we are our powers. We do not just have the powers of rationality, we exist through them. We do not just have abilities to feel things emotionally, we exist through them. And the same goes for our powers of sociability, our bodily powers, our sexual powers, our creative powers, our technological powers, our artistic powers, and any other distinct categories of powers you can identify within us. Each of our major categories of powers is comprised of component powers and each of our powers can combine into larger powers.
That’s the power part. The empowerment part specifically comes in when we realize that fulfilling our powers to their maximum means empowering others through the exercise of our abilities. The most marvelous thing about human powers is how much they can spread into other people and how much we need other people to use their powers to empower us. Every ability we have grows in its effectiveness the more that it increases the total net powerful effectiveness of the total number of people. When I am so powerful as to be able to empower you to be more powerful, then I am powerful not just in myself but also in you and in those you further empower, and so it goes, on and on.
The entire blog post is here.
The Secularite
Originally posted on January 3, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
What is “Empowerment Ethics”?
The gist of what I am dubbing “empowerment ethics” is simple.
I think I can argue in objectively factual terms that there is an overriding good that all humans should be concerned with. The good we should all strive for is to be as powerful according to our potential abilities as we can be. Every human being is made up of a set of powers. We do not just have our powers but we are our powers. We do not just have the powers of rationality, we exist through them. We do not just have abilities to feel things emotionally, we exist through them. And the same goes for our powers of sociability, our bodily powers, our sexual powers, our creative powers, our technological powers, our artistic powers, and any other distinct categories of powers you can identify within us. Each of our major categories of powers is comprised of component powers and each of our powers can combine into larger powers.
That’s the power part. The empowerment part specifically comes in when we realize that fulfilling our powers to their maximum means empowering others through the exercise of our abilities. The most marvelous thing about human powers is how much they can spread into other people and how much we need other people to use their powers to empower us. Every ability we have grows in its effectiveness the more that it increases the total net powerful effectiveness of the total number of people. When I am so powerful as to be able to empower you to be more powerful, then I am powerful not just in myself but also in you and in those you further empower, and so it goes, on and on.
The entire blog post is here.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Time, Money, and Morality
By Gino, F., and C. Mogilner. "Time, Money, and Morality." Psychological Science (forthcoming).
Abstract
Money, a resource that absorbs much daily attention, seems to be present in much unethical behavior thereby suggesting that money itself may corrupt. This research examines a way to offset such potentially deleterious effects—by focusing on time, a resource that tends to receive less attention than money but is equally ubiquitous in our daily lives. Across four experiments, we examine whether shifting focus onto time can salvage individuals' ethicality. We found that implicitly activating the construct of time, rather than money, leads individuals to behave more ethically by cheating less. We further found that priming time reduces cheating by making people reflect on who they are. Implications for the use of time versus money primes in discouraging or promoting dishonesty are discussed.
The entire article is here.
Abstract
Money, a resource that absorbs much daily attention, seems to be present in much unethical behavior thereby suggesting that money itself may corrupt. This research examines a way to offset such potentially deleterious effects—by focusing on time, a resource that tends to receive less attention than money but is equally ubiquitous in our daily lives. Across four experiments, we examine whether shifting focus onto time can salvage individuals' ethicality. We found that implicitly activating the construct of time, rather than money, leads individuals to behave more ethically by cheating less. We further found that priming time reduces cheating by making people reflect on who they are. Implications for the use of time versus money primes in discouraging or promoting dishonesty are discussed.
The entire article is here.
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