Announcements

Ethics Bowl Wins Regional

The Indiana University Poynter Center team won the Nov. 10, 2007 regional and will compete in the 2008 national competition in San Antonio.

Left to Right: Neil Shah, Sam Ross, Megan Robb (captian, holding the trophy), Andrew Hahn, Robert Crouch (coach), Emma Young

See Ethics Bowl for more information.

Upcoming Public Programs

See announcements of upcoming public programs.

Recipients for Undergraduate Research Stipends Announced

The Poynter Center is pleased to announce the recipients of the Undergraduate Research Stipends in Practical Ethics for 2007-2008. Brian Schrag, Acting Director of the Poynter Center, announced the five recipients. Each student will receive reimbursement funds after he or she presents results of the research at the Poynter Center in the spring of 2008.

The five undergraduates and their project mentors are:

• Aaron Goldman, a senior in Biology and Religious Studies. Goldman will be researching how faculty members understand the role of ethics in their research. His research project is with Brian Powell in the Department of Sociology.
• Jamie Lee Gunn, a senior with majors in Religious Studies and French. Gunn will be researching the works of Holmes Rolston III, John Haught, and Thomas Berry, to look at science, nature, environmental ethics, and humans. Gunn is working with Lisa Sideris in the Department of Religious Studies.
• M. Tyler King, a senior majoring in Philosophy and Biology, with minors in Chemistry and Social Science and Medicine. King will be comparing the current health care system and the health care proposals of six or seven of the leading presidential candidates. King's mentor is Sandra Shapshay in the Department of Philosophy.
• Lisa Koers, a senior in Entrepreneurship. Koers will be studying ways to improve pre-natal health care for low income women in the United States, including studying the possibility of using more midwives in an improved system. Her faculty mentor is Laura Ginger from the Kelley School of Business.
• Oliver McGraw, a senior in Informatics, has minors in Philosophy and Anthropology. McGraw will be studying the methods and concerns of student designers as they develop systems for a larger multi-disciplinary NSF-funded project concerning privacy in home-based computing in the homes of elders. He is working with Kalpana Shankar from the School of Informatics.

The Undergraduate Research Stipends in Practical Ethics were first offered in 2005-06 and are awarded in a competitive process. Brian Schrag noted, “As the projects suggest, every discipline is rich in ethical issues that researchers need to consider as they study, and the students will be tackling some of the issues in their disciplines. We are pleased to have students from the College of Arts and Sciences and from the Kelley School of Business and the School of Informatics.” The program is funded by the Poynter Center.

Richard Miller on Sabbatical

Richard Miller, director of the Poynter Center and professor in Religious Studies, is on sabbatical for the 2007-08 academic year. He will be completing a book tentatively entitled, 9/11, War, and Moral Memory. The general aim of the book is to develop a sustained ethical discussion of 9/11, focusing on the ethics of war against Afghanistan and in Iraq, the moral challenges of dealing with terrorism, the problems of tolerating the intolerant in a pluralistic society, and the relationship between these issues and the formation of public memory in civil society. It will draw upon and refine Miller’s previous work in the ethics of killing and war, and it will build on work he has done more recently in the ethics of culture and memory – especially the 2006-07 Interdisciplinary Faculty Seminar at the Poynter Center on “Memory: Ethics, Politics, Aesthetics.”

Brian Schrag Acting Director

Brian Schrag, Executive Secretary of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, is acting director of the Poynter Center for the academic year 2007-08. Schrag's research interests include practical and professional ethics; teaching research ethics; research ethics; organizational loyalty; ethics of faculty; and civility. He is currently collaborating on a book about ethics in higher education administration as well as editing a book of cases and commentaries on ethics in higher education administration. He is also completing a paper on ethical issues in anthropological research on groups.

International Visitors

On August 21, 2007 the Poynter Center hosted six international visitors for a meeting and discussion about ethical issues in government and business. The visit was organized by the U. S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program. The program is designed to introduce the international visitors to the meaning and implications of ethical standards and how they are defined, monitored and enforced in government and business in the United States.

The group met with Richard Miller, director of the Poynter Center, and Brian Schrag, executive secretary for the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. Miller and Schrag prepared two cases for discussion, which the group received in advance. One case focused on problems that international businesses face when their products are used by despotic regimes to repress their citizens. The second case focused on political lying by a democracy aiming to destabilize a corrupt regime abroad. In both cases visitors were asked to consider ethical principles and consequences, along with the challenges of thinking about ethical values in different contexts.

The group included:
Kneeling: Mr. Gbessay Ehlogima Momoh, Sierra Leone
Left to right: Ms. Mariana Tukana, Fiji; Mr. John Bande, Malawi; Brian Schrag, APPE; Ms. Beverly Castillo, Belize; Richard Miller, Poynter Center; Mr. Bayee Tanyitiku Enohachuo, Cameroon; Mr. Erkut Sahali, Cyprus. The group was accompanied by Mr. Lonnie Hilliard, English Language Officer, U. S. Department of State, who is not in the photo.

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The Poynter Center offers an e-mail list for people in the Bloomington area who would like to be notified of upcoming public events. If you would like to be added, contact Glenda Murray.