The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics
and American Institutions

Archived News and Programs

Ethics Bowl Team Wins Regional | Miller on Sabbatical | Schrag Acting Director | International Visitors | Richard Miller | Khalil AbuGharbieh | Emma Young | Megan Robb | Race and the Academy | Mark Wilson

Ethics Bowl Wins Regional (2007-08)

The Indiana University Poynter Center team won the Nov. 10, 2007 regional and will compete in the 2008 national competition in San Antonio. See Ethics Bowl for more information. Left to Right: Neil Shah, Sam Ross, Megan Robb (captian, holding the trophy), Andrew Hahn, Robert Crouch (coach), Emma Young

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Richard Miller on Sabbatical (2007-08)

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."

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Brian Schrag Acting Director (2007-08)

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.

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International Visitors (2007-08)

International Visitor Leadership Program

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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Megan Robb Receives Palmer-Brandon Prize (2007-08)

Megan Robb, who has been on two Ethics Bowl teams (2005 and 2006), was one of two recipients of the Palmer-Brandon Prize for 2007-08. Robb will be a senior in English, Philosophy, and India Studies.

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Richard Miller Awarded James Philip Holland Award for Exemplary Teaching and Service to Students (2006-07)

Richard Miller receives the award from Dean Bennett Bertenthal, from the College of Arts and Sciences. Richard Miller, director of the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions and professor in the department of Religious Studies, was selected as the 2007 recipient of the James Philip Holland Award for Exemplary Teaching and Service to Students. He was nominated by two students, Khalil AbuGharbieh and Emily Crouch. Both students have been in classes taught by Professor Miller and have been participants on the Ethics Bowl team. The award, which includes funding for additional research, was presented April 19, 2007.

Emily's letter stated, "In the classroom, Professor Miller excels at capturing the voice of the respective philosopher or theologian studied. . . . [He] equips his students with the ability to think critically about various philosophies, as he mediates the issues with thought-provoking questions and concerns. He continually encourages his students to enter into the dialogue of the issue at hand. His method of instruction teaches students to form an independent and engaged mind, which is one of the hallmarks of a liberal arts education."

Khalil added, "While Dr. Miller's teaching skills make him an outstanding professor, his commitment to the IU Poynter Center Ethics Bowl team makes him a truly exceptional professor and servant to students. For the past five years, Dr. Miller has served [as] the sponsor for the IU team, spending countless weeknights and Sunday afternoons coaching the squad. Practices are an ideal forum for the exchange of ideas, as the five students get to combine with the two coaches in developing and fine-tuning responses to difficult and sometimes intractable ethical dilemmas. . . . I have been a team participant for three of my four years at IU, and it has been the most valuable academic experience of my life."

See Richard Miller for his vita. Richard Miller is flanked by the two students who nominated him, Emily Miller and Khalil AbuGharbieh.

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Khalil AbuGharbieh Receives Herman B Wells Senior Recognition Award (2006-07)

A graduate of Penn High School in Mishawaka, IN, Khalil AbuGharbieh was the 2007 recipient of the Herman B Wells Senior Recognition Award. While at IU he majored in Political Science, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Religious Studies. AbuGharbieh's combination of majors, which all relate to the Middle East, reflect both an effort for self-understanding and a passion for studying issues deeply in search of common ground among disparate views. In order to pursue these interests, AbuGharbieh spent a summer at Birzeit University in the West Bank and a year abroad at the American University in Cairo.

AbuGharbieh actively participated in several campus programming groups, serving on committees for the Indiana Memorial Union Board and the Undergraduate Religious Studies Association. He also took a leadership role in the IU Muslim Student Union, becoming the group's president as a senior and overseeing the group's many religious, social, and outreach activities. He interned at the IU Lilly Library and worked for the IU Language Labs as a lab assistant. While in Cairo, AbuGharbieh worked with local African refugee populations, teaching English and learning about the refugee resettlement process.

Developing an interest in ethics, AbuGharbieh joined the IU Poynter Center's intercollegiate Ethics Bowl team. He competed with the team at the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics' national tournament three times, winning the national championship in 2004 and making the semifinals in 2005 out of a field of 40 schools. He completed research with the Ethics Bowl sponsor, professor Richard Miller, on competing philosophical outlooks that might underlie a coherent theory on the provision of health care.

In the summer of 2005, AbuGharbieh was a fellow at a National Science Foundation research experience for undergraduates program at Indiana State University, where he produced a paper on the Palestinian use of rhetoric favoring the binational solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2007, he was a research intern for Political Science professor Abdulkader Sinno, aiding in conducting research on the hostility that first-time minority candidates face in running for Congress.

Aspiring to become a policy-maker and public servant, AbuGharbieh was a finalist for the Harry S. Truman scholarship in 2006. In the summer of 2006, he interned for U.S. Senator Richard G. Lugar. AbuGharbieh now plans to pursue a joint degree in law and Middle Eastern studies.

For more on AbuGharbieh's activities with Ethics Bowl, see Ethics Bowl. See above for his photo with Professor Miller.

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Emma Young to Mayo Clinic internship for summer (2006-07)

Emma Young, who has been on the Ethics Bowl team for three years, spent ten weeks during the 2007 summer as a bioethics research intern in the Mayo Clinic's summer Mentored Undergraduate Research Fellowship program. Their current research projects concern the genetics of nicotine addiction, patient experience of the informed consent process, and end-of-life care.

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Mark Wilson Wins Newcombe (2006-07)

Mark Wilson, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies, was awarded a 2006-07 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. The committee annually selects 30 Fellows from the United States whose work is expected to contribute to research and scholarship in the study of ethical or religious values. Mark had a double major in Classical Humanities and Theological Studies at St. Louis University, where he received an Honors B.A. and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He also minored in Philosophy and received a certificate in Ancient Greek. Mark's dissertation title is "The Emotion of Regret in an Ethics of Response." He is a research associate at the Poynter Center and coached the 2003, 2004, 2006, and 2007 Ethics Bowl teams for the Poynter Center.

Mark Wilson practicing with the Ethics Bowl team in early 2006.

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"Privacy in Public" Grant (2006-07)

The Poynter Center has been awarded a research grant by the Office of the Vice President for Research at IU. The grant is from the Arts and Humanities New Perspectives funding from Lilly Endowment.

The project, Privacy in Public: Ethics, Privacy and the Technology of Public Surveillance, involves four half-day public seminars on the subject in 2006 and early 2007. The last seminar will be Thursday, April 5. More info. . . .

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Race and the Academy (2005-06)

The Poynter Center hosted a special forum on Race and the Academy January 31, 2006. This panel addressed a host of questions surrounding race and the role of "difference" in contemporary scholarship. How does race factor into our civic understandings and interactions? What opportunities and challenges arise in scholarship informed by race? What civic discourses are deployed when race is introduced into the quest for new knowledge? What varieties within and between groups does the study of race disclose?

Three distinguished members of the IU faculty addressed these and related questions. Panelists discussed the role of race in their research and intellectual work. They identified opportunities and challenges that arise for scholars who study race relations historically, politically, and culturally.

The panelists were Yvette Alex-Assensoh, associate professor in the Political Science Department; John Nieto-Phillips, associate professor of History and Latino Studies; and Ranu Samantrai, associate professor in the department of English. The moderator was Richard B. Miller, director of the Poynter Center and professor of Religious Studies.

The forum was sponsored by the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Support and Diversity, and Office of the Dean of Faculties and Academic Affairs.

	Presenters John Nieto-Phillips, Yvette Alex-Assensoh, and Ranu Samantrai listen to a question from the audience. Photo compliments of IDS photographer Ali Jones.

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