Ethics Goes Public
Enough meta-blogging. This is an encouraging sign: this summer the University of Michigan officially launched the Center for Ethics in Public Life. Part of the motivation?
In Fall 2004 President Mary Sue Coleman convened a task force of faculty, staff and students to examine ways in which the University might “explore the synergies of education and scholarship on the issue of ethics in public life, contributing to and is some cases structuring broader public discourse on these issues.”
In her charge to the task force, President Coleman noted the rising public concern about the unethical behavior and institutional failures that have been front-page news in recent years.
A big part of my intellectual interests are driven by experiences with ethical failures that seem bureaucratic or institutional in nature — the U.S. Attorneys scandal is an excellent case in point. In fact, although I’m enrolled in a philosophy PhD, I’m planning to focus my research on bureaucratic ethics (which explains the blog’s tagline… see, this blog is less ad hoc than you might think). So it’s nice to see someone else taking interest in this as an area of academic research.
