Honoring Another Successful Michigan HSEB

Organizer extraordinaire, Jeanine DeLay, recently shared news of yet another successful Michigan High School Ethics Bowl, hosted by A2Ethics and the University of Michigan Philosophy Department. Here’s an abridged report from Jeanine, followed by celebratory pictures.

[MHSEB #12 was] a philosofest of energy, thoughtfulness and ardent discussion with 22 teams from 14 schools, including 2 new schools: Hamtramck HS (Cosmic Conscience) and Detroit Country Day School (“Kant Even” and “Golden Rulers”).  Among other memorable team names: Washtenaw International High School’s “We Mill Locke You”; “The Golden Mean Machines” from the Academy of the Sacred Heart; Ann Arbor Skyline’s “Plato’s Cavemen.”  

We had a Red Carpet entrance for each team accompanied by their team songs. Since this was the “Year of the Volunteers,” we took several photos of judges, philosopher coaches from A2Ethics’ 12 years strong campus community partnership with University of Michigan Philosophy, teacher advisor/coaches and volunteers.

The special word of the year was definitely…honor. We were honored to have seven former Michigan Bowlers serve as moderators in 2025. And we were also thrilled to debut our not-for-real and just-for-fun moderator fashion collection to honor their contributions. We were honored to host nine first-time judges – all undergraduate philosophy students and their resourceful professors (Julia Smith and Griffin Klemick) from Hope College. The gift to Bowlers were honor cords to be worn at their graduation and academic honors ceremonies held at their schools. The colors were Maize and Blue for the University of Michigan and “Honolulu Blue” which is A2Ethics’ color…and the Detroit Lions’ color too. 🙂 Indeed, another year, another honor. 

2025 UM graduate student Bowl coordinators: AG McGee, Kiara Gilbert and Lindy Ortiz
From every Ethics Bowler’s favorite illustrator, the talented Dusty Upton
The Hope College 2025 Bowl judges (photo credit Melanie Reyes)
Credit illustrator Dusty Upton
Professor Jim Spence, Philosophy and Religion, Adrian College, judge for all 12 Michigan Bowls
MC and Hallmark Event Planner, Jeanine DeLay (photo credit Melanie Reyes)

Congrats, Michiganders! Leading the way with style and fun, per usual. And thanks so much for my own MHSEB honor cord! Proudly displayed in my home office – much appreciation and admiration from EthicsBowl.org headquarters in Tennessee :-)

Continuing the Conversation: a Post-Bowl Discussion Topic and Guide

If your regional Bowl is over and your team didn’t advance, that’s no reason to disband. Thanks to Coach Michael Andersen, you can easily pivot into Ethics Club mode with this ready-made discussion guide. It’s even tied back to a couple of old Ethics Bowl cases. And if you’d appreciate more off-season resources like this, post a comment or shoot me an email at matt (at) mattdeaton.com! Perhaps we can accommodate.

Reason & Rationality Summer Program

Reason & Rationality program coordinator, dean of academics and co-founder, Peter Bach-y-Rita, recently reached out to share a selective summer program pitched as “Critical Thinking through Convivial Conversation.” I had to look it up, but convivial means friendly, lively, and enjoyable. Sounds like a great way for Ethics Bowlers to spend a few weeks this summer, right? Here’s a blurb from Peter:

“Reason & Rationality Summer Program at Princeton and Swarthmore empowers high school students to think rigorously about complex questions, distinguish factual belief from ideology, and engage in civil, convivial exchange. The two-week summer immersive program is led by instructors from Princeton, Harvard, Oxford, MIT, and other top universities, with an intimate 1:5 instructor to student ratio. Students boost their critical thinking ability as they discuss and debate 20 Big Ideas in philosophy, politics and economics in a setting that is simultaneously rigorous and joyful.”

It’s pricey, but partial scholarships are available. To learn more, check out the intro video and visit www.reasonandrationality.com.

Fall 2024 TKEthics Olympiad Results

Here’s a message from Archie Stapleton, co-founder of the Modus Ponens Institute and organizer of the TKEthics Olympiad, congratulating recent winners and announcing several cool spring events. Congrats to all who participated and kudos to MPI for growing in these exciting new directions!

Dear Ethletes and coaches from the TKEthics 2024 Fall Olympiad, 

We want to start by congratulating all of you for participating in an incredible day of ethical discussion! We have heard really positive feedback from judges and spectators about the quality of your argumentation and engagement. You all demonstrated real commitment to ethical discourse, and tackled the problems of AI and technology in an incredibly nuanced and mature way. You can all be extremely proud. 

Here are the results: 

In the Open Division: The Gold Medal is awarded to Pythagoras (Eric Zhang, Michael Xu, Ethni Cajigas, Chase Chong, Stephanie Lee), The Silver Medal is awarded to Diogenes (Middle School team), (Eleanor Kleman, Mia Santos, Dahlia Rodgers, Reya Krishnan, Emilia Henry), The Bronze Medal is awarded to Parfit, (Qinrong (Anny) Qian, Anthony Gong, Eirena Wen, Zhiyuan (Jerry) Jiang). Following closely behind in fourth place was: Hobbes (Chengyin Du, Jingxuan (Jenelle) Zhang, Mutong Zhong, Huahui Chen), and in fifth was Locke (middle school team) (Ruilin Liang, James Loke, Darren Han, Haoxian (Ethan) Wang). 

In the Middle School Division, excluding Diogenes who attained Silver in the open category: Gold Medal is awarded to Locke (Ruilin, James, Darren, Ethan), The Silver Medal is awarded to Socrates (Isaac Zhang, Nina He, Jeason Zhou, Steven Wu, Eason Wei), The Bronze Medal is awarded to Leibniz (Moxi Zhu, Laura Zhang, William Tao). Following closely behind in fourth place was Hume (Jeffery Lian, Zachary J Liu, Kingston Wang, Mia Zhang, Vicky Fei). 

Top International Team team: Aristotle (Olivia Yu, Yishan Gao (Noelle), Winston Ge). 

Finally, we allow judges to submit an “honorable mention” for any team they were particularly impressed by in any given round! These teams received Honorable Mentions throughout the day: Plato (“Xing (Elsa) Gao, Ziyue (Abby) Zhou, Liqian (Eric) Yan, James Chen), Hegel (Derek Hu, Austin Lu, Liam Kim), Hobbes (listed above), Parfit (listed above) and Russel (Angela Yang, Jordan He, Alpha Dong, Angel Shaji, Mushel Khan). 

Congratulations to all teams! Certificates will be sent out to each team within the next week. 

We are also excited to announce that we will host an in person conference on the West Coast of the US for any team mentioned in the above announcements in August 2025, stay tuned! 

If you missed out this time, don’t fret! Another opportunity is around the corner: 

Our next tournament is the spring TKEthics Olympiad on Sunday, March 1st, and is now open for registration! This will also allow you to qualify for our in person conference. 

After that is the Pan American Ethics Olympiad! This is the program with an Eastern Round on Saturday, April 26th at 9am EST, a Western Round on Saturday, May 3rd at 9am PST, and the

Pan Am Final on Saturday, May 17th, 2025 also at 9am PST. Register here. The winners of this event will be eligible for the International Ethics Olympiad Final held in July (10am East Coast Australia time), with hundreds of teams from all over the world. 

Kind regards, 

The MPI and TKEthics Olympiad Organizing Committee