Earlier this week the first ever Tertiary Ethics Olympiad was hosted by Matthew Wills and team in Australia. I was honored to serve as a judge, and was supremely impressed with the quality of analyses and discussion. The results, shared by Matthew via email afterwards:
“[Australian National University, ANU] (Green) was awarded the Gold medal, ANU (White) the Silver medal and Monash University (Red) received the Bronze medal. Close behind and in order were; [University of Western Australia, UWA] (Aqua), UWA (Green), Monash University (Yellow), University of Wollongong (Blue), UQ (Orange), Curtin University (Black) and UQ (Plum). The following teams received honorable mentions from the judges; Curtin University (Black), ANU (White), Monash University (Red & Yellow), UWA (Aqua & Green), University of Wollongong (Blue) & UQ (Orange and Plum).”
Super congrats to Australian National University for winning both 1st and 2nd place! But thanks and congrats to all coaches and teams for making this first event possible. I know Matthew was thrilled to expand Ethics Olympiad to the collegiate level, and the broader Ethics Bowl community couldn’t be more proud.
Ethics Bowl began in the U.S. on the college level, first in Bob Ladenson’s classroom, then at APPE sessions under the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl. Several years later, folks like Fred Guy in Baltimore, Roberta Israeloff on Long Island and George Sherman in St. Petersburg found success extending them into high schools. And slowly, innovators like Deric Barber in Houston tried Ethics Bowl in middle schools as well.
In Australia, the high school version came first, followed by middle and elementary school. And this fall, our friends down under are holding their first collegiate-level Ethics Olympiad.
Gold, silver and bronze awards will be determined by three Zoom-based heats on October 4th. Each team needs a coach, up to two teams are allowed per institution, members may be undergraduate or grad students and must be enrolled in “a tertiary institution in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore or Hong Kong.”
Kudos, Matthew and team! I understand that several schools in India participated in a recent high school Ethics Olympiad. Awesome that you’re not only expanding geographically, but across age groups as well.
For more information click here or email admin [at] ethicsolympiad [dot] org.
We’ve witnessed the benefits of Ethics Bowl in others. We’ve experienced them firsthand. But anecdote is no substitute for cold, hard data, especially in the eyes of school administrators, budget officers and grant committees.
Few (if any) large-scale Ethics Bowl studies exist. But our friends at UNC’s Parr Center are fixing that, and they’re maximizing participation with the promise of guaranteed pizza!
If you’re a high school Ethics Bowl coach or participant, take one 10-minute survey next month, then another in February. You don’t even have to be on an Ethics Bowl team. You just have to be a student at a school that participates. That’s it. 20 minutes of painless surveying, and unless I’m mistaken, there’s no requirement that the pizza be healthy, organic, or locally-sourced!
The full details are available here. But the upshot comes in the final paragraph.
“If you are interested in participating or would like more information, please complete this short form or send an email to Study Coordinator Michael Vazquez. We are happy to correspond via email or to arrange a Zoom meeting to discuss any aspect of your participation in further detail. It is important that we have involvement from both students involved with NHSEB and students not involved with NHSEB. So, we would greatly appreciate your help recruiting fellow educators or coaches at your school to get involved with the study. Click here to download a flier that you can share with your colleagues.”
Parr, thank you for taking the initiative, and kudos for making this easy, painless and yummy. Hopefully some portion of the results will be shared with the broader Ethics Bowl community. And on behalf of hungry teenagers everywhere, thanks for the pizza!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently took my nephew skydiving, and in the process decided to give away my books. (Facing mortality at the speed of gravity inspires clarity!)
My philosophical ethics primer, used by college, high school and even jr. high students on at least three continents, has been available on the Resources page in PDF here at EthicsBowl.org for several years. And I released the audiobook at Audible last summer. But as of this morning, the audiobook edition is now free and available to all on good old YouTube.
Enjoy! I hope this helps students lacking the stamina or time to read (reading wasn’t my #1 hobby growing up, either), as well as educators and Ethics Bowl coaches brave enough to teach them. Re-introducing philosopher’s approach to morality, now rather than in 100 pages, 100 minutes.
Handy Timestamps (also in description at YouTube):
Search the Dobbs. v. Jackson Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade for “philosopher” and you’ll find references to Australian ethicist Peter Singer, ethicist Mary Anne Warren’s “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” and the leading academic journal Philosophy & Public Affairs all supporting a section analyzing personhood.
As readers of Abortion Ethics in a Nutshell know, personhood is a moral concept capturing the capacities we associate with the most valuable creatures of all: adult humans – consciousness, the ability to feel pleasure and pain, the ability to engage in relationships, and higher order reasoning which facilitates moral agency, responsibility, and full membership in the moral community.
Unborn Developing Humans (aka fetuses, unborn children, etc.) possess none of these features of personhood at conception, but they do develop some over the course of gestation, and become more likely to develop into full persons the closer they are to birth. Accordingly, the “gradualist” position – that a UDH’s value increases as they develop, and therefore later term abortions are more difficult to justify – makes a lot of sense. (For more, listen to the “The Nature of the Conception” chapter here.)
I’ve not read the full decision yet, and so I’m not sure if the ruling acknowledges the appeal of gradualism. But I share the simple fact that they mention philosophers and ethicists by name and employ one of our key terms to help you appreciate how our work has implications at the highest levels.
Sometimes it can feel as if Ethics Bowl is an isolated game and that the world-changing action happens elsewhere. In some ways, it does. Losing Ethics Bowl team coaches aren’t jailed (thank goodness!) and Ethics Bowl judges’ proclamations aren’t legally binding (doubly thank goodness!). But the sort of analysis we refine and the progress that we drive through our collaborative pursuit of moral truth can and does find its way into the minds of decision-makers. Slowly but surely.
We won’t always agree with their decisions. And we rightly doubt their commitment to objective, truth-oriented analysis (including Jarvis-Thomson or Maggie Little in their analysis would have helped). But the broader philosophical, applied ethics and Ethics Bowl communities are leading by example, and our work is making a practical difference.
Here’s that section, in which the Justices challenge viability as a useful criterion for granting a UDH full legal protection.
“This arbitrary line [the time at which a UDH can survive outside of the womb] has not found much support among philosophers and ethicists who have attempted to justify a right to abortion. Some have argued that a [Unborn Developing Human] should not be entitled to legal protection until it acquires the characteristics that they regard as defining what it means to be a ‘person.’ Among the characteristics that have been offered as essential attributes of ‘personhood’ are sentience, self-awareness, the ability to reason, or some combination thereof. By this logic, it would be an open question whether even born individuals, including young children or those afflicted with certain developmental or medical conditions, merit protection as ‘persons.’ [They’re right, but biting the bullet and excluding some categories of humans from full personhood is the price we pay for being honest about the importance of personhood.] But even if one takes the view that ‘personhood’ begins when a certain attribute or combination of attributes is acquired, it is very hard to see why viability should mark the point where ‘personhood’ begins.”
Check out the full ruling yourself (it’s a landmark decision and you’re more than capable, so analyze it firsthand!), and if you’d like to author a post connecting it to Ethics Bowl, guest submissions welcome.
The American Philosophical Association recently showcased an ethics bowl syllabus redesigned and taught by Michael Vazquez of UNC’s Parr Center.
Using the ethics bowl format to teach democratic deliberation, the class pairs UNC undergrads as coaches for NHSEB teams across the country via the new NHSEBBridge program.
Especially impressive is Michael’s “toolkit” approach to teaching ethics. Check out the full post and syllabus, and leave Michael some positive feedback here.
Ethics Bowl to the Rescue! How the Anti-Debate Is Saving Democracy has been in the works for some time, and will soon be ready for beta reader feedback. What do beta readers do? They review a manuscript at their leisure, usually over 3-to-4 weeks, then provide general impressions, improvement suggestions and feedback to help make the final product better. Suggestions can concern chapter order, tone, word choice, topics – whatever comes to mind.
What’s in it for you? Apart from my eternal gratitude, I’ll thank you by name in the book, and mail you an autographed copy. Plus you can take pride in helping spread ethics bowl! The better the book is (thanks to your generous feedback), the more people will read it, the more it will help spread ethics bowl.
Thanks for considering! No special expertise required. If you’re an ethics bowl enthusiast in any capacity, you’re invited to beta read Ethics Bowl to the Rescue! For more information, shoot me an email or use the contact form at MattDeaton.com.
Earlier this month the American Philosophical Association in collaboration with the Philosophy Documentation Center awarded the National High School Ethics Bowl the 2021 Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Philosophy Programs. As the selection committee put it:
“Prior to the pandemic, NHSEB was already excellent and facilitated the participation of 4,000 high school student across the country… [But during COVID] NHSEB shifted their focus to access and to on-boarding new participating high schools through their NHSEBBridge program, which evolved into the NHSEBAcademy and became an online hub for students, coaches, judges, and volunteers to crowdsource ideas about ethical perspectives, gain perspectives on cases from NHSEB experts, and collaborate to address significant ethical problems. The Academy is evidence of philosophers doing their best work in a public forum, to advance the public good.”
Bravo, NHSEB! So many contributed to the initiative’s original launch, including ethics bowl creator Bob Ladenson, former Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Directors Richard Greene and Pat Croskery, Roberta Israeloff of the Squire Family Foundation, Jan Boxill, Goeff Sayre-McCord and Katelin Kaiser of UNC’s Parr Center, and early organizers from across the country including George Sherman in Florida, Karen Mizell in Utah and Fred Guy in Baltimore.
But it’s been new director Alex Richardson and support from teammates including Steven Swartzer, Delaney Thull, Austin Foushee and others who’ve steered and elevated NHSEB through the pandemic, turning what could have been a show-stopper into an opportunity for innovation and growth.
Super congrats to Team NHSEB, including the hundreds of coaches, judges, moderators, sponsors and volunteers who are helping take ethics bowl to the next level. Thanks to each of you for moving democracy in a more civil, respectful direction. And thanks to our friends at APA for this well-deserved recognition!
Our friends at NHSEB Academy are hosting a Zoom-based case discussion workshop next Saturday, December 4th at 4:30 EST.
Organized and led by philosophy students taking UNC’s Ethics Bowl and Democratic Deliberation class, coaches and teams will be invited to kindly and cooperatively think through cases 4, 7, 9 and 15:
Suffering in the Wild
23 & Memaw
Priorities, Priorities…
All Eyes on You
Absent judges, score sheets, rankings and awards, this should be a wonderful opportunity to consider these cool issues in good faith. And with many bright moral thinkers in attendance, it should be a simple way to elevate our collective understanding… and also give your team an edge 😉
Host of the Oregon High School Ethics Bowl, Portland State University, is offering a Philosophy Summer Camp for high school students from August 2-13.
Made possible by their annual Day of Giving campaign, graduates will receive college credit. And since it will mostly take place over Zoom (with a philosophy-related field trip), they’re opening it up to students across the country.
According to program coordinator Professor Alex Sager, “We are offering a reduced tuition rate of $220, as well as offering generous scholarships to qualifying students… The deadline to apply is July 16th. Applicants should send me (asager@pdx.edu) the following information:
Name Best Contact Info High School Grade in fall 2021 GPA 300-500 word statement on why you are interested in attending the philosophy summer camp.”
