Strands

The Contemporary Ethical Issues seminar, which is semester-long, focuses on four strands:

• Ethics in the News--moral problems in national and international affairs
• Critical Ethical Issues--capital punishment, affirmative action, cloning, abortion, etc.
• Ethics in the Workplace--how individuals deal with ethical dilemmas they face in their professions. Panels of professionals meet with the students in the evening or during class meetings.
  
• Personal Ethics--how moral reasoning takes place. Specifically, students use care-based (what would I like done to or for me in the same situation), rule-based (what is the highest principle that can be honored by my actions), and ends-based (what is the greatest good for the greatest number) approaches to discuss ethical issues. Students also categorize ethical dilemmas using Rushworth Kidder's model of
  
• Justice vs. Mercy
• Individual vs. Community
• Truth vs. Loyalty
• Short-term vs. Long-term
  

Daily News Analysis--Students subscribe to the New York Times and each week day read news stories, columns, or opinion pieces that have a significant ethical element.They select one of these each week to analyze in depth in a two-page paper.

Readings. Rushworth Kidder's How Good People Make Tough Choices provides basic course content Students read numerous additional handouts and articles concerning topics.

Papers--Students write analytical papers on ethical issues. Topics in the past have included: 

• WalMart's business practices
• The Confederate flag debate
• Affluence and poverty
• Honor code violations at the University of Virginia
  
• Guns in the home
• Drug sales in developing countries
• Child stars
• Supermodels and their effect on teenagers
• Lawyer-client privilege
• Second-Hand smoking: is it a civil liberty issue?
• Animal rights
• Physician-assisted suicide
• Homosexual adoption
  
• Professor Joseph Ellis lying about Vietnam service to students
• Hate speech codes on college campuses
• Homosexual marriage
• Animal experimentation
• Ayala case: having another child to save a dying child
• Hate speech on the Internet
• Women in ground combat
• Homosexual adoption
• The ethics of nuclear deterrence
• Title IX in college athletics
• Abortion special cases
• Affirmative action in college admissions
• Therapeutic cloning
• Physician-assisted suicide
• Should cousins be allowed to marry?
• Sales of drugs in developing countries

Ethics Journals--Students submit biweekly journal entries related to class discussions, readings, and guest speakers.

Case Studies--Students use case studies (hypothetical and real) to assist them in understanding various perspectives on ethical issues.

Video--Video segments from the Ethics in America series produced by PBS as well as relevant segments from ABC's Nightline present themes to supplement class discussions.

Film--A number of feature-length movies address ethical issues in provocative ways and are viewed by the class, sometimes during class sessions and sometimes during evening sessions. This semester's films include:

Cheaters--A true story of a group of students who, conspiring with their teacher, cheat in an academic interscholastic competiton and deal with the consequences.

Cider House Rules--A Maine orphanage/abortion hospital and an apple farm provide the settings for this John Irving story of a young man's journey to finding his calling.

Dead Man Walking--A nun responds to a request for a visit from a man on Death Row. The result is a fascinating and balanced examination of capital punishment in all of its complexities. A moving and powerful film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

Friday Night Lights--In Texas, football is king. Billy Bob Thornton gives a strong performance as a football coach who understands what his depressed town of Odessa wants. Based on interviews conducted by H.G. Bissinger.

Gattaca--Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Gore Vidal in a science fiction look at a future of selective cloning. A thoughtful and challenging examination of the possible consequences if cloning humans were feasible.

Hotel Rwanda--Don Cheadle stars in this true story of how one man can make a difference in the face of chaos and mass murder. Based on the Rwandan civil war that resulted in at least 500,000 deaths.

Ethics in the Workplace Panel Discussions--Panels of individuals in various professions that encounter ethical dilemmas in their work place discuss ethics with the seminar members.  All discussions run from 7:00 to 8:30 pm in Boswell Library, South Campus. Discussions have included:

 

Topic	Panel Participants
Ethics in Hollywood	Ted Griffin, writer and producer (Matchstick Men) Alec Berg, Seinfeld executive producer and writer Marlee Matlin Grandalski, Academy Award winning actor
Ethics in Politics	Alison Daly Van Dyke, former fund-raiser for the Republican National Committe Vince Duffy,  former speech writer for Governor Gray Davis Ann-Marie Villicana, former Pasadena City Councilmember
Ethics in Academia	David Axeen, former Dean of Faculty, Occidental College Ed Stolper, former provost, Caltech
Ethics in Hollywood	Sean Bailey, Executive Producer The Emperor's Club Ghen Maynard,  NBC Vice-President, Alternative Programming Jane Whitford, actor, Malcolm in the Middle.
Ethics & Sports	Pat Haden, broadcaster, former Pro Bowl quarterback
Ethics & the Law	Gary Feess, U.S. District Court Judge Steve Olson U.S. Assistant District Attorney Candace Ipswitch, attorney in private practice
Ethics in Medicine	Dr. Shannon Thyne, Director, Children's Health Center, San Francisco General Hospital and Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, University of California San Francisco  Dr. Paul Helfgott, neurologist, Physician Representative, Hospital Ethics Committee, Beverly Hospital, Montebello Dr. Robert Riewerts, pediatrician, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, Los Angeles
Ethics in Journalism	Joe Mathews, Los Angeles Times reporter,  Anna Wilde Mathews, Wall Street Journal reporter, Larry Wilson, editor, Pasadena Star News
Ethics in Corporate Life	John  Bryson, CEO, Edison International Paul Haaga, Executive Vice President and Director of Capital Research & Management Company in Los Angeles; Diane Dixon, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Communications and Advertising, Avery Dennison