On July 25, The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study on the correlation between a distinctive brain damage (chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE) and playing football professionally. The study included 202 brains of individuals who played football at some point in life, 111 of which were of former NFL players. They found that only one of the professional football players didn’t have CTE.
A recently released report from a Harvard panel of faculty members recommended that Harvard adopt an outright ban on student participation in unrecognized social clubs such as “Final Clubs,” fraternities, and sororities. These organizations have not had official recognition from Harvard since 1984, when such formal recognition was rescinded because these social clubs refused to end membership policies discriminating on the basis of gender. In May 2016, Harvard decided to penalize anyone who joins these single-gender social clubs by banning student members from “holding athletic team captaincies and leadership positions in all recognized student groups. They will also be ineligible for College endorsement for top fellowships like the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.” The report from the faculty panel takes the May 2016 policy to its natural conclusion: an outright ban.
Continue reading “Do Harvard’s Final Clubs Undermine Equality and Inclusion?”
On July 23, 10 people were found dead in the bed of a swelteringly hot tractor-trailer found in a WalMart parking lot in San Antonio, Texas. Authorities found 39 people in the vehicle, but had reason to believe that there had at one time been as many as 100 in the small space. All of the individuals appeared to be suffering from heatstroke, and many will likely have related injuries and other health problems from which they will suffer for the rest of their lives. It appears that the individuals involved were undocumented immigrants, seeking to gain access into the country illegally.
Continue reading “What Can be Done about Human Trafficking?”
Back in 1994, Sarah Dunant published a collection of essays titled The War of Words: The Political Correctness Debate, and it was met with a great deal of media coverage. A large portion of the country had been moved by a sensitivity to language that could offend or contribute to an undesirable power schema, and this sensitivity had been met with scorn or doubt by another large portion of the country, often along party lines.
Continue reading “Finding New Language to Reimagine Disability”
This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.
Suppose your boss asks you to fudge certain numbers on a business report on the same week the company is conducting layoffs. Is this an ethical dilemma, a financial dilemma, or seeing as it will affect your family, a social dilemma? Likely, all three are true, and more layers exist beneath the surface. Are you in debt from taking a luxurious vacation? Do you have children in college? Are you hoping to get a promotion soon? Research shows that navigating through these many layers makes it increasingly difficult to see the ethical dilemma. This describes “ethical fading,” the process by which individuals are unable to see the ethical dimensions of a situation due to overriding factors.
Ann Tenbrunsel first described ethical fading in 2004 as, “the process by which the moral colors of an ethical decision fade into bleached hues that are void of moral implications.” Since moral decisions are made in the same parts of the brain that process emotions, moral decisions are made almost automatically, instinctively, and therefore are prone to self-deception. Self-deception appears in the workplace when employees see an ethical dilemma as firstly a financial dilemma or personal dilemma instead. Seeing a dilemma, such as polishing numbers in a report, as a choice that could affect personal financial stability allows an individual to make unethical decisions while still referring to themselves as an ethical person. In fact, ethical fading eliminates the awareness that one is making an unethical decision in the first place.
This phenomenon can manifest in a variety of ways, making ethical fading a difficult problem to tackle. Sometimes, an individual replaces the idea of an ethical dilemma with a financial or personal dilemma. Sometimes an individual is under so much pressure that an ethical dilemma passes through them unseen. In other cases, individuals are exposed to ethical dilemmas so often that they become jaded.
Tenbrunsel argues that ethics training in companies is null and void if ethical fading is occurring. No amount of training can teach an individual how to navigate an ethical dilemma if one doesn’t see an ethical dilemma in the first place. One recent case study of ethical fading is with college administration. In 2009, The University of Illinois was found to have a hidden admissions process that pushed through applicants with significant ties to politicians, donors, and university officials. Since the ethical dilemma was lost in the culture and organizational structure of the university’s administration, this case has been deemed an example of ethical fading. Michael N. Bastedo, director of the Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, stated that a growing number of college administrations are “starting to see ethical problems as system problems.”
Like other examples of ethical fading, budget cuts were pressuring the administration to reach out to donors more, and the ethical problem of giving preferential treatment to certain applicants was forgotten. Following Tenbrunsel’s argument, this problem wouldn’t be remedied with ethics training, unless the hidden applications system was fixed as well. Since those inside the administration didn’t see the hidden application system as an ethical problem in the first place, ethics training wouldn’t prompt employees to come forward and fix the application system.
A similar incident has been occurring in the military as well. In 2015, a study by Army War College professors Leonard Wong and Stephen J. Gerras found that lying is rampant in the military, and is likely caused by the immense physical and emotional strain that soldiers experience. Ethical fading in this case means that Army officers have become “ethically numb” to the consequences of lying. When the professors pressed their participants on how they manage juggling their many duties, classic sugar-coat phrases often heard in the business sector were reported. In order to satisfy their many duties and requirements, Army officers routinely resort to deception in the form of “hand-waving, fudging, massaging, and checking the box.” This case reveals that financial strain is not the only cause of ethical fading, but physical and emotional strain as well, and that sectors besides business are prone to ethical fading in their employees.
Tenbrunsel’s argument for self-deception provides yet another obstacle for business ethics. If the cause of unethical behavior isn’t caused by a lack of information and training, but the human trait of self-deception, no amount of ethics seminars will discourage unethical behavior. As a start, ethics training should include information on how to spot ethical fading, overcome prejudices, and tips to handle emotional strain in the workplace. However, ethical fading helps address the fact that unethical behavior is not limited to unethical people. Tenbrunsel points out the fact that everyone practices self-deception at some point, and this may be the start to addressing unethical behavior in the workplace properly. Addressing unethical behavior as a human tendency will hopefully start to fill the gaps in current ethics training programs. If not, ethical dilemmas will continue to be sugar-coated and slip through the cracks.
As I write these lines, I still do not know whether or not O. J. Simpson will be paroled. His hearing is scheduled for July 20. But, regardless of the outcome, a consideration of his life always invites ethical reflections.
Continue reading “O. J. Simpson and the Complicated Legacy of Identity Politics”
In prisons throughout the United States, a total of somewhere around 80,000 prisoners are isolated from human contact for 22 to 24 hours a day. These prisoners are kept in very small cells—spaces of roughly 80 square feet. In the cell is a bed, a toilet, and very little else. Prisoners in solitary are fed three meals a day and are often allowed outside every day for an hour, with no contact with other prisoners. The practice, commonly known as “solitary confinement” has come to be known by a number of euphemisms, including “restrictive housing” and “segregation.”
Continue reading “Taking Stock of Solitary Confinement’s Mental Toll”
This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.
Charlie Gard is an 11-month-old boy suffering from an inherited and terminal mitochondrial disease. He cannot move his arms and legs or breathe unaided. At the time of writing, Charlie was still in intensive care at a UK hospital. Charlie’s parents decided that Charlie should be brought to the United States to receive an experimental treatment that may help alleviate his condition. However, the doctors at the UK hospital decided that the experimental treatment would not likely improve Charlie’s quality of life. Since the parents and the doctors disagreed on what would be in Charlie’s best interests, the courts got involved. The UK legal system has so far ruled that receiving the experimental treatment would not be in Charlie’s best interest, and Charlie should be removed from life-sustaining treatment to receive palliative care; the legal process is still in process concerning Charlie’s ultimate fate.
Even after his passing, Otto Warmbier continues to make headlines. Over 17 months ago, Warmbier, an American college student, was detained while attempting to leave North Korea after a trip with Young Pioneer Tours. According to The Daily Beast, Warmbier was accused and found guilty of stealing a propaganda sign from his hotel, and was sentenced to remain in the country for 15 years of hard labor. A few weeks ago, Warmbier was returned home under mysterious circumstances and in a comatose state, before eventually dying.
Continue reading “Privilege, Punishment and Cultural Relativism: The Case of Otto Warmbier”
On July 4, car giant Volvo announced its plan to suspend all production of non-electric or hybrid cars by the year 2019. This means that Volvo will not produce any new diesel or gasoline-powered cars in only two years. In reaction to this announcement, France’s new cabinet released an ambitious plan to ban all diesel and petroleum-fueled car sales by 2040. Though France is not the only country to take this approach to clean energy transition, regulating the sale of petroleum-fueled cars is still very rare. France’s ecology minister stated that the new standard was “a way to fight against air pollution.” Though this move is being applauded by many environmentalists, is the French government’s regulation of petroleum fueled cars really better for the environment? And how will this new regulation influence socioeconomic inequality?
Continue reading “The Costs of a World Without Fossil Fuel-Powered Cars”
Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer died on July 2. It was hardly noticed in English language media. This is not surprising as, indeed, he was an obscure person. But, unfortunately, his legacy lives on, and the harm he has caused far outweighs the media attention that he has been given (Spanish and German newspapers have dedicated more attention to his death). Continue reading “Ryke Geerd Hamer and the Dangers of Positive Thinking”
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, as well as South Sudan’s National Bureau of Statistics, recently declared that certain area of South Sudan are no longer in famine, but “but almost two million people are [still] on the brink of starvation.” According to an April 4, 2017 BBC article, the famine in South Sudan started in February 2017, during which 100,000 people faced starvation. This was reportedly the first time in six years that a famine had been declared in any part of the world. The main reason for the South Sudan famine is the current violence precipitated by political disagreements between the president and vice president of the country. The president fired the vice president in July 2013, who he later accused of wanting to take power, and forces loyal to both sides escalated the political dispute into armed conflict.
Continue reading “South Sudan’s Famine and the Moral Relevance of Distance”
In 2014, Conrad Roy III, an eighteen-year-old resident of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, committed suicide. Roy placed a generator inside the cab of his pickup truck to facilitate the production and inhalation of a lethal amount of carbon monoxide.
In recent months, Roy had expressed to friends and family that he was in a low place mentally. He shared details about his psychological state with his girlfriend, Michelle Carter. In a series of text messages and Facebook correspondence over the course of a few weeks, Carter encouraged Roy to end his own life. “I thought you wanted to do this,” she told him, “The time is right and you’re ready, you just need to do it! You can’t keep living this way. You just need to do it like you did last time and not think about it and just do it babe. You can’t keep doing this every day.” When he expressed reservations about going through with it, Carter insisted, “You’re just making it harder on yourself by pushing it off, you just have to do it.”
In one of the final rulings before the Supreme Court’s summer recess, the court found that it was unconstitutional to deny civil funds to a Missouri church on the basis that it was a religious institution. Trinity Lutheran Church applied for a grant that would re-surface its playground with recycled tires, creating a safer rubber surface for its preschool children to play on. Forty-four non-profit organizations applied for the grants, and the church’s application ranked fourth among them, but it was denied the grant on the grounds that it was a religious institution and thereby is an ineligible beneficiary of these public benefits.
Continue reading “The Church, the State, and a Missouri Playground”