Subject: Ethics Education
Venue: Workshop on Ethics Education and Scientific and Engineering Research
Date of speech: August 25, 2008
Summary Excerpt
Rotten Apples or a Rotting Barrel
Crises of corporate and professional responsibility have been endemic to American society, at least since the last quarter of the nineteenth century. With each chapter of professional misconduct -- from the robber barons and the Teapot Dome scandals, from the progressive era through the Watergate, Iran Contra, and financial mismanagements of the last quarter of the twentieth century -- the response has been the same: calls for education in ethical citizenship, and specifically training in ethics as part of professional education. The cycle has been so often repeated that one can be surprised only by the paucity of models for providing that education.