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About the Center
Fordham University's Center for Ethics Education was created in 1999 to promote high quality teaching, research, and service through intellectual appreciation of moral values and critical thinking about ethical practices. The Center offers students, professionals, and the public knowledge and skills to study, inform and shape national policies that emphasize fair and respectful care for diverse peoples, communities, and nations. The Center provides a broad range of multidisciplinary ethics education opportunities, including degree programs, major lectures and support for ethics research and scholarship. In this era of increased need for ethical discourse in academic, professional, and public life, the Center draws upon social and other areas of ethical discourse to help advance the common good through respect for individuals and community diversity.
The cross-disciplinary synergy of the human sciences, moral philosophy, and moral theology extends Fordham University's national and international role in finding new means of understanding and enhancing the dignity of vulnerable persons across philosophical, cultural, and religious differences. Following the Jesuit philosophy of homines pro aliis — men and women for others — the Center is dedicated to fostering teaching and scholarship infused with concern for the moral responsibility of persons and the moral integrity of the University's overlapping communities of inquiry, instruction, and faith. The primary mission of the Center is to assist Fordham University in its historical commitment to the dignity of the human person and the advancement of the common good. The Center fulfills this mission by providing a broad range of ethics education activities aimed at encouraging pedagogical, scholarly, scientific, and public practices guided by respect, fairness, and care for diverse peoples, communities, and nations.
Our nation has entered the twenty-first century with a heightened concern over the ethical behavior of politicians, educators, scientists, organizations, and professionals. Colleges and universities are rethinking their curricula to provide education that will strengthen moral leadership and improve society worldwide. The need for ethical discourse in academic, professional, and public life has never been more urgent.
As a response to the needs of our society, the Center's mission is organized around three interacting motifs: the interdisciplinary synergy of Moral Responsibility, Global Ethics, and Responsible Science. These motifs extend Fordham University's national and international role in finding new means for reanimating social hope and trust and creating languages to articulate the dignity of human persons across philosophical, cultural, and religious differences.
The Moral Responsibility motif organizes critical ethical dialogue on social justice, common goods, and moral responsibility as grounded in both historical traditions and contemporary currents in philosophical ethics. Through this thematic emphasis, the Center: a) maps the urgent contemporary issues onto thinking about individual and collective responsibilities, b) outlines the role of moral values in public discourse, and c) enunciates the rights of citizens to conscience as well as the responsibility to mutual respect in a democratic, pluralistic society.
The Global Ethics motif introduces a theological voice to the various ethical issues that face an increasingly global culture. Through this moral lens, Center activities explore how the global culture impacts traditional theological language and ethical categories, provide a Roman Catholic/Christian perspective on global issues, and promote dialogue with other religious and cultural traditions on the concepts of the moral person and the moral nation within a global community.
The Responsible Science motif introduces a concept of responsible science grounded in both personal moral agency and interpersonal understanding arrived at through moral discourse among scientists, research participants, their families, and the communities they represent. Through this thematic focus, and against the backdrop of historical abuses of government sponsored experimentation, the Center encourages examination of personal, cultural, religious, and institutional influences on moral thought and action in relationship to scientific conduct and pioneers methods of social justice to insure that vulnerable individuals have equal access to research benefits without sacrificing their autonomy or welfare.
Through the convergence of these three thematic motifs, the Center opens opportunities for scholars, scientists, religious leaders, community advocates, and policy makers for exploring rigorously and respectively grounds of individual and collective responsibilities for social and global justice and solidifies in the world-wide search for principles and strategies of transitional justice, repair, and conciliation in the wake of institutional and scientific exploitation, political violence, terror, or oppression.
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