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Proposed CEHV Programs

COMPAS (Conversations On Morality, Politics, And Society)

The COMPAS program is a year-long, University-wide “conversation” on a topic of current controversy, such as immigration or sustainability. Altogether it encompasses dozens of events in variety of venues and in conjunction with many different programs and units. It seeks to model the sort of informed, civil discussion of complex issues that is too often absent from public discourse and that universities are in a unique position to promote. The COMPAS program comprises the following components:
  • The Academic Core: This aspect of the COMPAS program is composed of an autumn conference, several COMPAS Colloquia throughout the academic year, and a spring conference. These events are organized directly by the Center with the help of an expert advisory committee made up of faculty. The conferences focus attention on central issues related to the main theme. They are strongly interdisciplinary and aim to demonstrate the value of having researchers from different disciplines engage each other about the ethical dimensions of their work. Conference panels bring together leading scholars from other universities and showcase the research of OSU’s own faculty. Past conferences have culminated in a keynote presentation by an internationally known figure: Jorge Castañeda (former Foreign Minister of Mexico), Jose Antonio Vargas (Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and advocate for the ‘Dream Act’), Cass Sunstein (Harvard professor and former administrator for the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs), and Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia Professor, Director of the Earth Institute, and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals). Colloquia are selected and supported after a consultation with relevant academic and other units of the university, with roughly one colloquium per month running from the fall through spring. Colloquia may take a variety of forms, from lectures to debates to creative presentations followed by discussion.
  • The University Life Program: The COMPAS organizers also work with as many existing programs at OSU as possible to plan and promote other events related to the COMPAS theme. Partners have included The Provost’s Discovery Themes Lecture, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Office of Outreach and Engagement, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Buckeye Book Community/First Year Experience, the Humanities Institute, the Thompson Library and Billy Ireland Cartoon Library, the Undergraduate Colloquium Series, the Digital Storytelling Program, the Multicultural Center, the Honors and Scholars Program, the Swing Space Gallery, and a variety of undergraduate student groups.
  • Educational Program: The COMPAS program has developed and received approval for two COMPAS-related courses: ASC 230 and ASC 230E (an honors-embedded course). Each of these qualifies for GEC Arts & Humanities credit in the Cultures & Ideas category or, if the student prefers, GEC Social Sciences credit in the Individuals & Groups category. The COMPAS organizers are working to promote COMPAS theme-related courses across campus and plan to fund a prize for undergraduate research related to the theme in the year following a given COMPAS program. 
  • Community Outreach: The COMPAS organizers work to reach beyond the campus to involve the broader community in the conversation as well. Past partners have included the Columbus Mayor’s Office, WOSU/All Sides with Ann Fisher, the Columbus Council on World Affairs, the Mid-Ohio Food Bank, the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio, the Columbus Metropolitan Club, and Metro High School. COMPAS has also begun working with the Kettering Foundation on their National Issues Forum and related programs concerning the quality of public discourse in America. A pilot collaboration on a future National Issues Forum booklet is scheduled to commence in 2015-16. The reach of COMPAS will be significantly extended by an association with the National Issues Forum and COMPAS itself will provide a platform for ongoing research about effective public deliberation.

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Post-doctoral/Pre-doctoral Fellowship Program

The intellectual vitality of an ambitious Center requires an active and engaged community of researchers and organizers. In addition to OSU’s core ethics faculty in a number of departments, the Center will develop a pre- and post-doctoral fellowship program for promising graduate students and recent PhDs doing significant new work on topics related to the work of the Center. These fellows will not only teach related courses offered by cooperating departments but will take an active role in organizing and guiding the Center programs each year. They will come from a variety of disciplines, and over time will contribute to raising the profile of OSU as a leader of ethical reflection on important social issues as the fellows go on to permanent positions at leading universities around the world. The teaching component will enhance instruction in ethics at OSU  and provide a (modest) source of funding for the Center.
 
 

ETHOS (Ethics THroughout Ohio State)

The ancient Greeks used the term “ethos” to describe both the guiding values that characterize a community and the individual character traits that underwrite claims to expertise. The ETHOS initiative (Ethics THroughout Ohio State) combines these two meanings: first, it is a forum for OSU scholars to reflect upon the ethical questions that attracted them into and confront them within their disciplines; and second, this process of reflection will help to define the values (and value) of the OSU community more broadly. Two signature ETHOS programs will be central to realizing those goals.  First, an annual ETHOS Address will sponsor a distinguished member of the faculty, drawn from a diverse range of disciplines, to deliver a public lecture to the incoming class of students (also open to the larger OSU community) discussing the ethical and value considerations that animate his or her scholarly vocation. Second, ETHOS Across the Disciplines will be a curated series of relatively short (fifteen- to twenty-minute) high-quality web talks inviting faculty to reflect on these questions in a more informal setting. Together these efforts will promote critical reflection on the ethical issues that motivate members of our community and the professional challenges they confront.
 
 

EVOC (Ethics & Values Open Colloquium)

The various projects of the Center for Ethics and Human Values are bound together by a belief in the importance of sustained reflection on the values that unite us – and divide us – as human beings and as members of local, national and global communities. One of the core programs of the Center will therefore be a colloquium series on ethics and values, the purpose of which is to promote cutting-edge research in the various fields of ethical inquiry, including metaethics, value theory, normative and applied ethics, moral psychology, and the normative dimensions of legal and political philosophy. The Colloquium will sponsor a series of monthly talks over the course of the academic year by OSU faculty and distinguished faculty from other institutions, with the aim of building a community of scholars whose work has a specifically ethical focus, and of promoting research that advances the frontiers of ethical inquiry.
 
 

Ethics Circle

The Ethics Circle will aim to provide members of the OSU community with the training and support they need to foster ethical awareness in their teaching, educational programming, or other activities on campus. It will lay the foundation for the long-term success of the Center for Ethics and Human Values by drawing together and growing the community of administrators, faculty, and students who wish to become more reflective about the ethical dimensions of their work. The program will have two mutually-reinforcing parts. First, it will host a regular brown-bag lunch series, led by Ethics Circle members and by outside speakers, to discuss ethical issues of interest to the OSU community. These informal gatherings will promote reflection on particular moral or social problems that often cut across disciplines. Second, it will organize an annual internal fellowship program that provides incentives and training to OSU administrators, faculty, and graduate students to help them incorporate ethical thinking more directly in their teaching and other activities. Members of the OSU community will apply to become Ethics Circle fellows by proposing a ‘project’ of ethical reflection that they wish to pursue in conversation with other fellows over the course of the academic year. Examples of projects might include a physician reflecting on the nature of well-being or an operations administrator thinking about the social demands of sustainability. Eight to ten fellows will be selected. The program will include a week-long introduction to ethical theories as well as monthly dinners to discuss fellows’ projects, all moderated by an OSU ethicist. Fellows will also be given funds to pursue their projects and a financial award upon successful completion of the program.
 
 

Ethics in the Community

This program will promote reflection on ethics and human values in area schools, civic organizations, retirement homes, and other community groups. The core program will develop relationships with Columbus-area teachers at all levels who are interested in promoting ethical reflection in their classes. Coordinated activities or course modules might include an introduction to major ethical thinkers, a set of classes on practical ethical problems encountered in everyday life, reflections on value and the nature of the good life, or discussion of ethical dilemmas presented in literature. The program will engage faculty and graduate students trained in ethics to carry out these modules.
 
 

Ethics Workshops

Ethics Workshops will provide resources for colloquia, panel discussions, and workshops that promote the mission of the Center but do not fall under one of the other Center programs.