Each year, CEHV selects a challenging theme for its “Conversations on Morality, Politics, and Society” (COMPAS) program, inviting speakers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives to help faculty, students, and other community members think constructively about next steps for our society. Complex ethical challenges need input from different areas of expertise, and COMPAS brings these voices together for wide-ranging, problem-solving discussions.
2025-26 COMPAS Theme: Food
This year’s COMPAS theme focuses on the many areas of private and public life that are impacted by our moral and political conceptions of food. Food is often a unifying staple of our relationships, a key ingredient in many families, friendships, and communities. However, it can also become a fissure in our divergent perspectives on the role of government and policy, the job of medicine and scientists, and the treatment of animals and the environment. Differing approaches to how we even define health, safety, and just access shape and is shaped by societal conceptions of class, gender, and race. Food, then, is present in disagreements regarding cultural awareness, diversity, immigration, foreign tariffs, social media, the authority of scientific expertise and regulatory oversight, and as such is situated at the center of our most pressing moral and political conversations today.
Past COMPAS Programs
Previous COMPAS topics include Immigration (2011-12), Public/Private (2013-14), Sustainability (2015-16), Inequality (2016-17), Religion in Public Life (2017-18), Technology (2018-19), What Is America? (2019-20), COVID-19 (2020-21), Markets and the Open Society (2021-22) and Education in Our Democracy (2022-23), COMPAS Directions: A Decade of Ethical Exploration (2023-24), and Work (2024-2025).