On Monday, April 8, 2019 the Monmouth University Murder of Ethicists and the Honors School co-sponsored the first World Ethics Café, made possible by funding from the Helen McMurray Bennett Endowment in Social Ethics. Organized by Associate Professor of Sociology and Endowed Chair of Social Ethics Johanna Foster, Ph.D., the event drew nearly 50 students to discuss provocative ethical issues in seven rotating roundtable sessions with Monmouth faculty who teach and research in the areas of ethics and social justice.
The faculty facilitators were all members of the cleverly-named Murder of Ethicists (“murder” meaning a large group of crows), a recently established network of professors working to elevate the campus conversation on social ethics, and to raise greater awareness about the wide range of threats to shared values of ethics, justice, and the common good that currently permeate our communities and our world.
Students were asked to consider questions like “Is it ethical to clone humans?” and “Is fair trade really fair?” Students also weighed in on whether or not it is right to pay CEOs 300 times the median pay of workers, or if the death penalty should be abolished.
Following the roundtables, students and faculty had an opportunity to share the extent to which their initial perspectives on the issues had been shifted or not, and how so. The Murder has plans to open the World Café again in semesters to come. For more information, please contact jfoster@monmouth.edu.
