An advocate for ethical consumership, KIE Nonresident Senior Fellow Christine Bader recently published an entry on the Wall Street Journal blog “The Juggle.” In her entry, she discusses the difficulty in obtaining information on the labor practices used to produce the rugs and carpet used in homes.
There is a growing market in the American food industry for products with eco-labels, advertising that products are organic, pesticide-free, sustainably harvested, and so on. In an article picked up by the Fox News website, Shana Starobin, KIE graduate student and Ph.D. candidate at the Nicholas School of the Environment, says “Hundreds of eco labels exist on all kinds of products, and there is the potential for companies and producers to make false claims.”
On Friday, November 9, a group of Kenan Institute for Ethics students began a new project at Durham’s Jordan High School. The team of undergraduates is presenting refugee monologues originally culled by students during last year’s DukeImmerse: Uprooted/Rerouted program. The monologues reflect personal stories of forced migration by Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal and Iraqi refugees living in Egypt, which were originally performed last spring.
Lead by Virginia Dillon and Kate Abendroth, the team consists of students enrolled in the FOCUS course “The Limits of Obligation? World Refugee Policy and International Law,” Eliza Meredith, Jojo Ramseyer, Natasha Sakraney, and Mousa Alshanteer. A series of readings will occur throughout the 2012-2013 school year, reaching every freshman student at Jordan High School.
In October, KIE Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong gave a lecture on the ethics of killing at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Ethics Grand Rounds lecture series. A video of the talk has been published.
The Duke Research Blog has recently featured former DukeImmerse student Ronnie Wimberley, who discusses his work through the program with refugees and his continued interest in migrant issues.
In a recent post to IslamiCommentary, a blog for perspectives and research on the study of Islam and the Muslim experience, Nadia El-Shaarawi uses the upcoming tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a touchstone for examining the plight of approximately 3 million displaced Iraqi refugees. El-Shaarawi uses her own work with Iraqi refugees in Egypt to explore reasons why refugees are reluctant to return to their home country, and the lack of resources the refugees face in their adopted nations.
As part of a recent workshop through Duke’s Thompson Writing Program, Jimmy Soni visited campus to work directly with undergraduate writers and discuss his new book Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato. The Duke Chronicle covered Soni’s participation in the program, “Compose Yourself: Writing for Change.”
In the wake of hurricane Sandy, global climate change has come to the forefront of media coverage. Chris MacDonald discusses steps corporations can take to better the situation in the magazine Canadian Business. Among his suggestions are movement away from carbon fuel, aiding government regulatory actions, and greater cross-industry collaboration. MacDonald is a KIE Nonresident Senior Fellow and Associate Professor at Ryerson University (Toronto).
KIE instructors will be teaching a few new courses in the upcoming semester, including:
Religion, Ethics, Psychology {Ethics 290S.06/Psych 290S.01/ICS 290S.11}
Instructor: Dimitri Putilin (Undergraduate level)
Tuesday/Thursday 1:25 – 2:40pm
The course will consider two distinct perspectives on ethics: religious and psychological. Religions provide the oldest, immensely influential accounts of what it means to be moral; with its empirical approach and innovative methods, moral psychology is able to shed new light on how moral ideals shape people’s thoughts and behavior in the modern world. We explore and contrast the ideals of moral perfection described in Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, and complement this with the understanding of morality which is emerging from empirical research in moral psychology, covering both established knowledge and current controversies. No prior knowledge of religion or psychology is required.
A Paradoxical Politics? Religions, Poverty, & Re-Imagining Citizenship in a Globalizing World {REL 999.08, XTIANTHE 840}
Instructors: Ebrahim Moosa, Dept. of Religion; Luke Bretherton, Divinity School
Tuesdays, 5:30-8:00 pm (Graduate level)
This interdisciplinary graduate seminar examines the paradoxes in the public sphere when faith, citizenship and poverty intersect with the myriad processes of globalisation. What is the shape, purpose and configuration of the public sphere in regional, national and international contexts that issue forth from the points where these intersect? Understanding the paradoxes produced by the intersection of faith, politics and economics is a crucial yet neglected dimension to negotiating the impact of globalisation locally, regionally and internationally on a wide range of issues such as public health, the environment, welfare provision, schooling, development aid, immigration, urban regeneration and security.
The Modern Regulatory State {HST 365D-01/PUBPOL 219D.001}
Instructor: Edward Balleisen
Monday/Wednesday 3:05-4:20pm, plus discussion section (Undergraduate level)
This new undergraduate course offers an extended foray into the regulatory black box. Framed around questions of historical origins and transformations, the course will begin with the construction of modern, technocratic regulatory bodies in Western Europe and especially the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The course will examine the evolution of these institutions during the twentieth-century and explore more recent developments, including processes of privatization/deregulation and the impact of globalization on regulatory frameworks, and the expansion of regulatory modes of governance to emerging economies.
In an opinion piece for ABC, Australia’s national broadcasting network, Luke Bretherton observes a surprising trend among American Christians debating whether to exercise their right to vote. He ascribes this phenomenon partly to the polarization of the public through the politics of commodification and also due to the Republican focus on individuality over society.