What is a good life and how should it be lived? How does our identity shape our morality? What does ethics mean in the face of power, violence, and cruelty?

They’re big questions, among life’s most important. Duke University’s Ethics Certificate Program offers an opportunity for undergraduate students to examine these issues in depth—to test their convictions, deepen their knowledge, and explore their ambitions. The curriculum offers a robust examination of ethics in moral traditions, art, literary imagination and everyday life that reflect localized knowledge and experience across cultures as well as the influence of a globalized world. It’s a rigorous course of study designed to prepare students for life—both personally and professionally.

Participants begin with the signature Gateway Course, The Challenges of Living an Ethical Life, which draws on ancient and modern texts including dramas, autobiographies, and political commentaries to explore fundamental ethical questions. They then choose six courses from a wide range of selections in philosophical, religious, and practical ethics, and in ethics in historical and cultural context, to build the program that best complements their chosen field of study. Participants finish with the Capstone Course, a research seminar where they will complete a research paper that integrates their special concerns into the broader issues of living an ethical life.

As participants advance through the program’s multidisciplinary coursework, they’ll learn how ethical issues have been framed across history and cultures, and how ethical challenges are being negotiated in practice by policymakers, researchers, doctors, journalists, and others. They’ll develop the knowledge and critical-thinking skills to fully engage in ethical debates. They’ll become part of a diverse intellectual community of peers, graduate students, and faculty scholars. And they’ll build a clear commitment to ethical thought and action that will serve them well throughout their life and career.

“The Ethics Certificate Program helps students to analyze the ethical challenges of everyday life, to see the world from an ethical perspective different than their own, and to engage the Gateway Course authors — Sartre, Job, Plato, James Baldwin, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Sophocles, Arendt, and Melville — in a moral dialogue that will continue throughout their lives.” – Professor Peter Euben

Download the Handbook for the Ethics Certificate Program (pdf)

Download a one-page flier on the Ethics Certificate Program (pdf)

2009 Ethics Certificate Program Graduates
(with majors and minors listed)
Dan Haaren - Political Science/Political Theory
Mary Key - Women’s Studies, Chemistry
Pamela Lang - Psychology/Personality & Social Behavior
Anne Meyers - History/Europe, Art History
Amanda Norris - Political Science/International Relations, French Studies
Christian Pikaart - Interdepartmental Relations/Political Science, History
Melissa Wiesner - Public Policy Studies, Cultural Anthropology