Global Arc

The course aims to show the various regulatory methods used by constitutional democracies worldwide, present the relevant case law, and help students understand why emergency measures could be dangerous in constitutional democracies. It is one of the main tasks of this course to draw attention to the link between autocratic transitions and exceptional measures to help better understand the importance of preserving the values of the rule of law and to discuss the relevant examples from the origins of the ancient Roman dictatorship to the recent developments related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This course will explore the theory and practice of rhetoric in ancient Greece and Rome and the ways in which classical rhetoric has been adapted in modern American verbal art. From Gorgias and Demosthenes to Lincoln and Douglass, to Ida B. Wells and Fannie Lou Hamer, we will consider what makes individual speeches noteworthy in their local, historical contexts, as well as placing them in a larger rhetorical tradition. Throughout, we will analyze the role of ideologies of gender, class, race, nationality, religion, and sexuality in the construction of the rhetorical subject.

With the resurgence in anti-racist activism and the COVID-19 pandemic came a growing attention to racial disparities in health and healthcare. What are we to make of these disparities? What role do injustices - past and present - play in generating these disparities? More generally, what constitutes racial (in)justice in clinical care and research? This course will explore these questions, as well as the ethical and social implications of contemporary interventions offered to resolve racial disparities in healthcare.

We now have unprecedented control over how we are born, live, and die. Parents can choose to have a girl or a boy, a deaf or a hearing child. Soon they will be able to choose to have a smarter, more athletic, more beautiful child. Should we allow parents to do this? New drugs enable trauma victims to dampen the memories of painful experiences. Is picking and choosing among our memories an unacceptable tampering with the self? Many people think it is okay to follow a living will in terminating a life that is in a permanent vegetative state. But what about a living will that requests euthanasia as soon as Alzheimer's develops?

The course will challenge students to examine their life from an ethical perspective. Should altruism guide our life? What is effective altruism? Should we share our wealth with people who will otherwise die from poverty-related causes? How should we live and act in an era in which human activity is changing the planet's climate? What ethical considerations are raised by eating meat and other animal products? We will also consider the Supreme Court's decision on abortion. Students will be encouraged to question their ethical beliefs and explore how reason and argument can play a role in everyday ethical decision-making.

This course will discuss policy issues relating to the environment, using several case studies to provide a deeper understanding of the science and values involved.

This course will examine issues at the intersection of ethics, policy, and public health, paying particular attention to the centuries-long tension between individual rights and the common good. Ethical arguments are increasingly visible in public health activities in the United States and worldwide, demonstrating the continued relevance of long-standing debates over the proper role of government in promoting the health of individuals and communities. The course will explore ethical, historical, and policy aspects of public health activities, and it will consider the relationship between public health ethics and bioethics.

This course will examine issues at the intersection of emotional attachment, ethics and agency theory. In particular, we will consider whether and how disordered attachment orientations might bear on questions concerning the moral agency and ethical treatment of members of certain clinical populations, including psychopaths and those who suffer from (certain forms of) addiction. In exploring these issues, we will engage with recent literature on moral responsibility, autonomous agency, and bioethical approaches to understanding the nature and treatment of the aforementioned pathologies.

This seminar aims to introduce students to a range of philosophical debates in clinical and population-level bioethics. Among the topics in clinical bioethics that we may discuss are physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia; abortion; and the ethics of genetic enhancement. In population-level bioethics, questions we may discuss include the definition and measurement of health; cost-effectiveness and disability-discrimination; the significance of health inequalities; personal and social responsibility for health; treatment vs prevention in the fight against HIV/AIDS; and standards of care in clinical trials in the US and abroad.

The century that concluded with declarations of rights on both sides of the Atlantic witnessed a transformation in how people talked about rights. Previously a mostly philosophical discourse, rights talk entered the broader world of letters. But in some parts of the world (France in particular), this transformation also brought back Classical notions of natural right. This course explores how the modern language of rights emerged during the Enlightenment and Revolutionary periods, and also places this "Age of Rights" in a longer history stretching from Antiquity to the twentieth century.