The Ethics of Choice

WATCH THE VIDEO

The Jepson School of Leadership Studies presents a discussion between economist Tyler Cowen and ethicist Jessica Flanigan. They will explore the ethical challenges of globalization and development, inequality and markets, politics today, and what we owe to the distant future.

Tyler Cowen, the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics and Chair and Faculty Director of the Mercatus Center, George Mason University

Jessica Flanigan, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies and Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law (PPEL); the Richard L. Morrill Chair in Ethics and Democratic Values, University of Richmond

Panel Chair
Jessica Flanigan, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies and Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law (PPEL); the Richard L. Morrill Chair in Ethics and Democratic Values, University of Richmond

Panelists
Ryan Davis, Associate Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University
Suzanne Marie Love, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Georgia State University
James Lindley Wilson, Assistant Professor of Political Science, The University of Chicago

Description:
Kantians generally think that it’s very important to respect people’s rights against interference. But philosophers who agree on a broadly Kantian ethical framework often disagree about what this framework requires politically. This panel includes three Kantian-ish philosophers who emphasize three different political approaches— anarchism, socialism, and democracy. Our goal for this panel is to figure out why they disagree about justice when they agree about ethics.

WATCH THE VIDEO

Panel Chair
Jennifer Cable, Professor of Music, Coordinator of Vocal Studies, University of Richmond

Panelists
Monti Datta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Richmond
Roger Mancastroppa, Adjunct Instructor, Liberal Arts; Associate Director, Academic Skills Center, University of Richmond

 

WATCH THE VIDEO

Panel Chair
Allison Anna Tait, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Professor of Law, University of Richmond

Panelists
Naomi R. Cahn, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy Distinguished Professor of Law; Nancy L. Buc ’69 Research Professor in Democracy and Equity; Director, Family Law Center, University of Virginia
Bridget J. Crawford, Professor of Law, Elisabeth Haub School of Law, Pace University
Carla Spivack, Oxford Research Professor and Director, Certificate Program in Estate Planning, Oklahoma City University School of Law

Moderator
Christopher Corts, Professor of Law, Legal Practice, University of Richmond
 
Description:
This panel will explore the various ways in which the options of ordinary- and low-wealth families for financial flourishing and economic stability are circumscribed and even undermined by the legal frameworks surrounding marriage, inheritance, and wealth management. While discursive tropes about opportunity, financial democratization, and economic mobility abound, rules governing family formation, taxation, and wealth management all provide benefit almost uniquely to high-wealth families. The result is a landscape of inequality in which legal rules enable both wealth gains and wealth gaps. Moreover, the intricacies of these legal frameworks reveal that genuine "choice" in family money matters is reserved for elite families.

WATCH THE VIDEO

Panel Chair
Jan French, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Richmond

Panelists
Patricia Boling, Professor of Political Science, Purdue University
Meredith Harbach, Professor of Law, University of Richmond

Description:
The panel will consider ethical choices raised in three contexts: using food justice to challenge the dominant frame that what we eat is a matter of individual choice and not a matter for public policy or regulation; the state’s reactive orientation toward law and policy regulating families and children; and treatment of seriously mentally ill adults, the family’s caring role, and privacy/autonomy concerns. Through these cases, panelists will challenge the assumption that certain concerns are strictly private, individual choices and propose alternative ways of thinking about choice that might lead to policy changes.

WATCH THE VIDEO

Panel Chair
Terry L. Price, Professor of Leadership Studies and Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law; Coston Family Chair in Leadership and Ethics, University of Richmond

Panelists
Alfredo Yei Hernandez, Associate, VoteTripling.org
David Lefkowitz, Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law (PPEL); Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of Richmond 
John M. Parrish, Chief of Staff and Special Assistant to the President, Loyola Marymount University

Description:
This session explores the ethics of choice under conditions of moral uncertainty. First, what role should concern for one’s own virtue play in making decisions that are morally risky? One intuitive answer is that it should play some role but that this consideration is not decisive. Even if virtue ethicists can vindicate this intuitive answer, we might conclude that they are committed to an unattractively obsessive concern with their own virtue in such circumstances. Second, what should we make of the fact that when leaders do what they decided was necessary in the situation, there remains a sense in which their behavior is morally problematic and, most important, they feel that they did something wrong? Perhaps the feelings associated with so-called dirty hands behavior are ultimately unreliable indicators of ethical failure—sometimes leaders have done wrong but sometimes their behavior is not wrong at all. Finally, we might ask whether institutions have the capacity to act conscientiously? While some classic criteria of civil disobedience—publicity, communication, and non-violence—can easily be met by institutions, the most distinctive criterion—conscientiousness—is more complicated. Can these factors potentially ground institutional claims to conscientious action that mirror the key features underlying individuals’ rights claims to conscientious disobedience?

WATCH THE VIDEO 

Panel Chair
Monti Datta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Richmond

Panelists
Andrea Simpson, Associate Dean, Thriving, Inclusivity, Diversity, and Equity (TIDE) and Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Richmond
Raymond Tademy, Adjunct Instructor, Virginia Commonwealth University 

Description:
The panelists are part of an Arc of Justice (A&S) project entitled, “The Carceral Institution Education Project.” The project seeks to design a curriculum to offer citizens inside of Virginia state prisons. Covid interrupted the full launching of the project, which is now underway. The panelists will discuss the current state of carceral education, and why education is a key component of rehabilitation and re-entry.

WATCH THE VIDEO 

Panel Chair
Christopher R. von Rueden, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond

Panelists
Sarah Brosnan, Distinguished University Professor, Co-Director Language Research Institute, Georgia State University
Andrew Delton, Associate Professor, Political Science and the College of Business, Stony Brook University
Amrisha Vaish, Pamela Feinour Edmonds and Franklin S. Edmonds, Jr. Discovery Associate Professor in Psychology, University of Virginia

Description:
Why do we make the moral decisions we do? This session presents research broadly related to this question, from four speakers representing diverse disciplines: primatology, developmental and evolutionary psychology, and cultural anthropology. This diversity is purposeful: understanding moral decision-making- including how it varies with age and across cultures- requires consideration of primate and human evolution.

Panel Chair
Marilie Coetsee, Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond

Panelists
Ryan Davis, Associate Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University
Amanda Greene, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University College London 
Andrew Sabl, Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto

Leaders have power to make choices on behalf, and for the benefit, of their followers. In making these choices, leaders face certain characteristic moral dilemmas. First, leaders must be accountable to followers while preserving the freedom to make executive decisions that generate beneficial outcomes. Second, leaders must balance responsibilities to support the good of the group as a whole against responsibilities to individual members who lose out from those decisions. Third, leaders must avoid gaslighting their followers while also being willing to make judgments on behalf of those followers on the basis of evidence they may not fully understand or appreciate. This panel considers these tensions inherent to the practice of leadership and recommends moral practices that leaders—and followers—should adopt to address those tensions.

WATCH THE VIDEO

Panel Chair
Tom J. Shields, Associate Professor of Education and Leadership Studies; Chair of Graduate Education; Associate Dean for Academic and Students Affairs in the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, University of Richmond

Panelists
Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership, Virginia Commonwealth University
Javaid Siddiqi, President & CEO, The Hunt Institute; Former-Secretary of Education for Virginia
Robert Stevens, Associate Prinicipal, CodeRVA

Description:
School choice is a new phenomenon in K-12 schools in the U.S. The policies around school choice take many forms, with some being more controversial than others. This panel will feature academics and practitioners who will to discuss the role of school choice in our society and examine the theoretical and the practical aspects of what has become a focal point of debate in our American K-12 education system.

WATCH THE VIDEO 

Panel Chair
Richard Dagger, E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair in the Liberal Arts, Emeritus; Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law (PPEL), University of Richmond

Panelists
Yvonne Chiu, Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy, U.S. Naval War College
Robert S. Taylor, Professor of Political Science; Director of Undergraduate Studies in Political Science, University of California, Davis
Jeppe von Platz, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Coordinator of the Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law (PPEL) Program, University of Richmond

Description:
Cooperation and choice seem to be entangled in a paradox.  On the one hand, the requirements of cooperation inevitably impose constraints on the individuals who find themselves engaged in cooperative activities; but on the other hand, cooperation makes it possible for individuals to do things -- and thus to choose to do things -- they could not do on their own.  Cooperation thus seems to expand and limit the freedom of choice at the same time.  The aim of this panel is to consider ways of disentangling or living with this paradox, with attention to the relationship of cooperation and choice in such areas of life as politics, economics, social relations, and even warfare.

WATCH THE VIDEO 

Panel Chair
Frank Abumere, Zuzana Simoniova Cmelikova Visiting International Scholar, University of Richmond

Panelist
Samuel Ujewe, Senior Research Ethics Advisor, Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Description:
The two major distinction lines in global justice are the relational approach and the non-relational approach. The relational approach is associative, that is, it is member-based. It emphasizes that the common relationships that bind moral agents of justice together have moral significance. While the non-relational approach denies that justice is based on any special relationship. It asserts that justice is based on our common humanity and common human factors such as natural prerogatives, basic needs, and so on. In view of the above contrasting approaches, this panel seeks to explore the scope or extensity of our moral obligation to each other. 

WATCH THE VIDEO

Panel Chair
Miriam McCormick, Professor of Philosophy, University of Richmond

Panelists
Coleen Macnamara, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside
Nancy Schauber, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law (PPEL); Coordinator, Law and Liberal Arts Minor, University of Richmond

Description:
This sessions explores reasons for the choices we make, and actions we take, as well as what we can expect from one another as moral agents.  Some more specific questions to be addressed include: If I don’t identify with actions by a group of which I are member does this excuse me from responsibility? What constitutes a grateful response to a kindness given?