Ethical questions posed at ASU symposium

In a recent article, Daniel Friedman of Raising Arizona Kids asked parents, “How often do you talk to your kids about ethical issues?” Friedman was reporting on the 4th Annual Lincoln Ethics Symposium, which attracted approximately 400 high school students to Arizona State University’s Memorial Union, Nov.12. This year’s forum was themed, “Are we smart enough to save ourselves? Are we kind enough to save each other?”

As Friedman noted, the high school students in attendance were well-prepared to ask questions and offer comments, having completed pre-event exercises about each of the four symposium topics:

• Is your cell phone linked to atrocities in Africa?
• How well do we take care of ourselves and each other, really?
• Who’s truly green and who’s greenwashing?
• In praise of conflict.

The annual symposium continues to draw an increasing number of high school students, according to programs director Kelly O’Brien of ASU’s Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, which hosts the forum. Professor Jason Robert, interim director of the center, served as master of ceremonies. To stimulate discussion, four distinguished ASU professors and fellows framed the conversation by presenting each of their ethical questions briefly and then opening it up to the audience.

In his article, Friedman notes that Cecelia Moreno, a junior at ASU Preparatory Academy, was surprised when she calculated her ecological footprint in advance of the symposium. Moreno had completed one of the exercises suggested by LaDawn Haglund, Lincoln Fellow for Human Rights and Sustainability and associate professor of justice and social inquiry in ASU’s School of Social Transformation in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Moreno said she had not expected her middle-class lifestyle to consume the equivalent of four earths’ resources.

Other symposium speakers included Daniel Rothenberg, Lincoln Fellow for Ethics and International Human Rights Law; Amy Landis, Lincoln Fellow for Sustainable Development and Ethics and associate professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and The Built Environment in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering; and Braden Allenby, Lincoln Professor of Sustainable Engineering and Ethics, President’s Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and The Built Environment in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, professor of law in Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, distinguished sustainability scientist in the Global Institute of Sustainability and director of the Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management.