Category: ethics

A role for philosophy remains…

Austin Hughes’ superb long piece in The New Atlantis, here.

Money quote:

Of all the fads and foibles in the long history of human credulity, scientism in all its varied guises — from fanciful cosmology to evolutionary epistemology and ethics — seems among the more dangerous, both because it pretends to be something very different from what it really is and because it has been accorded widespread and uncritical adherence. 

Do read it all. It’s incredibly important.

Greg Smith welcomes me back to the East Coast

I arrived to beautiful spring weather yesterday afternoon–it was warmer in DC than in LA–and the bombshell from Greg Smith which you can find here.

Money quote from his op ed in the NYT:

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money.

In higher education, we face analogous ethical challenges and from my perspective, the key thing to remember at all times is that the core mission of colleges must continue to be, putting the education of our students first. In eras of austerity and tight budgets, that touchstone, can too easily be forgotten.