The Johns Hopkins Berman Institute for Bioethics published a blog post on the Arrighi Center’s 2016-2017 general seminar on the Practical Ethics of University-Community Engagement.

The post is written by Beverly Silver (Director of the Arrighi Center and Chair of the Sociology Department), Christopher Nealon (Chair of the English Department), Daniel Pasciuti and Sahan Savas Karatasli (Assistant Research Scientists in the Arrighi Center), and Chris Westcott (Graduate Student in the English Department). The post not only discusses some of the lessons learned from the seminar series, but also addresses what motivated the Arrighi Center to focus its fall 2016 general seminar on the question of practical ethics. Here is a short quote from the blogpost:

“When the Arrighi Center for Global Studies was established in 2012, our goal was to provide a space for a critical analysis of urgent problems arising from contemporary processes of globalization, including ethical debates around questions of local/global governance, democratic entitlements, violence, and inequality. The April 2015 uprising in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray gave a new sense of urgency to our desire to focus directly on the ethical dimensions of contemporary capitalism, as it not only put a spotlight on the deep racial and class disparities in the city but also brought to the surface a set of urgent ethical questions about the relationship between the university and the community. The Explorations in Practical Ethics grant call [from the Berman Institute for Bioethics] arrived just as we were discussing ways to intensify our focus on the ethical dimensions of 21st century capitalism locally and globally.”