Reflect on the three key lessons you take away from the course. Reflect on your perceived value of this course.
In the time of this course, I have learned that much of what my fellow classmates believe is in line with the material and what I believed as a leader with limited privilege. I believe the Ethics course was perfectly placed at the end of the coursework; if I were to start off the program with the hopeless sentiments of an inherent underclass that education cannot save, I do not believe I would have had such a inspirational yet dissatisfied point of view about leadership development. Nevertheless, I see much value in the course - I have learned to be suspicious of the actions of others while balancing the hopeful maverick aims of the preceding coursework. The three things I take away from this course are:
- What counts as ethical is in the eye of the beholder (and the beholder judges their actions far less critically than they do the actions of others) (LaFollette, 2007).
- Situational ethics and rule-based ethics have their reasoning, but since all people do not live by the same morals (based usually on religion), there really is no such thing as rule-based ethics on a macro levels.
- We can all stand to be better people and think more about how our actions impact others.
Though I meant this for traditionally-aged undergraduate, I do not believe every student is getting this from the program; perhaps it is too late in their learning for them to consider change. There have been more than a few examples which support my concern. Our A634.4.2.DQ - Racism and Religion focused a lot of power and privilege, particularly Affirmative Action. A lot of my fellow students felt that Affirmative Action was a reactionary yet racist law that hurt students and workers of the racial, religious and gender majority. I could not help but realize that most of my classmates are of the ascribed statuses that benefited and benefit from racial, religious and gender inequality. The overall sentiment was that, racial, religious and gender minorities need to get over the past. As one of the students notes:
Nothing could be more detrimental to the reputation of an institution of higher learning than giving a degree to someone who has refused to resolve some of their ignorance. I want the college experience to grow young adults into people who question what they read in the classroom and what they hear outside of the lecture hall. I want students to read, listen and converse with all people, considering all information but rationalizing the impact of such views. I want them to fight for people when they are unrepresented, as passionately as when they are standing next to them. Self-awareness, citizenship and understanding should be mastered skills of every graduate. I have dedicated my life to achieving this goal.
I do not deny past wrongdoings against minorities and that people have been deprived of many things because of their race. However, I and many others did not take part in those wrongdoings.The grandfathering of privilege is still ignored en mass by people who feel they have enough of a fight to the top (success) between one another is hard enough, without giving historically marginalized groups access to the battling cage. Kramer notes in the story of fictional crash-and-burn executive Marjorie Peel, “all were adept at propelling themselves to the top, willing to take risks and break rules” (Kramer, 2003). From the standpoint of justice for wrong, it does not seem that ignoring injustice is in line with any ethical perspective (though one could be made for utilitarian ethics which I will end this piece with). It is as if the racial, religious and gender preferred have said, "You've already lost. Accept your place and fight within your caste." It reminds me of the George R.R. Martin quote — ''A lion doesn't concern itself with the opinion of sheep." There is no time to feel individually obligated to help others when that could slow them down from stepping on others.
In week seven, our blog post discussed how people apply the practice of ethics to themselves and others. I was surprised to find that one of the speakers in the material was a formally trained ethicist who did speaking engagements with large companies, and the second speaker was a criminal who also did speaking engagements. Both have books and both are paid to discuss how to evaluate actions based on deontological and consequentialist thought. As I noted in A634.7.4.RB - Ethics and Behaviors, why would anyone pay a felon to talk about ethics? As much as I believe there is a sliver of hope in the criminal justice system in which some actually leave revitalized, it seems that the ex-felon has merely found a new way to exploit people. Though he discusses the way others evaluate their actions as ethical and unethical, he paradoxically does not see himself as a exploiter. As I survey other postings for A634.7.4.RB - Ethics and Behaviors (which are readily available with a Google search) I do not see many past students expressing concern with Gallagher's past either. Another assignment, detailing the career of MIT's Marilee Jones, shows how easily some can get away with unethical actions. Jones notes in her book “Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond,”
"Holding integrity is sometimes very hard to do because the temptation may be to cheat or cut corners,” it says. “But just remember that ‘what goes around comes around,’ meaning that life has a funny way of giving back what you put out.”She was found out after nearly 30 years to be a fraud, falsifying three institutional educations, but edging up to the role of Dean at one of the country's best colleges. Apparently it does pay to be a criminal. Perhaps to some, Jones was simply tactful, learning enough through experience to fake her way into a high level, almost-Ivy pay band. Jones said, two years after the scandal, she runs an admissions consulting service with parents who sometimes pay about $500 for a three-hour session. She reports she had also been approached by institutions interested in hiring her as an admissions dean (2009). There are no reports of Jones having to pay back any of the salary she was paid. Where is the justice? As ironic and contrary it seems, I wonder if other students believe that an ex-con makes for a equal partnering with a bioethicist? Would Gallagher be so intelligently insightful to viewers if he'd been a drug dealer?
There were a lot of things I read within our discussion question conversations that concerned me. For instance, in forum A634.2.2.DQ - Ethics: Their Definition and Mine, a student (serving in the Air Force) wrote:
While I could never support Hitler and his ambitions, I most certainly can empathize with him. Taking on a utilitarian point of view, one could argue that Hitler was trying to perfect the human race and weed out the weak.The idea that anyone can manage to say that they empathized with Hitler is completely troublesome and a sign of a not-so-dying sentiment of situational ethics gone terribly wrong. A person who has sworn to serve all of the "weak" civilians (in 2012, only about 13% of U.S. adults overall are veterans) believes that the aims of an international terrorist were admirable. Hitler's goal of "weeding out the weak" was not based on an illness within a population or a psychological deficit that would have caused generations of people who could not care for themselves. His definition of weak was a people following a religion that was different than his own. I wonder what this solider would have said if another student were to respond believing the same about a Muammar Gaddafi, Idi Amin Dada or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (leaders who terrorize/d their own people more than becoming an international threat).
If students can relate a genocidal dictator to some great cause, excuse laws pressing for citizen equality as "reverse racism" and accept the experience of a thief who looks like them as viable ethics education, it is no wonder why we suffer from the epidemic of Islamophobia and xenophobia towards our Muslim and Hispanic citizens; how those who claim to be blind of color and creed can see it vividly when it seems to disenfranchise them; and it is not a slippery slope assumption that one would believe in the pseudoscience of race superiority that has and still supports the degradation of racial minorities. It is this flippant mindset that allows for privileged groups to code switch between situational and rule-based ethics, defending their variance as the practice of utilitarian ethics - the course of action that produces benefits for the majority regardless if it is produced by lies, manipulation, or coercion - and ignoring the plight of the disadvantaged (Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, 2014).
References
Kramer, Roderick M. (2003). Harvard Business Review.
The Harder They Fall. Accessed at https://hbr.org/2003/10/the-harder-they-fall
LaFollette, H. (2007). The practice of ethics. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Pub.
Lewin, Tamar (2009). Dean Resurfaces, Leaving Scandal Behind. New York Times. From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/education/08jones.html
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. (2014). Calculating Consequences:The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics. Santa Clara University. From https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/calculating-consequences-the-utilitarian-approach/
Newport, Frank. (2012). In U.S., 24% of Men, 2% of Women Are Veterans. Gallup. From http://www.gallup.com/poll/158729/men-women-veterans.aspx
Velasquez, M., Andre, C., Shanks, T., & Meyer, M. (2015, August 18). What is Ethics? From https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/what-is-ethics/
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