February 2010 Archives

Here's an interesting piece from the NY Times on people banding together to help out with the labor intensive business of sustainable agriculture.  Think about the resources for similar projects that we have here in Central PA, with such a large student body at Penn State and plenty of small farms that could use a hundred or so hands every now and then.... 

  

Take a look at these letters in the Centre Daily Times by students in Seth Baum's Geography 30 class.  Another example of students at Penn State taking initiative and contributing to the ongoing discussion of where we should go from here...  

A full list of student publications from the course can be found here!

Look what they're up to in Dr. Z's COMM 409 class.  Thanks to Dr. Z and all the student contributors for sharing their work with us.  

If you heard that a can't miss NFL prospect from Florida State left Tallahassee with one year of college eligibility left, you would probably be wondering which uniform you would see him wearing on Sundays, right?  You might think that the temptation to cash in on a signing bonus and a guaranteed contract was too much, or that he just couldn't afford to risk getting hurt in his senior season and losing his livelihood.  You probably wouldn't think for a second that what he chose to do instead of playing out his final year would be something that would actually hurt his chances of being signed by an NFL team. That, however, is exactly what Myron Rolle did.

Instead of playing football in the ACC or the NFL, the athlete that Cornel West called "the future of Black America" is studying at Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, and preparing for a life after football that includes medical school and being a neurosurgeon.  He is doing this despite the fact that NFL teams are not terribly fond of shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to people who don't need to play football.

Imagine that you were in Myron Rolle's shoes, and you could do just about anything you wanted... what would you do?

Now, imagine that you are the general manager for an NFL team that could sure use a talent like him on the field, but you know that he is already making plans for what he will do when he walks away from the game... what would you do?

Now, imagine you are on the board of a hospital, you need all the talented surgeons you can get, and you think that a career in the NFL is a senseless risk for someone who has so much to give the medical community... what would you do?      

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" opens at the Hub this week. The exhibit examines how the Nazi regime, with the collaboration of medical professionals, used the pseudo-science of eugenics to legitimize persecution and genocide. The exhibit is open until May 2, 2010.  A series of events tied to the exhibit have been scheduled for February 16, March 25 and April 21.  For more information about the exhibit and the events, please go to:  http://rockethics.psu.edu/events/deadlymedicine0910.shtml

This extremely important exhibit should be of interest to everyone.  But for medical students, students in the life sciences, and students pursuing a minor in Bioethics and Medical Humanities or Science, Technology and Society, it's not to be missed!

Last Friday's New York Times contained this article on the quickly-growing field of synthetic biology. It is a very interesting and informative piece that is not just about the field itself, but about the way it is attracting students that otherwise may not have considered careers in biology, and the differences between the haves and the have-nots in the competition to make recognized contributions to this exciting field of research.

The author, John Mooallem, clearly intends for the story to have a moral (read the piece and that should be abundantly clear), yet he also points us to different interpretations of what that moral might be. 

Starting this week, the HUB Robeson Galleries will be host to a traveling exhibition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that investigates the role that science and medicine played in 'justifying' the persecution and genocide carried out by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.  This is a topic that is particularly relevant to our discussion of values, rationality, and objectivity in science.  I hope that everyone will make the effort to see the exhibit while it is here and, perhaps, to attend one or more of the events that are scheduled around it.  If you do, please share your thoughts with the rest of us by commenting on this blog post or on our Facebook page. 

We recently received the following announcement from the farm animal protection organization Farm Sanctuary. We would encourage you not only to attend the presentation, but also to share your reactions with us, either here or on our Facebook page:

Is it ethically justifiable to use animals as food? Do factory farming practices reflect mainstream American values? Can your students articulate their beliefs on animal rights?

On Monday Feb. 22 at 7 pm, Gene Baur, president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, will speak in Kern room 112, on "Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food." I encourage you and your students to attend this presentation and discussion which will challenge us to examine our values on these important topics.  

http://farmsanctuary.typepad.com/gene_baurs_bloggings/

Thanks to, friend of the Rock, Vicki Fong for calling this book review from the New York Times to my attention.  Rebecca Skloot's decade-long commitment to uncovering the details of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" and her natural writing talents have apparently provided us with a compelling story that raises a whole host of serious ethical questions:  questions about medical testing and informed consent, about the ethically dubious background assumptions that are often operative in scientific communities, about the debts that may be owed to the descendants of unwilling (and otherwise largely forgotten) participants in the scientific process.

If you were a student working in a lab that was doing important work with HeLa cells, and you discovered this book, what would you do?

If a therapy developed and tested through the use of HeLa cells allowed you, or a loved one, to survive a life-threatening illness, and you discovered this book, what would you do?

If you were a descendant of Henrietta Lacks, and you could not afford health insurance or health care, what would you do?      

I realize I'm a little bit behind here, but I want to congratulate the whole team at Onward State for their work, which has recently attracted the attention of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The focus of the video piece there is on the use of new technologies to provide a serious alternative to the more traditional forms of journalism that one finds, for example, in the Daily Collegian.  That in and of itself is clearly newsworthy, but there is something that was not mentioned in that piece that I think is also worth considering--something that I see as a beneficial, even if unintended, consequence of the work they are doing.

Onward State provides a service that, if taken advantage of, can help persons with generational challenges (a term I much prefer to the many others--such as old and out of touch--that are no doubt applied to me on a regular basis) keep up with the issues that concern our students in those moments when they are not anxiously poring over the assignments listed on our syllabi.  Instead of assuming I already know what 'kids these days' are into when I am thinking about my courses, I can actually go see... and when I make the effort to do this, I tend to come away with a better understanding of what Penn State is about and a greater respect for its student body.  I have no doubt that this helps me do my job better, so, thanks.

I am not claiming that Onward State provides us with the only useful window into the world of Penn State students, but I do think that any organization that not only includes student voices at all levels but also allows the rest of the Penn State community to learn from its students in ways that further the educational mission of the university deserves a special mention on this blog.  If you can think of other organizations around Penn State's campuses that deserve similar recognition, Speak Up!  Please let us know by commenting on this post and telling us a bit about the work they are doing and what we stand to learn from their example.

                 

Thanks are due to, friend of the Rock, Sanford Gray Thatcher for bringing this article from Inside Higher Ed to our attention. 

I think Kiss and Euben do a nice job of articulating some of the central pedagogical challenges faced by those of us who teach ethics, and of making the case that ethics can be central to the mission of the university without undermining its commitment to critical inquiry and academic freedom (which, I have to admit, have always seemed to me to be substantive ethical commitments, rather than morally-neutral cognitive values).  I'll be interested to hear what you think.

After reading the article, please feel free to leave comments below, or to respond to the original query on our Facebook page. 

You can read about Penn State's own Cole W. Camplese, and his (for now, at least) unorthodox approach to teaching in this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Feel free to share your comments concerning the pros and cons of his approach below!

According to an article in Friday's New York Times, President Obama may be changing his mind about holding the trial of 9/11 attacks mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan, just blocks away from where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.  The President sees having the trial in Manhattan as an opportunity to provide a poignant demonstration of American justice in action; however, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come to see it as disruptive and costly, and several U.S. Senators have argued that having the trial in New York would provide terrorists with a highly visible platform to celebrate their deeds and to recruit others to their ranks.  If you were charged with determining where to hold this trial, what would you do?

Would you agree that it provides us with an opportunity that we should not miss to show the world our commitment to the rule of law, even (or perhaps especially) in cases where some  be more interested in revenge than in justice?

Would you think, instead, that it would be exactly the kind of world-wide spectacle that those who seek to undermine our system would want?

Would you ignore the question of which side would benefit most from the spectacle and focus, rather, on the concrete disruptions and the real costs of providing the kind of security that would be needed to protect those who live and work in Manhattan during the trial?

Would you claim that we are dealing with enemy combatants and should hold a military tribunal rather than a civil trial?

Which, if any, of these factors seems most important for the decision concerning where justice ought to be served in this case?  What would you do?