Ben Carson Defends Buying $31,000 Dining Set to Congress: ‘I Left It to My Wife’; New York Times, March 20, 2018

Glenn Thrush, New York Times; Ben Carson Defends Buying $31,000 Dining Set to Congress: ‘I Left It to My Wife’

[Kip Currier: HUD Secretary Ben Carson's statement in the excerpt below is the money quote take-away from this article.

Ethics is not only about the substantive impacts of actions but also about how those actions look to other people: The messages--both spoken and unspoken--that  our actions communicate about our own values.

A phrase often heard regarding ethical issues is "air of impropriety", meaning that an action has a sense of not seeming "right", of not being "above board", of not looking good. Even if an action may technically be legal or ethical.

Good ethical decision-making includes consideration of our own internal compasses and the external signals that our actions send to other people. Not just in the current buzzphrase sense of "the optics" of something, but what we are communicating about our priorities and values.

Ethical leadership--especially public service--is concerned with promoting trust in the integrity of our leaders, our institutions, our democratic values and ideals. Being mindful about how something looks--the example we set for others--is an integral component of ethical leadership. That's worth thinking about.]

"On Tuesday, Mr. Carson defended that decision, saying that his son had not profited from his father’s government post.

“HUD’s ethics counsel suggested it might look funny, but I’m not a person who spends a lot of time thinking about how something looks,” Mr. Carson said."

Comey to teach ethical leadership course at College of William & Mary; Politico, January 19, 2018

Aubree Eliza Weaver, Politico; 

Comey to teach ethical leadership course at College of William & Mary

"Former FBI Director James Comey is joining the faculty at his alma mater, the College of William & Mary, and will teach a course on ethical leadership starting this fall, the school announced Friday morning.

“I am thrilled to have the chance to engage with William & Mary students about a vital topic — ethical leadership,” Comey said in a statement. “Ethical leaders lead by seeing above the short term, above the urgent or the partisan, and with a higher loyalty to lasting values, most importantly to the truth.”

“Building and maintaining that kind of leadership, in both the private sector and government, is the challenge of our time,” Comey said."

Mr. President, stop attacking the press; Washington Post, January 16, 2018

John McCain, Washington Post; Mr. President, stop attacking the press

"Ultimately, freedom of information is critical for a democracy to succeed. We become better, stronger and more effective societies by having an informed and engaged public that pushes policymakers to best represent not only our interests but also our values. Journalists play a major role in the promotion and protection of democracy and our unalienable rights, and they must be able to do their jobs freely. Only truth and transparency can guarantee freedom."

John McCain: Why We Must Support Human Rights; New York Times, May 8, 2017

John McCain, New York Times; 

John McCain: Why We Must Support Human Rights

"In a recent address to State Department employees, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said conditioning our foreign policy too heavily on values creates obstacles to advance our national interests. With those words, Secretary Tillerson sent a message to oppressed people everywhere: Don’t look to the United States for hope. Our values make us sympathetic to your plight, and, when it’s convenient, we might officially express that sympathy. But we make policy to serve our interests, which are not related to our values. So, if you happen to be in the way of our forging relationships with your oppressors that could serve our security and economic interests, good luck to you. You’re on your own...

In the real world, as lived and experienced by real people, the demand for human rights and dignity, the longing for liberty and justice and opportunity, the hatred of oppression and corruption and cruelty is reality. By denying this experience, we deny the aspirations of billions of people, and invite their enduring resentment...

We are a country with a conscience. We have long believed moral concerns must be an essential part of our foreign policy, not a departure from it. We are the chief architect and defender of an international order governed by rules derived from our political and economic values. We have grown vastly wealthier and more powerful under those rules. More of humanity than ever before lives in freedom and out of poverty because of those rules.

Our values are our strength and greatest treasure. We are distinguished from other countries because we are not made from a land or tribe or particular race or creed, but from an ideal that liberty is the inalienable right of mankind and in accord with nature and nature’s Creator."

A Commencement Address; Reading, Archives and the Academy Blog, May 1, 2017

Richard Cox, Reading, Archives and the Academy Blog;

A Commencement Address

[Kip Currier: Dr. Richard Cox, a colleague in Pitt's Information Culture and Data Stewardship department, gave a stirring call-to-action commencement address yesterday--focused on ethics, technology, and responsibilities of information professionals.]

"On April 30th I was the speaker at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences commencement ceremony. This was the last commencement of the school, as it becomes the School of Computing and Information on July 1. This was a great honor, and a nice way of marking my own forthcoming retirement on December 31. I was asked to address the topic of the school’s focus on information ethics. Here is the address."

Openness Is Key to Becoming Employer of Choice for Millennials; Inside Counsel, February 17, 2017

Devdeep Ghosh, Ally Klein, Inside Counsel; 

Openness Is Key to Becoming Employer of Choice for Millennials

"To drive change, it is important that these values are communicated to the entire department through sustained campaigning. While documented policies and guidelines (both from an HR and departmental perspective) are essential, it is critical to design a messaging campaign around the rollout of such culture-building initiatives. In the messaging campaign it is critical to answer the “what’s in it for me?” question; i.e., the law department needs to show how these values and the openness help each and every attorney and staff member in their daily work. The rollout of such a campaign needs to have a framework that will work in a loop to identify and develop the content needed, roll out the message, gather feedback and revise periodically. The framework should include types of communications, proposed media, frequency/cadence and audience, as well as success measures.

To ensure a cultural change, law departments also need to find a way to measure and review their alignment to these values. For example, criteria can be built into performance management reviews in order to ensure that all attorneys and staff are adhering to and promoting a culture of openness and collaboration instead of one that solely promotes competitiveness and individual merit. The law department should promote and require open feedback, as well as encourage employees to share information and be honest, responsive and transparent with their colleagues."

Should software developers have a code of ethics?; CIO, 1/11/17

Sharon Florentine, CIO; 

Should software developers have a code of ethics? 

"While there are organization-- and company-specific codes of conduct -- like these guidelines from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - Computer Science (IEEE-CS) joint task force on software engineering ethics professional practices, there's no one all-encompassing set of standards that includes the entire industry.

But maybe there should be...

Teaching people to ask the right questions involves understanding what the questions are, says Burton, and that everyone's values are different; some individuals have no problem working on software that runs nuclear reactors, or developing targeting systems for drones, or smart bombs, or military craft...

The questions should be around should it be built, what are the fail-safes, and what can we do to make sure we're having the least harmful impact we can?" he says.

There's no one "right answer" here, and a code of ethics certainly won't put all the ethical issues to rest. But it could be a good place to start if individuals and organizations want to harness the great power of technology to create solutions that serve the greater good."

The Wild West of Robotic "Rights and Wrongs"; Ethics and Information Blog, 12/18/16

Kip Currier, Ethics and Information Blog; The Wild West of Robotic "Rights and Wrongs"

The challenge of "robot ethics"--how to imbue robotic machines and artificial intelligence (AI) with the "right" programming and protocols to make ethical decisions--is a hot topic in academe and business. Particularly right now, related to its application in autonomous self-driving vehicles (e.g. Uber, Apple, Google).

When we think about ethical questions addressing how robots should or should not act, Isaac Asimov's oft-discussed "Three Laws of Robotics", spelled out in his 1942 short story "Runaround", certainly come to mind (see here).

Themes of robots making judgments of "right and wrong", as well as ethical topics exploring AI accountability and whether "human rights" should be inclusive of "rights-for-robots", have also been prominent in depictions of robots and AI in numerous science fiction films and TV shows over the past 50+ years: Gort in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) and (2008) (Klaatu...Barada...Nikto!). 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the monotonal, merciless HAL 9000 ("Open the pod bay doors, Hal"). 1983's War Games, starring Brat Pack-ers Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, can also be seen as a cautionary tale of ethical-decision-making-gone-awry in a proto-machine learning gaming program ("Shall we play a game?"), used for then-Cold War military and national security purposes.

Blade Runner (1982) revealed Replicants-with-an-expiration-date-on-the-run. (We'll have to wait and see what's up with the Replicants until sequel Blade Runner 2049 debuts in late 2017.) Arnold Schwarznegger played a killer-robot from the future in The Terminator (1984), and returned as a reprogrammed/converted "robot savior" in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) throughout its run explored "sentience" and the nature of humans AND non-humans "being human", as seen through the eyes of Enterprise android crew member "Commander Data" (see 1987 standout episode "The Measure of a Man"). Fifth column sometimes-sleeper Cylons with "many copies" and "a plan" were the driving force in 2004-2009's Battlestar Galactica. Will Smith portrayed a seriously robophobic cop hot on the heels of a homicidal robot suspect in the Asimov-short-story-collection-suggested I, Robot (2004).

Most recently, robots are front and center (if not always readily identifiable!) in this year's breakout HBO hit Westworld (see the official Opening Credits here). Short-hand for the show's plot: "robots in an American West-set amusement park for the human rich". But it's a lot more than that. Westworld is an inspired reimagining ("Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin recently called this first season of “Westworld” a "true masterpiece") of the same-named, fairly-forgettable (--but for Yul Brynner's memorable robot role, solely credited as "Gunslinger"!) 1973 Michael Crichton-written/directed film. What the 1973 version lacked in deep-dive thoughts, the new version makes up for in spades, and then some: This is a show about robots (but really, the nature of consciousness and agency) for thinking people.--With, ahem, unapologetic dashes of Games of Thrones-esque sex and violence ("It's Not TV. It's HBO.(R)") sprinkled liberally throughout.

Much of the issue of robot ethics has tended to center on the impacts of robots on humans. With "impacts" often meaning, at a minimum, job obsolescense for humans (see here and here). Or, at worst, (especially in terms of pop culture narratives) euphemistic code for "death and destruction to humans". (Carnegie Mellon University PhD and author David H. Wilson's 2011 New York Times best-selling Robopocalypse chillingly tapped into fears of a "Digital Axis of Evil"--AI/robots/Internet-of-Things--Revolution of robotic rampage and revenge against humans, perceived as both oppressors and inferior. This year Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, among others (from 2015, see here and here), also voiced real-world concerns about the threats AI may hold for future humanity.)

But thought-provoking, at times unsettling and humanizing depictions of robotic lifeforms--Westworld "hosts" Maeve and Dolores et al., robot boy David in Steven Spielberg's 2001 A.I. Artificial Intelligence, as well as animated treatments in 2008's WALL-E from Pixar and 2016's Hum (see post below linked here)--are leveling this imbalance. Flipping the "humancentric privilege" and spurring us to think about the impacts of human beings on robots. What ethical considerations, if any, are owed to the latter? Whether robots/AI can and should be (will be?) seen as emergent "forms of life". Perhaps even with "certain inalienable Rights" (Robot Lives Matter?).

(Aside: As a kid who grew up watching the "Lost in Space" TV show (1965-1968) in syndication in the 1970's, I'll always have a soft spot for the Robinson family's trusty robot ("Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!") simply called...wait for it..."Robot".)

In the meantime--at least until sentient robots can think about "the nature of their own existence" a la Westworld, or the advent of the "singularity" (sometimes described as the merging of man and machine and/or the moment when machine intelligence surpasses that of humans)--these fictionalized creations serve as allegorical constructs to ponder important, enduring questions: What it means to be "human". The nature of "right" and "wrong", and the shades in between. Interpretations of societal values, like "compassion", "decency", and "truth". And what it means to live in a "civilized" society. Sound timely?

Why Ethical People Make Unethical Choices; Harvard Business Review, 12/16/16

Ron Carucci, Harvard Business Review; Why Ethical People Make Unethical Choices:

"Despite good intentions, organizations set themselves up for ethical catastrophes by creating environments in which people feel forced to make choices they could never have imagined. Former Federal Prosecutor Serina Vash says, “When I first began prosecuting corruption, I expected to walk into rooms and find the vilest people. I was shocked to find ordinarily good people I could well have had coffee with that morning. And they were still good people who’d made terrible choices.”

Here are five ways organizations needlessly provoke good people to make unethical choices."

A Note From the Editors; Daily Beast, 8/11/16

Daily Beast; A Note From the Editors:

"Today, The Daily Beast took an unprecedented but necessary step: We are removing an article from our site, “The Other Olympic Sport In Rio: Swiping.”

The Daily Beast does not do this lightly. As shared in our editor’s note earlier today, we initially thought swift removal of any identifying characteristics and better clarification of our intent was the adequate way to address this. Our initial reaction was that the entire removal of the piece was not necessary. We were wrong. We're sorry.

Today we did not uphold a deep set of The Daily Beast’s values. These values—which include standing up to bullies and bigots, and specifically being a proudly, steadfastly supportive voice for LGBT people all over the world—are core to our commitment to journalism and to our commitment to serving our readers.

As a newsroom, we succeed together and we fail together, and this was a failure on The Daily Beast as a whole, not a single individual. The article was not intended to do harm or degrade members of the LGBT community, but intent doesn’t matter, impact does. Our hope is that removing an article that is in conflict with both our values and what we aspire to as journalists will demonstrate how seriously we take our error.

We were wrong. We will do better."

50 G.O.P. Officials Warn Donald Trump Would Put Nation’s Security ‘at Risk’; New York Times, 8/8/16

David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, New York Times; 50 G.O.P. Officials Warn Donald Trump Would Put Nation’s Security ‘at Risk’ :

"Fifty of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, have signed a letter declaring that Donald J. Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

Mr. Trump, the officials warn, “would be the most reckless president in American history.”

The letter says Mr. Trump would weaken the United States’ moral authority and questions his knowledge of and belief in the Constitution. It says he has “demonstrated repeatedly that he has little understanding” of the nation’s “vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances and the democratic values” on which American policy should be based. And it laments that “Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself.”

“None of us will vote for Donald Trump,” the letter states, though it notes later that many Americans “have doubts about Hillary Clinton, as do many of us.”"

Students' Broken Moral Compasses; Atlantic, 7/25/16

Paul Barnwell, Atlantic; Students' Broken Moral Compasses:

"At a recent convening of 15 teacher-leaders from around the country at the Center for Teaching Quality in Carrboro, North Carolina, I spoke to some colleagues about the balance between teaching academic content and striving to develop students’ moral identities. Leticia Skae-Jackson, an English teacher in Nashville, Tennessee, and Nick Tutolo, a math teacher in Pittsburgh, both commented that many teachers are overwhelmed by the pressure and time demands in covering academic standards. Focusing on character and ethics, they said, is seen as an additional demand.

Nonetheless, Tutolo engages his math students at the beginning of the school year by focusing on questions of what it means to be a conscientious person and citizen while also considering how his class could address community needs. His seventh-grade class focused on the issue of food deserts in Pittsburgh and began a campaign to build hydroponic window farms. While learning about ratios and scaling—skills outlined in the Common Core math standards—students began working to design and distribute the contraptions to residents in need, a project that will continue this fall as Tutolo “loops” up to teach eighth grade."

Is the Elite Media Failing to Reach Trump Voters?; Slate, 7/28/16

Isaac Chotiner, Slate; Is the Elite Media Failing to Reach Trump Voters? :

"Has your opinion of him or WikiLeaks’ project changed?

Yeah, it has, because when WikiLeaks first began—one of the things that people have forgotten—they were actually very careful in redacting. In fact, there were tons of redactions when they were releasing Pentagon documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. And they even wrote a letter to the State Department before they released the cables requesting the State Department’s help in figuring out which information ought to be withheld. And I used to defend WikiLeaks all the time on the grounds that they were not indiscriminate dumpers of information; they were carefully protecting people’s reputations. And they have changed their view on that—and no longer believe, as Julian says, in redacting any information of any kind for any reason—and I definitely do not agree with that approach and think that they can be harmful to innocent people or other individuals in ways that I don’t think is acceptable."

The fall of Roger Ailes: He made Fox his ‘locker room’ — and now women are telling their stories; Washington Post, 7/22/16

Manuel Roig-Franzia, Scott Higham, Paul Farhi and Krissah Thompson, Washington Post; The fall of Roger Ailes: He made Fox his ‘locker room’ — and now women are telling their stories:

"“Boorish behavior is Murdoch company behavior — boorish behavior as defined by tough-guy behavior,” Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff said in an interview. “The tough-guy behavior sometimes intersects with sexual harassment, and this is very strong within the organization.”

In a statement Thursday announcing Ailes’s resignation (which made no mention of the claims against Ailes), Lachlan and James Murdoch said: “We continue our commitment to maintaining a work environment based on trust and respect. We take seriously our responsibility to uphold these traditional, long-standing values of our company.”"

Understanding the Free Speech Issues at Missouri and Yale; HuffingtonPost.com, 11/11/15

Geoffrey R. Stone, HuffingtonPost.com; Understanding the Free Speech Issues at Missouri and Yale:

"How should we think about the free speech issues in the recent controversies at the University of Missouri and Yale? In my view, universities have a deep obligation to protect and preserve the freedom of expression. That is, most fundamentally, at the very core of what makes a university a university...

In my view, a university should not itself take positions on substantive issues. A university should not declare, for example, that abortion is moral, that undocumented immigrants have a right to remain in the United States, that the United States should abandon Israel, or that a flat tax is the best policy. It is for the faculty and students of the institution to debate those issues for themselves, and the university as an institution should not intrude in those debates by purporting to decide on the "correct" point of view.

On the other hand, a university can promote certain values both to educate its students and to foster an intellectual environment that is most conducive to the achievement of the institution's larger educational goals. To that end, a university can appropriately encourage a climate of civility and mutual respect. It can do this in a variety of ways, as long as it stops short of censorship. More specifically, a university can legitimately educate students about the harms caused by the use of offensive, insulting, degrading, and hurtful language and behavior and encourage them to express their views, however offensive or hurtful they might be, in ways that are not unnecessarily disrespectful or uncivil."

Starving for Wisdom; New York Times, 4/16/15

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times; Starving for Wisdom:

"“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.”

That epigram from E.O. Wilson captures the dilemma of our era. Yet the solution of some folks is to disdain wisdom...

So, to answer the skeptics, here are my three reasons the humanities enrich our souls and sometimes even our pocketbooks as well...

My second reason: We need people conversant with the humanities to help reach wise public policy decisions, even about the sciences. Technology companies must constantly weigh ethical decisions: Where should Facebook set its privacy defaults, and should it tolerate glimpses of nudity? Should Twitter close accounts that seem sympathetic to terrorists? How should Google handle sex and violence, or defamatory articles?...

Likewise, when the President’s Council on Bioethics issued its report in 2002, “Human Cloning and Human Dignity,” it cited scientific journals but also Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” Even science depends upon the humanities to shape judgments about ethics, limits and values."

Pentagon vexed by inability to solve ethics lapses; Politico, 2/10/14

Philip Ewing, Politico; Pentagon vexed by inability to solve ethics lapses:

"“I don’t think there is one simple answer to the issue of ethics, values, a lapse in some of those areas that we do know about,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters the other day at the Pentagon. “That’s why we’re taking a hard look at this.”...

So when Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert was asked last week why he thought a cadre of 30 senior nuclear power instructors in Charleston, S.C., might risk their jobs by potentially cheating on their exam, he shook his head.

“If I knew that answer, I would be doing all kind of things within the Navy,” Greenert said. He vowed that this investigation would go as deep or wide as necessary to keep it from happening again. “We will be very introspective on this.”...

According to documents described at the time by The Associated Press, the anonymous sailor who complained about the Memphis’s cheating did so because he thought it was unfair that he’d been singled out for punishment when it was so commonplace among the crew. He argued that his reprimand was comparable to being caught driving at 60 miles per hour in a 55 zone and losing his license for life, while all the other drivers kept on speeding.

The head of the Navy’s submarine force, then-Vice Adm. John Richardson, cited the Memphis case at the time as an example of why the fleet depends on integrity."