With the resurgence in anti-racist activism and the COVID-19 pandemic came a growing attention to racial disparities in health and healthcare. What are we to make of these disparities? What role do injustices - past and present - play in generating these disparities? More generally, what constitutes racial (in)justice in clinical care and research? This course will explore these questions, as well as the ethical and social implications of contemporary interventions offered to resolve racial disparities in healthcare.

The course aims to show the various regulatory methods used by constitutional democracies worldwide, present the relevant case law, and help students understand why emergency measures could be dangerous in constitutional democracies. It is one of the main tasks of this course to draw attention to the link between autocratic transitions and exceptional measures to help better understand the importance of preserving the values of the rule of law and to discuss the relevant examples from the origins of the ancient Roman dictatorship to the recent developments related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

We are what we eat--morally as well as molecularly. So how should concerns about animals, workers, the environment, and the local inform our food choices? Can we develop viable foodways for growing populations while respecting ethnic, religious, class, and access differences? The goal of this course is not to prescribe answers to these questions, but to give students the tools required to reflect on them effectively. These tools include a knowledge of the main ethical theories in philosophy, and a grasp of key empirical issues regarding food production, distribution, and disposal. Includes guest lectures, instructor-led small-group sessions.

This is a required course for the ten Graduate Prize Fellows (GPFs) in the University Center for Human Values. It is expected that the GPFs register for the course in both the fall and spring semesters of the year they are GPFs. The course has three central goals. First, the seminar is designed to support students' dissertation work while providing special aid to the human values aspect of the dissertation. Second, the seminar has an intensive focus on in-person academic performance skills. Third, the seminar aims to help graduate students to work toward the academic job market.

Introduction to ethical issues in market exchange, and in laws that regulate it. How ethical commitments evolve, and influence cooperation. The moral dimension of low wages, outsourcing, "fair" trade, price discrimination, and banning sales of sex, blood, organs and other "repugnant" goods. The nature, causes and consequences of economic inequality.

In the interface of environmental and film studies, this multidisciplinary course investigates the phenomenology of home in relation to the environment as well as the civilizational (both cultural and technological) paradigms of colonizing versus nomadic homemaking through examples from masterpieces of cinema and our own short research film exercises.

A survey of major problems and developments in twentieth century metaethics, from G.E. Moore to the present.

This course surveys ways in which the value of the environment has been conceptualized in political philosophy, with a special focus on the moral problem of climate change. What is the value of nature, biodiversity, and non-human animals? What is a fair distribution of environmental goods? How does climate change interact with other structures of inequality in our society? Is economic growth the problem or the solution? What are our environmental responsibilities to future generations? How should individuals and governments respond to the problem of climate change?

Media and journalism are undergoing what many observers are describing as a profound structural change. How we view the consequences of this change for democracy depends on what we normatively expect from the relationship between the media and politics in the first place. Hence we shall start with basic questions about this relationship and critically examine previous transformations and what were perceived as crises in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We finish with a closer normative and empirical look at the role of social media and attempts transnationally to re-shape media landscapes. There will be a number of guest speakers.

This course examines political thinkers who profoundly shaped normative thinking about politics in Indian, Islamic, African and Chinese contexts. The course will examine non-Western ideas of modernity, and justified forms of moral and political order. It will shed new light on key ideas of modern political thought: rights, justice, nationalism, identity, violence, perfectionism, democracy and power. The thinkers in this course such as Gandhi, Iqbal, Ambedkar, Qutub, Fanon, Cesaire, Mao and others, not only contribute to political theory. Their arguments also define fault lines in contemporary politics.

An overview and examination of the cognitive science of human values and applications to contemporary global challenges. Interdisciplinary course highlighting research from cognitive neuroscience, psychology, behavioral economics, data science, and public health. Topics include utility and value, reinforcement learning, risky decision making, time preferences and self-control, social decision making, and applications to pandemics, polarization, technology, and the climate crisis.

An examination of the most influential theoretical, pragmatic, and moral arguments regarding the existence and nature of God (or gods). Along the way, we consider debates about whether and how we can talk or think about such a being, and about whether mystical experience, miracles, and the afterlife are intelligible notions. Finally, we consider whether religious commitment might be rationally acceptable without any proof or evidence, and whether the real-world fact of religious diversity has philosophical implications. Course readings will be taken from both historical and contemporary sources.

This course takes a close look at the foundational texts and critical concepts in the discipline of sociology, from the 19th century classics to contemporary theorists who have inspired important research agendas. Our two main goals will be to a) engage critically with authors and ideas and b) to develop your own 'sociological eye' and theoretical skills. Key authors will include Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Dubois, Schutz, Goffman, Bourdieu, Foucault, Butler and Latour. We will put these authors in their historical contexts and also ask how they can be used now to interpret contemporary issues and events.