Ethics in Action

Published a few months ago, Ethics in Action: A Case Based Approach is a collection of over forty case studies dealing with "real-life" ethical dilemmas in fields as diverse as health care, politics, and personal relationships. The cases are intended to help readers to develop critical abilities in the area of ethical decision making, and are ideally suited for use in class discussions. Each case is followed by an analysis made from three different perspectives: one commentator argues for a particular solution; the second argues against this solution and presents an alternative, and the third commentator shows why neither of these solutions are complete and provides an expanded analysis toward the morally preferable solution. As stated in the abstract of the book, "Through this, the reader is guided through a process of deliberation that leads to ethically defensible resolutions of moral dilemmas across a wide range of disciplines."

The approach taken in this book is modeled on the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, a academic competition that originated at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1993 and has grown into a nation-wide event that involves teams from around the country. You can find out more information about the Ethics Bowl, as well as how to participate in the 2009-2010 competition at our web site.

Ethics in Action: A Case-Based Approach by
Peggy Connolly, Becky Cox White, David R. Keller, and Martin C. Leever. Malden: MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

Please stop by the CSEP Library if you would like to take a look at this new addition to our collection!

New Books at CSEP

We are busy doing some moving around at CSEP in order to accommodate our growing collection of materials. What follows is a list of some of the new books now available to the IIT Community:

The Economy of the Earth by Mark Sagoff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

An Ethics Trajectory: Visions of Media Past, Present, and Yet to Come by Thomas W. Cooper, Clifford G. Christians, Anantha S. Babbili. Urbana, IL: Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008.

On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

(Frankfurt, a moral philosopher, here tries to spell out a theory of bullshit . When first encountering this book, I too wondered about its place in an ethics library However, this amusing and rather insightful book draws a distinction between bullshit and its close cousin lying, and how bullshit functions in our society.)

Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved by Frans de Waal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006

Review of the Federal Strategy for Nanotechnology-Related Environmental, Health, and Safety Research. National Research Council Committee for Review of the Federal Strategy to Address Environmental, Health, and Safety Research Needs for Engineered Nanoscale Materials,Washington, D.C. National Academy Press, 2009.

Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy by Thomas A. Mappes and Jane S. Zembaty. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2007.

Please come in a check out these new books, and leave us recommendations of materials you would like us to purchase for the library.

NanoEthicsBank Update - Launch of the Nanotech Companies Resource Page

In connection with the NanoEthicsBank, CSEP has developed a web resource for members of the nanotech industry. This resource shall include major databases covering current research on environmental, health, and safety aspects of manufactured nanomaterials, major reports and projects looking at national and international governance of nanomaterials, and risk assessment tools and best practices that have already been developed by standard-setting organizations and other companies for the handling of nanomaterials in the workplace. This page shall be updated weekly, highlighting news stories, reports, and recent editions to the NanoEthicsBank.

Please let us know about the kinds of materials you would like to see included on this page!

Engineering Ethics Resource Guide

CSEP Library has developed a new resource guide for Engineering Ethics. The guide includes special sections on finding case studies, as well as a small guide for instructors interested in integrating ethics into their technical courses. We will be adding more resources as the guide and CSEP's new web site continues to develop, so please feel free to recommend any resources you think should be included in the guide.

New Resource Guide for Scientific Resarch Ethics

A new research guide on the ethics of scientific research and the responsible conduct of research has just been published by CSEP. The guide is available off of IIT's Galvin Library web site. It includes resources on animal research subjects, authorship and peer review, conflict of interest, human research participants, research misconduct, and links to cases studies. Please let us know if you have any suggestions of materials to add to the guide, or if you would like us to add a section on a different topic.

A new image for CSEP

For the past few months we have been working extremely hard on redesigning our web site. The new site is going to blend in with the overall design for the Illinois Institute of Technology, include a number of much-needed updates in our site navigation, a complete overhaul of the Codes of Ethics Collection, and a number of other tweaks to our electronic collections and resource guides. So far, everything is going relatively smoothly, except for picking out a new image for the site.

With the help of Galvin, we have designed a new icon for CSEP. The question is, what color should it be? Our first one seemed to be a bit too dark for the web site...


So, we went for a more blue look, that seemed a bit easier to read...



Any thoughts? Please post your comments, ideas for a new color, etc. This image is going to be on this page, so let us know what you think! (This is a test version of the CSEP site, so beware of bugs).

Spring Break Hours

The Center and the Center Library will be open over spring break during our normal hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.