University Center for Human Values

Fostering ongoing inquiry into important ethical issues in private and public life and supporting teaching, research, and discussion of ethics and human values throughout the curriculum and across the disciplines at Princeton University. Learn more >

Ethics Classes Change Behavior - Peter Singer & co-authors publish study

Professor Peter Singer published a co-authored study on "Do ethics classes influence student behavior? Case study: Teaching the ethics of eating meat" in Cognition, a leading international peer-reviewed journal.
Black Lives Matter: A message from Melissa Lane, Director of the University Center for Human Values

The University Center for Human Values affirms as a fundamental human value that Black Lives Matter. We call for justice for all those who have been the victims of police violence and of other forms of oppression and inequality which are unequally visited upon people of color, and for the systemic changes that are needed to prevent
Melissa Lane writes about teaching Plato in the pandemic

Melissa Lane, the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics and director of the University Center for Human Values, writes about teaching Plato in the pandemic. To read the article, click here.
Kim Lane Scheppele interview with Vital Interests on autocratic legalism

Professor Kim Lane Scheppele interviewed about tracing autocratic legal innovations and their spread around the world in "The Rise of Authoritarian Democracies
COVID-19 Update

The latest updates for the University community about COVID-19 are available on the University's coronavirus website.
Philip Pettit has been elected as a Corresponding Member of l’Académie des Science Morales et Politiques, in the Philosophy Section

This French academy has five sections, each with 10 full members and ten corresponding members; places become vacant only with the death of an existing member. With four other academies in the arts and sciences, it constitutes l’Institut de France.
Tanner Lectures on Human Values Recap: Richard Tuck, "Active and Passive Citizens"

Professor Richard Tuck delivered the 2019-20 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Princeton University on Wednesday, November 6 and Thursday, November 7.
What Are Human Rights?

Values and Public Life seminar explores the question, “What are human rights?”
Anna Stilz receives the John H. Pace, Jr. ’39 Center for Civic Engagement’s Community Engagement Award

Stilz is the director of the undergraduate certificate program in values and public life. She is also the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values.
Barbara Herman Moffett Lecture Recap: "The Challenges of Beneficence: Revising the Terms"

When we think about helping others in need, the scenarios that first come to mind are likely the extreme cases we see in the news: a group of strangers forming a human chain to save a drowning person or a passerby catching a toddler falling out of a window.