Corey Cusimano is a cognitive scientist investigating how people evaluate their own and others’ mental states. His research asks questions like: how do ordinary people decide that an emotion or belief is good or justified? And: when, and why, do people hold others responsible for their thoughts,…
Christia Mercer, Columbia University
Christia Mercer is the Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, editor of Oxford Philosophical Concepts, and co-editor of Oxford New Histories of Philosophy, a book series devoted to making…
Listen to Professor Andrew Chignell discuss the ethics of veganism and omnivorism on this Sigma Radio podcast.
UCHV postdoc Annette Zimmermann was interviewed for a recent episode of Princeton University's Policy Punchline podcast. The podcast addresses the following questions: What is…
To read the full article, click here.
In his recent Op-Ed, Peter Singer explores the question, should we value all human lives equally? To read the full piece, click here.
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 their…
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.
To read the article, including a link to the podcast, click here.
Graduate Prize Fellow Stephanie Fan awarded a Josephine de Karman Fellowship. The Josephine de Karman Fellowship Trust was established in 1954 by the late Dr. Theodore von Karman, world-renowned aeronautics expert and teacher and first director of…
June 1, 2020, was Princeton’s Class Day. It was also the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Sophia Taylor, a graduate in the Princeton Class of 2020, wrote her senior thesis in Politics, with a certificate in African American Studies, on this event and its aftermath. She shared her thoughts on its role in the traumatic and…
The University Center for Human Values is delighted to announce that the winner of the 2020 UCHV Short Movie Prize is Ilene E for “Home | 家”. Athena Chu was awarded Honorable Mention for “In a Beautiful Country, Mothers Grow". Follow the links below to watch their movies.
Winner: Ilene E '21 for Home | 家 […
For more information about the documentary, click here.
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele was named the winner of the
The Princeton-CEU Workshop on the topic of Democracy and Autocracy took place on May 1 and 2, organized by Jan-Werner Mueller of Princeton’s Department of Politics and hosted on a virtual platform by the University Center for Human Values (UCHV), to launch a planned two-year research interchange…
If coronavirus presents medics with a stark ethical choice, which considerations should determine their course of action? Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in…
Congratulations to the following Center’s HVF and VPL students for receiving the 2020 Spirit of Princeton award:
Jacob Berman, fellow at the Human Values Forum
Kelton Chastulik, a junior in the Values and Public Life undergraduate certificate program
Jonathan Haynes, a senior in the Values and Public Life…
"Put a Price on Carbon Now!", an op-ed in Project Syndicate, Peter Singer and Kian Mintz-Woo link the current COVID-19 pandemic with climate policy by suggesting that the pandemic, and the current low…
The University Center for Human Values is pleased to announce the award of the Laurance S. Rockefeller 2020-21 Graduate Prize Fellowships to twelve advanced graduate students who are working on interdisciplinary dissertations in the area of ethics and human values.
Min Tae Cha is a fifth-year…
In an opinion piece in Project Syndicate, Jan-Werner Mueller questions, "Where is the Local News about COVID-19?"
Peter Singer's Op-Ed in The Washington Post, "Pandemic ethics: The case for experiments on human volunteers".
Jan-Werner Mueller's Op-Ed in The Guardian "There is no point talking to Trump. We need to talk past him" suggests a "parallel polis" to provide alternative leadership as we navigate the coronavirus crisis.
To better understand the dynamics of the virus and the impacts of policies, including a rough social welfare function assessment, click here to access the simulator. An article by Marc Fleurbaey about the simulator in Le Monde can be read
Five thinkers, including Peter Singer, weigh moral choices in a crisis, "Restarting America Means People Will Die. So When Do We Do It?"
Jan-Werner Mueller’s op-ed “Beware Viral Enabling Acts” about the line between government and opposition in addressing the public health crisis.
Peter Singer's article "When Will the Pandemic Cure Be Worse Then the Disease?" in Project Syndicate.
Jan-Werner Müller's Op-Ed in The Guardian, "Why do rightwing populist leaders oppose experts?"
Peter Singer's op-ed in The Age, "Ethical decisions about who lives and who dies may not be hypothetical".
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele interviewed about tracing autocratic legal innovations and their spread around the world in "
In his recent op-ed, "The Two Dark Sides of COVID-19", Peter Singer comments on the probable source of the coronavirus.
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.
Can algorithms help judges make fair decisions? After all, human judges can often be biased—so should we try to use ostensibly neutral technology instead? In a recent interview with WHYY, Philadelphia's public radio…
Professor Richard Tuck delivered the 2019-20 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Princeton University on Wednesday, November 6 and Thursday, November 7. In his two-part lecture “Active and Passive Citizens,” Tuck defended the old view of modern democracy held by early theorists such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, who viewed universal suffrage and…
Values and Public Life seminar explores the question, “What are human rights?”
In a U.S. presidential election year, American citizens will inevitably be inundated with rhetoric about human rights, particularly around issues such as healthcare and the condition of border detention facilities. In the fall semester…
University Center for Human Values congratulates senior Avital Fried on receiving a Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in the UK. Read the full story here.
In "Please Stop Calling Bernie Sanders a Populist," Professor Mueller argues that while the socialist from Vermont is not a threat to American democracy, the President is.
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.
You can read…
Senior research scholar Victoria McGeer's 2004 essay "The Art of Good Hope" was quoted in the BBC article "Is it wrong to be hopeful about climate change?"
The series “55 Voices for Democracy” is inspired by the 55 BBC radio addresses Thomas Mann delivered from his home in California to thousands of listeners in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and the occupied Netherlands and Czechoslovakia between October 1940 and November 1945. In his monthly…
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.
We might also feel overwhelmed by the scale of need that exists in the…
In the Aeon article "Rules or Citizens," Melissa Lane, director of the UCHV and Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, explores how Ancient Athenian and Greek practices afford us insights into how and why to maintain real accountability in public life…
The 10th anniversary edition of Peter Singer's book "The Life You Can Save" was published on Giving Tuesday. You can download a free version of the book on the book's website.
Singer and musician Paul Simon, who has followed the philosophy of…