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…
Jan-Werner Mueller’s new book "Furcht und Freiheit: Fuer einen anderen Liberalismus" won the Bavarian Book Prize, which is decided by three jury members deliberating publicly in the presence of the authors. Unlike with other prizes, this procedure is intended to achieve maximum transparency. An English version of Mueller's book is forthcoming.
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele weighs in on the question, "Is Brexit a British Constitutional Crisis?"
Professor Peter Singer is one of three bioethicists who have published an argument in The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, in favor of a Global Kidney Exchange program that matches donors and recipients across low and middle-income (LMIC)…
On Friday, October 25, Philip Pettit delivered the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture in London on the topic of "My Three Selves." You can watch the lecture here.
The University Center for Human Values co-sponsored “Amazonian Leapfrogging: Long-term Vision for Safeguarding the Amazon for Brazil and the Planet,” held at Princeton on Oct. 17-18.
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
-Emily Dickinson
László Rajk died on September 11, 2019, peacefully after a painful illness rapidly engulfed him. His beloved and loving wife, the renowned concert singer and professor of music, Judit Rajk, was at his side till the end. Those…
Philip Pettit, the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor in the University Center for Human Values, won the American Political Science Association's (APSA) prestigious Benjamin E. Lippincott Award for his book "Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government." The award is given "in recognition of exceptional work by a living political…
Andrew Chignell, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Religion and the University Center for Human Values, published a new edited volume on "Evil" in the Oxford Philosophical Concepts Series.
A complete overview of "Evil, A History" can be found here.
Linda McClain, Professor of Law and Robert B. Kent Chair at Boston University School of Law and former Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at the University Center for Human Values, completed her book, "Who's the Bigot?: Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law," due to be published by Oxford University Press in…
Cotsen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature, Sandra (Sandie) Bermann, speaks with Princeton's Jamie Saxon on "What I think: Sandie Bermann"
A Wall Street Journal article reported on a recent trend to teach basic financial life skills at some of the Ivy's in response to the rise in debt - including student loan debt - and out of concern for young people's economic future and growing…
Sally A. Nuamah, Assistant Professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, was named a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellow.
Nuamah was a Values & Public Policy Postdoctoral Research Associate with the University Center for Human Values, in association…
Daniel Patrick “Pat” Moynihan was an American politician, professor and diplomat with a career that spanned four decades. He served New York as a senator for nearly thirty years, advised four presidential administrations — two Democratic and two Republican — and worked at Harvard as a professor of sociology.
The feature-length…
Two past Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellows - Adriana Petryna (University of Pennsylvania) and Henry S. Richardson (Georgetown University) - were among the 168 scholars, artists, and writers chosen as a Guggenheim Fellow, according to a press release from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
"Appointed on the basis of…
On Friday, April 19 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Harvard University's Safra Center for Ethics will host a workshop on Professor Johann Frick's work on "Risk, Luck, and Future People." Commentators from MIT and Harvard will respond to five of Frick's papers on the topic.
Last weekend, Values and Public Life students gathered for a group lunch at Cargot followed by a trip to McCarter Theatre to see “The Niceties.” …
Professor McConnell, a former federal judge who now teaches at Stanford Law School, delivered his lectures on November 28 and 29, 2018, and he titled them "The President Who Would Not Be King."
Jan-Werner Mueller has published an edited volume revisiting Isaiah Berlin’s liberalism (more info here: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9789811327926). Former LSR fellow Joshua Cherniss contributed a chapter comparing Berlin’s political thought with that of Reinhold Niebuhr. The…
The website "Five Books" consulted UCHV Director Melissa Lane, an expert on ancient Greek thought, on the best books on Plato. Read Professor Lane's choices and explanations here.
According to its website, "Five Books" asks experts to recommend the five best books in…
A "semi-Brexit does not mean breaking up the UK," says Scheppele. "Rather the reverse: semi-Brexit may be the only way to hold the UK together." Scheppele proposes that Scotland and Northern Ireland remain in the EU, while permitting England and Wales to exit - and discusses how this would be possible.
In his recent op-ed, "Too Much Gratitude?", Peter Singer, comments on Michael Bloomberg's recent gift of $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins, in gratitude for the opportunities his education (and scholarship) made possible. While gratitude as a reason for giving is laudable, Singer says, it can often conflict with the "effective…