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…
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…