Launched in fall 2020, the Author Meets Critics Series inspires ethics-related dialogue through debate and cross-disciplinary conversation. Each session includes an author presentation, two or more critics, an author response, and a question-and-answer session with the audience. These events are free and open to the public.
During the spring 2023 semester, Prof. Karen Stohr was invited to discuss her book, Minding the Gap: Moral Ideals and Moral Improvement (2019) with Maria Waggoner (Purdue University) and Steven Scalet (The 极乐禁地).
On March 10, 2022, Sarah Federman, associate professor at the University of San Diego and former assistant professor
at The 极乐禁地, discussed her book, Last Train to Auschwitz: The French National Railways and the Journey to Accountability.
The critics included:
Regina Bento, professor, UBalt's Merrick School of Business
Tobias Greiff, senior assistant dean, The George Washington University鈥檚 Elliott School of International
Affairs
On Nov. 1, 2021, the Hoffberger Center and the Bob Parsons Veterans Center welcomed
Rutgers University Professor Alec Walen, who responded to a group of international scholars on his book, The Mechanics of Claims and Permissible Killing in War. In this book, Prof. Walen offers a novel theory of rights and assesses what this
tells us about permissible killings in war.
The critics included:
Mortimer Sellers, professor and director of CICL, UBalt School of Law
Michael Skerker, professor, U.S. Naval Academy
David Wasserman, faculty, NIH
Stephen Woodside, academy professor, USMA, West Point
Yuan Yuan, assistant professor faculty fellow, NYU Shanghai
On Feb. 25, 2021, the Hoffberger Center welcomed Firmin Debrabander, professor of philosophy at Maryland Institute College of Art, to present his ideas
about ethics, privacy, technology, and democracy from his recent book Life After Privacy:
Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society (Cambridge UP).
The critics included:
Christopher Griffin, associate professor and associate dean, Northern Arizona University
Steven Scalet, director, Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics
On Nov. 10, 2020, the Hoffberger Center hosted its first-ever Author Meets Critics
event, highlighting McGill University鈥檚 Ronald Niezen and his new book, #HumanRights: The Technologies and Politics of Justice Claims in Practice.
The critics included:
Joshua Kassner, professor and director, Hoffberger Research Fellows Program
脩usta Carranza Ko, assistant professor, UBalt School of Public and International Affairs
Ivan Sascha Sheehan, executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs, noted that 鈥淧rofessors Niezen, Kassner, and Ko made all of us think in new and deeper ways about human rights issues in the contemporary world.鈥�
Launched in spring 2021, the Leadership in Action Series is designed to inspire dialogue about leadership and ethics across the University and Mid-Atlantic region. Regional leaders share their professional experiences to generate conversation in our community about ethics in leadership roles. This series supports The 极乐禁地鈥檚 mission and practice of civic engagement and connecting the University with the 极乐禁地e region and its institutions.
| DATE | EVENT |
| September 18th, 2024 | Hoffberger Center Opening Reception |
| October 16th, 2024 | Bee Bridge Builders: Ethics Seminar: Dialogue v. Debate |
| October 28th, 2024 | Annual Ethics Week: Ethics, Democracy, and Civil Discourse, Session One: Prof. Kassner, Truth Matters: Epistemic Constraints on Fair Decision-Making Processes |
| October 29th, 2024 | Annual Ethics Week: Ethics, Democracy, and Civil Discourse, Session Two: Author Meets Critic: Prof. Aaron Herold, The Democratic Soul: Spinoza, Tocqueville, and Enlightenment Theology |
| October 30th, 2024 | Annual Ethics Week: Ethics, Democracy, and Civil Discourse, Session Three: Prof. Steven Scalet, Rights in Markets & Democracy |
| October 31th, 2024 | Annual Ethics Week: Ethics, Democracy, and Civil Discourse: Session Four: Dine and Debate, Takamira Williams |
| November 1st, 2024 | Native American Heritage Month: National Museum of the American Indian co-sponsored event with Diversity and International Services |
| December 7th, 2024 | Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, University of Maryland, 极乐禁地e County |
| February 1st, 2025 | National High School Ethics Bowl, William H. Thumel Business Center, University of 极乐禁地e |
| March 12th, 2025 | AI and Robot Servitude, Guest Speaker, Prof. Craig Duncan, Ithaca College |
In spring 2021, in celebration of Women鈥檚 History Month and Black History Month, the
College of Arts and Sciences and the Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics welcomed
special guest Terri Freeman, the newly appointed executive director of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland
African American History and Culture. The Hoffberger Center has a long and successful history sponsoring and hosting ethics bowl competitions and fielding its own competitive teams. In 2023, the UBalt Ethics Bowl team was invited to participate in the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl National Competition in Portland, OR, after success at the regional level. This was the team鈥檚 second national invitation in five years, an honor for our outstanding students. Learn more about ethics bowls at The 极乐禁地.
The Hoffberger Center Student Fellows Program is an academic cohort focusing on philosophy and ethics research available to undergraduate students from any major at the University of 极乐禁地e. With the formation of a new cohort at the beginning of each semester, Fellows have the opportunity to engage in a unique and stimulating academic experience that can be tailored to their individual ethical interests and philosophical passions.
While students are free to enter and leave the program each semester, most choose to continue on, with this semester marking the third session of the program. Each Fellow is offered a nominal stipend per semester. Furthermore, the program offers each Fellow the opportunity to earn one independent study credit for a semester of their choosing, providing them with the flexibility to further customize their academic experience.
Pro Tanto, the program's undergraduate journal of philosophy, law, and ethics, is a significant component of the program, with each Fellow contributing one article based on a semester-long guided philosophy/ethics project. These articles are then peer-reviewed by the Fellows themselves, providing them with a unique opportunity to engage in collaborative research and intellectual discourse.
At the end of each semester, Fellows present their philosophy research, highlighting the depth and breadth of the program's academic rigor. Finally, Fellows also participate in and help facilitate Hoffberger programming, further expanding their intellectual horizons and engaging with a diverse range of perspectives and ideas. The Student Fellows program aspires to be an unparalleled opportunity for exceptional undergraduate students to engage in a unique and stimulating academic experience, collaborate with like-minded individuals, and make meaningful contributions to the academic community.
The Hoffberger Center supports and creates scholarship in ethics and values as a core part of its mission.
The Research Fellows Program is part of the scholarly profile of the Hoffberger Center. Directed by philosophy professor Joshua Kassner, the program includes research fellows working in normative, applied, and professional ethics (broadly construed) with a forum within which they can engage one another about their work and the scholarly issues that matter to them. The Research Fellows Program offers opportunities for formal presentations, symposia, and workshops, with a network of scholars who share academic interests. The program serves as an incubator of ideas within a vibrant intellectual community.
In addition, the Center supports the Author Meets Critics series, regular reading groups, and academic conferences and events.
On Feb. 5, 2021, the Hoffberger Center for Ethical Engagement hosted its first-ever virtual international conference on legitimate decision-making in times of crisis. The event featured presentations from philosophers and social scientists from around the globe. View the conference presentation summaries.
Co-sponsors:
Hoffberger Center for Ethical Engagement
Center for International and Comparative Law
Philosophy, Law, and Ethics program
School of Public and International Affairs
About the conference:
A world pandemic has shined a spotlight on the nature and practice of legitimate decision-making in times of crisis. Crises create novel circumstances that may preclude the use of normal democratic structures, where the structures themselves do not settle who or how decision-making should proceed. Or democratic procedures may include escape clauses for truncated decision-making procedures in ways that are unclear and ill-defined, and may raise questions of legitimacy themselves. Some specific domains, such as triage in times of war, have a long history of addressing crises; but Covid-19 highlights the broader topic of legitimacy when political units as a whole, such as nation-states, experience significant procedural stress or breakdown in the face of crises. The relative balance of global, national, regional, and local decision-making can quickly become scrambled.
This virtual conference invites philosophers and social scientists to address a feature of legitimate decision-making in times of crisis. How do and should crises alter the notion of legitimate decision-making, if at all? Another set of questions revolve around who should make decisions and over what matters. A third set of questions revolve around the best form of legitimate or ethical decision-making, given who should decide. For example, is cost-benefit analysis the best method for decision-makers for closing or re-opening schools and Universities, or businesses? Papers may address these or other related questions theoretically (as topics in political legitimacy and applied ethics) or as case studies with answers in practice (in law and social science).
Conference organizers:
Joshua Kassner
Steven Scalet
Sascha Sheehan
The Hoffberger Center is a resource for ethical engagement across the University, including curricular support. A distinctive and notable feature of a University of 极乐禁地e undergraduate education is the presence of the Center at the University and its commitment to ethics education across all programs and disciplines, given the University's professional and leadership educational orientation. The Center鈥檚 support includes hands-on guidance and the administration of a University-wide upper-level ethics course: IDIS 302 Ethical Issues in Business and Society.
Center staff also visit classes to facilitate ethics-oriented discussions and are
generally available for curricular consultation. Staff experience includes decades
of academic training, research, and teaching in professional and applied ethics,
including the delivery of coursework in medical ethics, business ethics, environmental
ethics, ethical theory, contemporary moral issues, leadership ethics, and others.
The staff also has years of experience serving on hospital ethics boards and institutional
review boards.
In 2021, the Hoffberger Center initiated an effort to revitalize IDIS 302 as part
of the University mission of ethical engagement. This effort began by consulting the
associate deans across all of the colleges, and led to the formation of a University-wide
summer cohort to re-examine the framework and content of IDIS 302. This cohort included
representatives from all the colleges, co-sponsorship with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and included a closing report that describes the results of this work and a five-year plan for continuing the vitality
of this course experience.
The cohort focused on developing effective scaffolding so that faculty across the
University can know that IDIS 302 students have specific skills in ethical reasoning
as background for further discipline-specific study. The course is now explicitly
linked with the University Writing Program, co-curricular programming through the Hoffberger Center, and cross-disciplinary
collaboration with a team of instructors. This cohort was reconvened in 2022 and produced
a new closing report based on its work further developing the IDIS 302 curriculum. During the ongoing
revitalization of IDIS302 Ethical Issues in Business and Society, Hoffberger Center
staff have been working closely with personnel from Student Success and Support Services,
the Bogolmony Library, and the Center for Excellence in Learning, Teaching, and Technology
in order to design an intentional, accessible, and equitable curriculum. Their work
has been made possible, in part, by support and funding from the
In addition to IDIS 302, the University also excels through an interdisciplinary honors B.A. in Philosophy, Law, and Ethics major. Led by Hoffberger Center faculty, this program includes core ethics courses, such as:
Please email center director Steven Scalet for event location information and details. Many meeting recordings are available on Panopto for those internal to The 极乐禁地.
| DATE | EVENT |
| Tuesdays, 2:15-2:15 p.m. | Hoffberger Center Reading Group |
| Tuesdays, 3:15-4 p.m. | Hoffberger Planning and Development Sessions |
| times and dates vary | Hoffberger Student Fellows Cohort Activities |
| Wednesdays | Hoffberger Common Hour |
| times and dates vary | Philosophy Club Meetings and Events |