Dartmouth has a history as a top Ivy League college. Long esteemed for its schools of medicine, engineering, business as well as liberal arts, Dartmouth has now gained another distinction. The Boston Globe reported (Jan. 8), that “Up to 64 Dartmouth College students — including some athletes — could face suspension or other disciplinary action for cheating in an ethics...

While everybody is posting their own end-of-the-year list, here’s my selection of ethical stand-outs. Mike Carey – Carey is the first African-American to referee the Super Bowl and has been honored as one of the best in the game in 2008. While honesty and fairness are critical to his job, so is respect. So, in 2006 Carey quietly requested that...

In assessing the actions of the CIA and, in particular, the program euphemistically called, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, context is important. Nowhere is that historical context more evident than in an April 2007 interview CBS News Anchor Scott Pelley conducted with former CIA Chief George Tenet. Tenet was unusually candid and direct about the situation the United States faced after September...

Bill Cosby and Lance Armstrong would appear to have much in common. Both worked hard in their respective fields. Both became popular figures and spokesmen for important issues: Cosby on education; Armstrong for cancer survivors. Throughout several decades, both reached a rare level of success and celebrity. And both cultivated a position of power based on that celebrity. And now...

What’s disturbing about Lance Armstrong is not just that he used banned drugs to unfairly compete. What’s disturbing is how effortlessly, how compulsively he lied, and how ruthless he became in protecting that lie. And, in a sense, we were all complicit. “There are these two, completely opposite narratives,” Armstrong tells documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney. “The only person who can...

In line to buy Boris Johnson’s The Churchill Factor (see Nov. 14), I spot a tantalizing little book by Lauren Hom, playfully entitled, Daily Dishonesty – the beautiful little lies we tell ourselves every day. It not only made me laugh, it made me realize that all of us, (even us ethical folk) routinely tell lies of convenience.  » Read more...

What is your word worth? “Step by step I moved on. I kept telling me ‘Just fight, just fight,’ again and again. When I reached the summit ridge I could hardly believe it. With my altimeter I checked everything very carefully, I followed the ridge and I know I was on highest point.” That’s Swiss climber Ueli Steck, considered by...

What happens to a whistleblower after they blow the whistle? Are they considered heroes or villains? Do their actions inspire others, or are the personal risks too great? Those are some of the questions that are explored in a podcast(Mar. 11), by Julia Taylor Kennedy for the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Taylor Kennedy begins her conversation by talking to...

That’s the question a friend recently asked. I decided that it might make an interesting assignment for Professor Stephen Ambra and Sarah Hébert’s ethics class at The New Hampshire Technical Institute. Clearly the wording appears a bit cynical, suggesting that if we live in unfair surroundings we are somehow absolved from acting rightly, and many student responses reflected this idea....

“You CAN’T handle the truth!” Hands down, this is my favorite rationalization for lying offered up by Jack Nicholson in the movie, A Few Good Men. The film tells the story of Marine Colonel Nathan R. Jessup (Nicholson) a bigoted veteran officer who not only commands respect but lives by the creed: my way or the highway. The death of a...