RE Log - Spring 2024

34 Ransom Everglades LOG SPRING 2024 Honor and Ethics Holzman Center of Applied Ethics programming and speakers push students to do the right thing Twelve students gathered with their dining hall trays and lunches during the mid-day break on a cool Thursday in February to talk medical ethics. The month’s topic: the ethical failures surrounding the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, a decades-long study of Black men with syphilis that lacked informed consent and the option of treatment. For nearly an hour, students wrestled with the issues in a conversation guided by Dr. Kenneth M. Zide, a cardiac electrophysiologist and RE parent. “Ultimately, you just have to keep your moral compass headed north,” Zide said. “In this case, people didn’t do that. A lot of people didn’t do that. Finally, somebody blew the whistle. It was a young researcher, as is often the case …What you have to keep in mind is that, if you see something like this, you have the power to change it.” Honing that power to make moral decisions and stand up for what is right are, in many respects, the ultimate goals of the Holzman Center of Applied Ethics, which opened in December 2021 under the direction of Associate Head of School John A. King Jr. In its third year, the Holzman center has greatly expanded its reach and programming, while also bolstering a speaker series that has brought leaders in politics, business, the judiciary and sports to the upper school to talk about ethics. “There’s a lot of momentum, and it will continue to snowball,” said Steve Holzman, who provided the seed donation for the center’s founding. “I’ve always been somebody whose stomach churned when I saw people cutting corners. What I really wanted students to get out of this is just the importance of being honest. I’m very happy with how it’s developing.” The medical ethics roundtables began at the upper school last October. In the spring, the roundtables will also include an exploration of legal ethics under the direction of Varun Raju ’24 , a member of the newly formed Holzman Center of Applied Ethics Student Advisory Council. Raju last summer attended an ethical leadership program in New Orleans under Students Shoulder-to-Shoulder, an organization with which RE has formed an educational partnership. More than 10 RE students will attend similar programs this summer in various locations. Last fall, RE students on the new ethics council led powerful peer-to-peer assemblies at the upper school and middle school that addressed academic integrity. The ethics ambassadors urged their fellow students to abide by the honor code and make ethical choices. And Humanities Department faculty member Jenny Carson ’03 began teaching college-level Applied Ethics at the upper school. At the conclusion of the discussion- and reading-based course, she requires that her students present original research projects culminating in an Ethics Gallery Walk open to the RE community. Foundational to the course are high- level ethics case studies and student-led discussions. “It is not my job to teach them what is right,” Carson said. “It is my job to help “I’ve always been somebody whose stomach churned when I saw people cutting corners. What I really wanted students to get out of this is just the importance of being honest.” – Steve Holzman, founder of the Holzman Center of Applied Ethics On Campus Dr. Kenneth M. Zide talks with RE upper school students during the mid-day break.