We’ll never fully know the moral mindset of Cho Seung-Hui. The Virginia Tech killer left behind plenty of clues — violence-drenched pieces for his creative writing classes, scattered visits to mental health clinics and university counseling services, and his last rambling suicide letters and multimedia presentations. But how he distinguished right from wrong and good from evil — what he brought within the perimeter of his moral concern, what he excluded, and why — remains the imponderable.

We do know, however, several things that we cannot say about Mr. Cho:

• “He had no moral values.” The writings he left behind to justify his actions reflect real moral outrage. He railed against the materialistic wealth and elite privilege he saw around him — a common critique among commentators on modern culture. His diatribe was ranting, undisciplined, and ultimately perverse, but it was bursting with a values-driven perspective.
• “He lacked a capacity for moral judgment.” Unfortunately, his judgment was as clear and harsh as a high-contrast photograph. In a fashion typical to adolescent moralizing, he apparently saw a world with little ambiguity and no nuance: This is right, that’s wrong, and there’s no room for discussion.
• “He was a coward.” It takes physical courage to commit to a dangerous action and carry it out, however morally repugnant the outcome. The raw, animal courage of the suicide bomber or the mafia hit man is a counterfeit of real moral courage, but we can’t write it off as mere wimpiness.

So the question is not, Did he lack values, judgment, and courage? The real question is, How broadly did he express these things? For Cho, as for the terrorist or the mafioso, the perimeter was tightly drawn. Terror cells and mafia families have a strong sense of respect and responsibility, though those values are practiced in relation to only a close group of insiders, beyond which everyone else is fair game. In Cho’s case, there appears to have been no in-group at all. His perimeter, surrounding only the lonely morality of one, was so shriveled that it centered exclusively on the self. Beyond that boundary lay only those toward whom he apparently felt no moral obligation. They seemed to matter no more to him than fictional characters in a play.

Was he, in fact, indulging a deeply fictionalized sense of the world? His teachers and fellow students all seemed aware of the excessive violence he expressed in the stories and plays he wrote. Was he living out a fiction? One of the pictures Cho left behind, showing him scowling and brandishing two guns, seems to deposit him somewhere between Dirty Harry and the Terminator. Another, showing him holding a hammer ready to strike, was identified by a Virginia Tech professor as remarkably similar to an image from a violent South Korean film. In the end, was life for Cho something like a computer game, where the avatar that stood for himself strove to break out into reality and be recognized as an individual? Was this (also in adolescent fashion) a gross confusion of fiction and reality? Again, we won’t ever really know.

What we do know are some of the steps we can take to defend against such situations. Of course we can rethink campus security, tighten gun control, and create better early warning systems about mental health. In a larger context, we can ask whether our popular taste for violent films and psycho-shock leaves us simply (in media scholar Neil Postman’s famous phrase) “amusing ourselves to death” — and helps tip the unstable mentalities among us over the edge into real brutality.

But the real contribution we can make is to recognize that physical mayhem is enabled in proportion as our moral perimeters are diminished. We can take deliberate steps to expand those circles, moving toward an ideal that brings everyone within the radius of our deep moral concern. Here are some ways forward:

• Values: Engage purposefully in conversation about moral values and in the behaviors that reflect them — in schools, workplaces, homes, and places of worship — in an effort to move ourselves and others from narrow self-absorption to a greater sense of the community around us.
• Ethics: Persistently shift the sense of ethics away from a simplistic “I’m-right-you’re-wrong” notion — which, taken to its extreme, can justify any amount of deadly violence — to a right-versus-right conception that addresses life’s ambiguities head on.
• Moral courage: Elevate our understanding from physical to moral courage, giving us the confidence to reach out to loners and create inclusive structures — and the guts to take swift action when we see others in extreme need.
• Cultures of integrity: Commit to creating entire cultures of integrity, building organizational climates where ethical habits, traditions, and values define “the way we do things around here” and produce communities of significant caring.

The history of moral progress among nations, institutions, and individuals is a history of steady expansion of the moral perimeter — from racism, gender bias, and economic oppression to equality, parity, and a welcoming of the formerly excluded. Building a culture of integrity in this way won’t screen out every pathology, but neither will we make progress through fatalism, asserting that Cho was a madman and leaving it at that. We owe it to ourselves to ask, If something could have expanded his moral sensibility and brought even a few individuals inside his moral perimeter, would so many now lie dead.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“The reality is that your characterization of your participation is just significantly, if not totally, at variance with the facts.”

“Is this really performance-based, or did these people just run afoul of personality conflicts in the office and we were trying to make up reasons to fire them because we wanted to get rid of them?”

BLACKSBURG, Va.
Questions about the propriety of news coverage and the obligations of those who had interacted with Cho Seung-Hui, and presumably could have sensed his simmering rage before it boiled over, were debated last week. Among the stories:

• NBC’s use of disturbing video of the Virginia Tech gunman’s rants reopened an ethical debate that revisits similar scenarios in the days of the Son of Sam and the Zodiac kKiller, reports the Washington Post. NBC was the first network to air the diatribe and took most of the heat: Some media experts immediately questioned whether giving Cho an outlet for his rant served the public interest, and some families of victims expressed outrage. But many defended NBC’s decision, including former ABC News correspondent Judy Muller, now a journalism professor at the University of Southern California. “They aired valuable new information,” she told the Post. “It was not even a close call — it was a news judgment that was right.” The Post notes that the interaction of news media and killers is not a new dilemma: The San Francisco Chronicle was criticized after publishing letters from the Zodiac serial killer, and the New York Daily News stirred controversy by reprinting excerpts of letters from the killer known as the Son of Sam.
• The ethical obligations of those who may have been able to send up red flags about Cho’s behavior were debated in the media last week. CNN reports that police had investigated Cho after a female student complained about him contacting her, and Cho was also evaluated by mental-health counselors. The university and its police force last week, though, continued to defend themselves against charges that they had not done enough to adequately warn students about Cho. One of the more difficult dilemmas that surfaced centers on the obligation of creative writing teachers to recognize and report troubling patterns in students’ work and for administrators to follow up. According to CNN, several teachers had reported a “twisted” and “mean” tenor in Cho’s writing, and in some cases had reported him to university authorities. Cho’s playwriting teacher last week sent an email to students noting that while there was violence in Cho’s writing, there is a “huge difference between writing about violence and behaving violently.” Professor Edward Falco said he believed the English department did everything it could in bringing Cho’s behavior to the attention of authorities.
• Virginia’s governor last week named an independent panel to look into the campus massacre, reports the Agency France-Presse. Governor Tim Kaine said the panel will include Tom Ridge, a former head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Kaine said the panel will probe Cho’s interactions with the mental health system, warning signs that surfaced, and follow-up by authorities at Virginia Tech.
• The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Virginia Tech killings have re-ignited debate over gun control, with both sides of the issue claiming that the incident reinforces their beliefs. While gun control advocates say that stricter laws will prevent such violence, some on the campus are claiming that if regulations had not prevented them from carrying concealed weapons, Cho’s rampage could have been stopped. One local politician told the Monitor that the “only way you can stop people like that is with force,” and that Cho, when he went on campus, “must have known that he was entering a gun-free zone.” Law enforcement officials countered that more guns on campus would have made the chaos even more deadly.

WASHINGTON
U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales, embroiled in an ethics scandal that critics say is eroding confidence in the Justice Department, last week resisted calls for his resignation after being buffeted by hostile lawmakers during a Senate hearing.

Gonzales admitted making mistakes in his handling of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, but continued to deny that the terminations were politically motivated, MSNBC reports.

Critics charge that the firings were based on a lack of party loyalty. One of the more contentious cases involves a New Mexico U.S. attorney who claims he was let go because he did not pursue a case that would have embarrassed Democrats just before the midterm elections, notes the Albuquerque Tribune.

Gonzales and the White House have insisted that the firings were based entirely on poor job performance by the axed federal prosecutors. Lawmakers have questioned those claims after the administration repeatedly changed its public statements about the reasons behind the firings.

The most serious damage to Gonzales came at the hands of Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican who called for Gonzales’ resignation during the hearing, reports the Hill, a publication covering Congress.

Coburn said mistakes must have consequences, and that Gonzales should be judged by the same standards he claims were used when firing the U.S. attorneys.

The White House continues to stand by Gonzales, according to a report from UPI.

WASHINGTON and LONDON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld a ban on a specific abortion procedure, marking the first time the court has upheld such a federal law since the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which established abortion as a constitutional right.

The Reuters news agency reports that the ban on the practice known as intact dilation and extraction, also called partial-birth abortion, was signed into law in 2003. The law was never enforced due to a series of court challenges that focused partly on the law’s failure to include an exemption to protect the health of a woman.

While last week’s 5-to-4 ruling was praised by antiabortion groups, some medical professionals objected, claiming that it will take health-care decisions out of the hands of patients and their doctors. Some argued that jurists have no ethical or legal right to intrude in a medical decision, according to a report from ABC News.

The Supreme Court’s lone female justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lashed out at the ruling in a dissent, saying the court’s majority opinion was “alarming” and wrongly accepted as fact certain disputed assertions by antiabortion groups, notes the New York Times.

In a related story, the British press is reporting that a growing number of younger physicians there are objecting to performing abortions on ethical grounds.

The London Telegraph reports that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says there has been a noticeable increase in young physicians voicing “conscientious objections” to abortions.

But some senior doctors counter that the groundswell is really more of a lack of interest in a medical practice that often meets with public disapproval. London’s Daily Mail reports that this has been dubbed by some as the “cocktail party syndrome,” meaning that doctors do not want to admit to their friends that they do abortions.

Others, though, argue that the trend is based solely on moral grounds. Dr. Andrew Ferguson, who belongs to a group of doctors who oppose the procedure on religious grounds, told the Guardian newspaper: “With detailed ultrasound images broadcast on TV and on the front of papers, and stories of abortions due to cleft palates, society in general is thinking, have we gone too far?”

DURHAM, N.C.
In the wake of the ethics scandal involving the investigation of four Duke University lacrosse players who were eventually exonerated of rape charges, one of the players has called for the resignation of district attorney Michael Nifong, criminal probes into Nifong’s conduct, and an investigation of police and private laboratories involved in processing evidence in the case.

Raleigh television station WRAL reports that Michael Cornacchia, the New York-based attorney for Colin Finnerty, one of the players accused in the incident, has asked North Carolina’s governor and attorney general to publicly call on Nifong to resign.

The letter, obtained by the Long Island, New York, paper Newsday, reads in part: [Attorney general Roy] Cooper branded Mr. Nifong as a ‘rogue’ and ‘unchecked’ prosecutor because he had three innocent young men arrested, indicted and prosecuted for crimes that General Cooper found did not occur.
“Incredibly, Mr. Nifong continues in office as the chief law enforcement officer in Durham County, making life-altering decisions about who should be the subject of prosecution and handling the most sensitive and important cases.”

The letter also asks for appointment of a special panel to review possible criminal charges against Nifong.

Attorney general Cooper last week took the extraordinary step of calling a press conference to declare the accused players innocent and denounce the actions of D.A. Nifong.

For his part, Nifong also made an extraordinary statement: apologizing to the players and the Duke community in a move that the Duke University student newspaper reports essentially fell flat on campus. The Duke Chronicle quoted a university law professor as saying the apology failed to address key criticisms of Nifong’s handling of the case, including charges that Nifong made reckless and incendiary remarks to the media.

In addition to his other troubles, Nifong is facing possible disbarment due to ethics charges filed against him by the North Carolina Bar Association, reports the McClatchy newspaper news service.

NEW YORK
Employees are more likely to commit ethical transgressions on the job when they see their supervisors misbehaving, according to a new survey by the business-consulting firm Deloitte & Touche.

About 40 percent of the more than 1,000 workers surveyed said that behavior of management was the top factor in influencing ethics on the job, with 35 percent saying the behavior of direct supervisors was the most prominent factor.

The same survey also noted that a good balance between work and life, along with high levels of job satisfaction, is likely to promote workplace ethics, according to a summary from National Public Radio.

Reuters notes that more than 90 percent of respondents cited work-life balance as a key to good ethics.

“To the extent that they are dissatisfied, they also get disengaged. When they get disengaged, perhaps, they just don’t take the time or energy or think fully about making the good decisions,” Sharon Allen, chairman of the board of directors of Deloitte & Touche USA, told Reuters.

In a related finding from a separate survey, Deloitte & Touche also found that two-thirds of workers age 18 to 26 prefer working for companies that allow them to volunteer at nonprofit organizations, according to the Indianapolis Star. But only about four in ten respondents said their current employers offered them an opportunity to contribute their skills.

An analysis from MSN MoneyCentral concludes that the results appear to support the prevailing notion that “Generation Y” cares strongly about making a difference in society.

DENVER
Joseph Nacchio, the former CEO of the telecom firm Qwest International, was convicted last week of insider trading.

The New York Times reports that the federal district court jury in Denver found him guilty on 19 of 42 counts after a series of witnesses recounted how Nacchio withheld details of the Colorado-based firm’s financial problems while unloading his own stock.

According to the Associated Press, Nacchio joins former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers as the highest-ranking telecommunications executives convicted of crimes related to the meltdowns that plagued the industry during 2000 and 2001.

A report from Bloomberg notes that the case against Nacchio capped a federal crackdown on corporate crime that was motivated by the telecom scandals and the implosion of Enron.

Nacchio faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. His attorney said Nacchio would appeal, the Denver Post reports.

BANGKOK
Interpol says it will put a new emphasis on fighting corruption and money laundering in Asia.

At a three-day conference in Bangkok, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble said the agency, which in recent years has focused on terrorism and drug trafficking, is shifting its focus because of corruption’s deep but often unseen effects on society, according to Voice of America.

“Financial crime, though it receives far less attention from the media than violent crime, has a devastating impact on individuals, industries, governments, and societies,” Noble said, according to the VOA report. “It is estimated by the World Bank that over $1 trillion is implicated in corruption each year.”

According to the Bangkok Post, the subtext of Noble’s message was that Asian governments should be prepared to provide money for anticorruption efforts, including helping fund a new training academy to help law enforcement officers fight financial crime.

The academy is slated to open in 2009 in Vienna, and is said to be the first international training facility to focus on fighting corruption, BusinessWeek reports.

Noble also stressed the need for Asian governments to cooperate in anticorruption efforts, particularly in addressing international money laundering and sharing data on suspected crimes and criminals, according to a report from Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.

MONTREAL
A Canadian woman is using a pioneering medical procedure to freeze her eggs for future use by her seven-year-old daughter, who has a medical condition that will make her infertile, provoking fierce opposition by medical ethicists.

The CBC reports that Melanie Boivin’s daughter has a condition that will probably cause her to enter menopause at an abnormally early age and lose her ability to bear children. Boivin, a 32-year-old resident of Montreal, told the CBC that she took a year to ponder the ethical issues involved, but eventually decided that motherhood depends not only on genetics but on who takes care of the child.

“It is the same as if she would have needed any other kind of organ, for example a kidney,” said Boivin. “I would have given it to her without any kind of hesitation,” Boivin told the CBC.

Freezing eggs for future fertilization is possible with a technique developed recently at McGill University. According to reports from the Globe & Mail and the Hamilton Spectator, the procedure has been used for women who are about to experience medical conditions or procedures that will render them infertile, but this is the first time eggs have been frozen for use by another woman.

McGill ethicist Margaret Somerville says a mother freezing eggs for her daughter’s use raises some troubling issues.

“What are the rights of a child not to be brought into existence in this way?” Somerville asked, according to a report from the Toronto Star. “I think here there was a lot of good intentions … but we also have to ask about that future child.”

Somerville said there is a growing body of literature suggesting that many donor-conceived, test-tube children resent decisions that led to their creation. “Can we reasonably anticipate that a child would consent to having its sister be its gestational mother, and to be a sister to the woman who gives birth to it?”

From the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:

“The recent conviction of former White House aide Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice focused renewed attention on the subject of news leaks — the unofficial dissemination of newsworthy, politically sensitive information to the press and public….

“Libby’s trial drew extensive press coverage, but it has had little apparent impact on views about whether news leaks help or harm the public’s interest. Attitudes about news leaks are virtually the same now as they were in 1986, during Ronald Reagan’s second term. Currently, 42% of those who are aware of what news leaks are say they serve the public’s interest by providing Americans with information they should have; about as many (44%) believe such leaks hurt the public interest by revealing information that people should not have.

“Like many of the public’s attitudes about the press, opinions about news leaks are more politicized than during the mid-1980s. In … the current survey, about twice as many Democrats as Republicans say leaks serve the public’s interest (53%-26%, based on those who know what a news leak is)….

“People who are aware of how news leaks occur generally believe that government officials who disclose sensitive information are motivated by personal, rather than political, reasons. About a quarter (26%) say officials leak information for personal advancement or to fulfill their personal agenda. This also was the top reason cited for news leaks in 1986 (33%).

“About one-in-ten of those familiar with how leaks occur (12%) say officials provide information to influence or manipulate the press or public, while 11% say officials leak ‘for a worthy cause,’ and 10% cite partisan political factors….

“Generally, the public takes a skeptical view of the government’s complaints about press coverage of national security issues. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) say the government often criticizes such stories because it is trying to cover up problems with national security; just 32% say the government believes these stories would harm national security….

“Partisan differences over the reasons for government complaints about national security stories have increased considerably over the past two decades. In 1986, 57% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans said the government often criticized stories on national security issues more because it was trying to cover up problems than because it felt such stories would harm national security. But the partisan gap has nearly doubled in the current survey, with 79% of Democrats and just 30% of Republicans now saying the government criticizes national security stories to cover up problems.”

“There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as heaven does its rain, shower its favors alike on the high and on the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.”

– Andrew Jackson (7th U.S. president, 1767-1845)