Ethics Newsline®

Dr. Rushworth Kidder, author of How Good People Make Tough Choices and Moral Courage, will host a symposium to discuss his next book (tentatively titled Good Kids, Tough Choices: Seven Lenses for Ethical Parenting), on September 23, 2008, in St. Louis, Missouri.

This special event will provide a forum for participants to discuss ethics and parenting issues with Dr. Kidder prior to the book’s publication. The symposium will be limited to 20 participants to ensure an intimate dialogue with Dr. Kidder.

To register or to receive more information, please email Andrea Curtis or call 800-729-2615. Further information also can be found in this PDF.

For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

OXFORD, England
In recent weeks, the U.S. presidential candidates have been traveling overseas to bolster their foreign-policy credentials. Like presidents before them, their task will be, in the words of that shopworn adage, to think globally but act locally.

But what does “think globally” mean? A deceptively simple question, it surfaced during a meeting of internationally minded think tanks here at Oxford University last week. Convened by the New York-based EastWest Institute, it brought together representatives from Brazil, China, Dubai, Ethiopia, Great Britain, India, Latvia, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States. The stated goal was to create a world-class alliance of public-policy research organizations, provisionally called the Global Leadership Consortium. But the conceptual challenge arose from a troubling fact: Much so-called “global thinking” is little more than narrowly national thinking strutting on an international stage.

English novelist Jane Austen, it turns out, may help sort this out. We’ll get to her in a moment. First, though, take a more homey example: U.S. energy policy. It is driven largely by national needs in the face of global pressures. True, those who think about energy — presidential candidates, for example — need to know the geopolitics of suppliers like Iraq and consumers like China. They must be internationalists, and they must travel to be so. But that’s no guarantee that they will think globally. If they see their goal solely as defending U.S. energy interests, they will wear their global hats atop only a national uniform.

Genuinely global thinking, by contrast, aspires to a universal standpoint. It seeks to rise above positions viewed by some nations as truth but by others as mere self-interest. Freeing itself from the provincial, the national, and even the regional, it gravitates toward a perception of truths so broadly acknowledged as to be apparently universal. It seeks energy policies that benefit all nations. Yes, it wears the hat of local and national action, but always as part of a global uniform.

At that notion, of course, the very walls of Oxford seem to recoil. “Nonsense!” they cry out. “How, given the multiplicity of cultures, can there be any universally acknowledged truths? Isn’t every truth simply somebody else’s fiction? How dare you disturb our exquisitely differentiated view of the universe by asserting so transcendent a commonality?”

So perhaps it was propitious that our meeting was held at Lady Margaret Hall. As the first college at Oxford University for the education of women, its walls have seen generations of thinkers demanding common educational opportunities in the face of sharp differentiations between genders. And perhaps it was not accidental that the words of Jane Austen, who never could have attended Oxford, though two of her brothers did, wafted into our conversation. “It is a truth universally acknowledged,” she wrote in the famously witty opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice, “that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Her words are rich with the irony of overstatement — what, after all, can a gaggle of chattering rural women be expected to know about so Oxford-like a construct as universal truth? Yet this sentence throws down a gauntlet to the naysayers. Is there a culture anywhere that disagrees with her proposition that wealthy single men ought to get married — not for giddy romantic reasons, but for the practical social purpose of propagating children they can well afford to raise and thereby perpetuating the culture?

If we can find one such “truth universally acknowledged,” might there be others? Can we, in other words, identify a basis for a kind of universal thinking that escapes the boundaries of nationalism and regionalism, looks at life from a global perspective, and sees things the way that people from a variety of cultures agree they should be seen?

In an age proud of its ability to deconstruct universals, that may seem a tall order, but one place to start looking is at ethics. It appears that some “universally acknowledged” values — honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion — are held in common by many cultures around the world. If that’s true, global thinking can begin profitably by seeing the world through the lens of those values.

Another lens, as several of the conferees noted, focuses on trends of thought that might broadly be called expansive. Such trends move from the immediate to the long-term, from the one-dimensional to the multidimensional, from the partisan to the integrated, and from the self-centered to the community-focused. Thinkers rooted in these trends are more apt to think globally than nationally.

A third lens helps distinguish between two classes of issues. One class comprises those issues that are genuinely global — so interdependent that they lie beyond the ability of any single nation or region to control. Climate change, energy security, weapons of mass destruction, global terrorism, and the architecture of global markets all force us to think beyond the interests of even the largest nation or region — to look down from above, as it were, and see all the parts at once. A second class of issues — food security, governmental corruption, low-income housing, gender equity, and education reform among them — occur across the globe but don’t require that overarching view: Any single nation can make progress on them even if others don’t.

Can a group of think tanks, using these three lenses of shared values, expansive trends, and interdependent issues, help promote truly global thinking? If so, they can pool their valuable national and regional perspectives to help move governments toward holistic, transnational, and universal perspectives. They can help the world’s major corporations grasp the difference between the merely multinational and the genuinely global. And they can do so in ways that strengthen, rather than degrade, the local, tangible benefits that governments and businesses provide.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

Several readers commented on last week’s commentary by Rushworth Kidder, in which he asserted that the root causes of the problems faced by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed institutions guaranteeing the majority of home mortgages in the United States, were the millions of “little gray lies” and “petty fudgings” in mortgage applications and the subsequent investments based on those loans.

One reader had this reaction: “The plague of ‘little lies’ which beset the mortgage market had behind it a stiff wind of profit without risk. I — wink, wink, nod, nod — write the mortgage and collect unreasonable fees, then bundle them and pass along the risk to the aggregator. Obscene profits are made at each step, but there is really inconsequential risk to the profit takers as the market is too big to be allowed to fail. This is simply a pyramid scheme dressed in the cloth of making possible the American dream of universal home ownership.”

Another expressed frustration with U.S. leadership in general and wondered how a government so “deep in red ink and not embarrassed at all” could be expected to impose effective regulation on banks and business that have “grown up in a culture of sharp practices.”

And a reader who maintains that the complexity of the process removed the consequences of the actions from the actions themselves posited that “Jefferson once opined that every generation or two, all institutions should be abolished and started all over. Perhaps he was right.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

“The Commission’s determination that CBS’s broadcast of a nine-sixteenths of one second glimpse of a bare female breast was actionably indecent evidenced the agency’s departure from its prior policy.”

– An excerpt from Monday’s ruling by a federal appeals court overturning a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. over Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. The three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” when fining CBS since the punishment deviated from the agency’s longstanding practice of issuing fines only when the content was so “pervasive as to amount to ’shock treatment’ for the audience,” reports the Associated Press. “Like any agency, the FCC may change its policies without judicial second-guessing. But it cannot change a well-established course of action without supplying notice of and a reasoned explanation for its policy departure,” the court ruled.

Source: AP, July 21.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 12, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 25, 2005 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 28, 2005 — Related Newsline Commentary, June 28, 2004.

In addition to U.S. crane collapses, there’s concern over construction safety in India; also, financial toll from Boston’s Big Dig skyrockets

VARIOUS DATELINES
The fatal collapse of a crane last week in Houston focused international attention on issues of ethics and regulation — concerns reflected in a variety of stories in the United States, Canada, and India. Among the stories:

• Four people were killed and seven injured in a crane collapse at a Houston oil refinery, an accident that comes in the wake of increased scrutiny of crane safety after recent crane-related deaths in Las Vegas, Miami, and New York, reports the Associated Press. An AP survey found that cities and states have widely varying rules about construction cranes, and some have no rules at all, relying on federal guidelines that critics say are outdated. The cause of the collapse had not been determined as this issue of Newsline went to press.
• In an article headlined “Incompetence and Corruption Haunt Crane Work,” the New York Times claims that investigators are finding that amidst the city’s construction boom, the industry remains loosely regulated. Times reporter William Rashbaum writes: “Last month, the city’s chief crane inspector was arrested on charges that he took bribes, in part to ensure that some crane company employees would pass their city licensing tests. He is accused of giving the company a copy of the test and the answers.” Twice in the past four months, Rashbaum notes, “large tower cranes have toppled to the streets of Manhattan, leaving nine people dead and focusing intense scrutiny on an industry that rarely attracts attention despite its imprint on the skyline…. While crane accidents are far from routine, they have cast a spotlight on some industry flaws that have been all but habitual — job site payoffs, union corruption, and weak city oversight — at a time when New York’s building boom has made the crane a ubiquitous presence.”
• An investigation into a crane-related death in Vancouver has put the blame on insufficient training, according to a report from the Canadian Press. Authorities concluded that the operator received between 20 minutes and 90 minutes of training and “had little practical or theoretical knowledge of crane operations,” according to the investigator’s report.
• India’s building boom is taking a suddenly steeper toll in injuries and deaths, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. “Safety standards always have been an issue in India, whose building boom is helping the country maintain an economic growth of almost 9 [percent] a year,” Journal reporters Eric Bellman and Jackie Range report from New Delhi. “The number of accidents is also climbing in mining, manufacturing, and brick-making as those industries expand, experts say.” Small construction companies typically pay little attention to training and safety, the report claims.
• A massive construction project that has been haunted by safety issues, legal challenges, and cost overruns returned to the news last week, when Massachusetts residents learned that the “Big Dig” project — a tunnel system under the busy central area of the city — not only ballooned to a $15-billion price tag but will carry an additional $7 billion in interest, according to an investigative report by the Boston Globe. The debt has diverted maintenance and repair money from deteriorating roads and bridges across the state, reports the Globe. Criminal and civil litigation continues over the project, with federal prosecutors alleging that a contractor lied about safety and construction procedures in a section of a tunnel that collapsed and killed a motorist in 2006.

Sources: AP, July 18 — Boston Globe, July 17 — New York Times, July 16 — Wall Street Journal, July 16 — Canadian Press, July 16 — Boston Globe, June 24.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 9 — Related Newsline story, May 27 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 31 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 6, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 16, 2007.

Corruption issues top the news from several continents

VARIOUS DATELINES
Accusations of graft and vote-buying made headlines last week. Among them:

• The corruption probe of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert continued last week, with a U.S. financier testifying that he gave Olmert $150,000 in cash stuffed into envelopes, according to reports from the Voice of America and the Jerusalem Post. At issue is whether the money constituted legal campaign contributions, as Olmert claims, or whether the cash was used illegally for Olmert’s personal gain and to finance his lavish lifestyle when he was mayor of Jerusalem, as prosecutors claim.
• The European Union, which has been threatening for months to take away aid from Bulgaria if that nation does not clamp down on corruption, appears to be ready to carry through. EU officials have frozen a billion-dollar fund overseen by Bulgarian politicians whom the EU no longer trusts, reports the Economist. According to an unidentified diplomat cited in the piece, some of those funds may be withdrawn altogether unless Bulgaria can prove that EU funding is not being siphoned off by corrupt officials and organized crime.
• Indonesian authorities arrested a ember of Parliament last week on charges of taking bribes from developers. Forbes reports that Yusuf Emir Faishal is the sixth MP to be detained so far this year in a sweeping corruption crackdown. Indonesia is regarded widely as one of the world’s most corrupt nations and rates near the bottom of Transparency International’s Global Corruption Perceptions Index, notes Forbes.
• India’s government, priming for a crucial no-confidence vote, has been accused of widespread vote buying, according to a report from the Times of London. Jeremy Page, reporting from Delhi, writes: “In the run-up to Tuesday’s vote, Delhi has been gripped by a frenzy of mud-slinging, back-slapping, and deal-making as the Congress Party and its main rivals try to make up the numbers. An MP said this week that the Government was offering to pay as much as 250 million rupees ($5.9 million) for each vote in parliament.” According to Page’s dispatch, the government secured three votes by agreeing to name an airport for the father of a leader of a regional party, and is planning to free six jailed MPs for the vote, four of whom are convicted murderers.

Sources: Voice of America, July 18 — Economist, July 18 — Times of London, July 17 — Jerusalem Post, July 16 — Forbes, July 16.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 7 — Related Newsline story, June 30 — Related Newsline story, June 23 — Related Newsline story, June 16 — Related Newsline story, June 2.

From Switzerland, a new wrinkle in a bribery probe; from Seoul, a conviction of a corporate titan; and from Boston, an insight into textbook piracy

VARIOUS DATELINES
Moral issues related to the business world were featured in various press reports last week. Among the pieces:

• The corruption probe of British defense contractor BAE widened last week as Swiss prosecutors expanded three criminal investigations into alleged money laundering. Prosecutors are investigating charges that BAE used Swiss bank accounts to bribe officials in Saudi Arabia in return for contracts, reports the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. A concurrent probe into similar allegations is under way in Britain after being halted by the government there over concerns that details of the incidents in question would compromise national security.
• Lee Kun Hee, the former chairman of Samsung Group, one of South Korea’s most revered corporations, has been fined about $100 million and given a suspended three-year sentence for tax evasion. The mixed verdict cleared Lee of charges that he oversaw illegal maneuvers designed to transfer control of the company to his son. Prosecutors say they will appeal that acquittal, reports the Associated Press. Bloomberg notes that the sentence was the latest in a series of lenient judgments for high-ranking South Korean corporate officials, and may bring about renewed criticism of the nation’s tradition of family-run corporations, known as chaebols, which, critics say, perpetuate corruption and disadvantage minority shareholders.
• Textbook publishers say they are being undermined by high-tech piracy, the Boston Globe reports. Illegal copies of books, available over the Internet, are eating into profits. Textbook piracy is particularly seductive, an industry spokesman says, because academic books can cost more than $100, about three times the price of most other books. The Globe quotes a recent graduate who admitted pirating copies of textbooks during his four years in college: “Textbooks were massively overpriced,” said the student. He noted that many books were rarely or never used in class. “All of these things … lead me to pirate textbooks off the Internet whenever possible,” he said, adding that he continues to download illegally copied books.

Sources: Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, July 18 — Boston Globe, July 18 — AP, July 18 — Bloomberg, July 18 — Digital Chosunilbo, July 17.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 30 — Related Newsline story, June 16 — Related Newsline story, May 12 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 28 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25.

Stories include growing scrutiny of divesting from Zimbabwe

VARIOUS DATELINES
Questions involving investments in natural resources and in politically unstable nations arose is several news stories last week. Among them:

• In the investment world, shortages often lead to profitable opportunity. But the Christian Science Monitor speculates on whether speculation in water supplies is unethical. Several experts on a Monitor panel weighed in, and while coming to no firm conclusions, they did note that the decision may come down to a judgment about individual companies involved in water infrastructure projects. Chris Brown, chief investment strategist and portfolio manager for Pax World Balanced Fund, put it this way: “We really have to look at these companies: Are they more focused on profits rather than quality or service? We look at [environmental] violations. Mismanagement of that is an issue and that’s something as an investor we have to focus on and make sure they’re managing responsibly.” Another expert, Eric Fernald of KLK Research & Analytics, also pointed out that bottled water is currently in the ethical crosshairs, with environmentalists worried about plastic waste and the problem of its disposal.
• Ethical investors may benefit from soaring oil prices, according to a report from the official publication of the London Stock Exchange. Mike Fox, Sustainable Leaders Trust fund manager at Co-operative Investments, told LondonStockExchange.com that record oil prices will fuel a surge in demand for public transport. Ethical funds often are heavily invested in public transport ventures.
• The Irish government will scrutinize the ethical integrity of its investments in light of the nation’s pension holdings in Zimbabwe, according to trade journal Investment and Pensions Europe. One of the difficulties in ascertaining ethical investments, the journal reports, is determining how to categorize investments that involve multiple locations — for example, a venture located in Zimbabwe and several other nations. Zimbabwe has been under close scrutiny since its longtime ruler, Robert Mugabe, won a disputed election amid claims that opposition voters were intimidated, injured, and killed.

Sources: Christian Science Monitor, July 18 — Investment and Pensions Europe, July 16 — London Stock Exchange, July 10.

For more information, see: Related Newsline Commentary, July 14 — Related Newsline story, July 7 — Related Newsline story, June 30 — Related Newsline Commentary, June 30 — Related Newsline story, May 27.

Three expulsions so far for alleged doping; exasperated veteran cyclist calls for lifetime ban for drug cheats

NÎMES, France
The Spanish cycling team Saunier Duval last week fired one of its Tour de France riders after he tested positive for performance-enhancing drug EPO.

Riccardo Ricco was forced off the tour and also made a court appearance, reports Agence France-Presse. The possession and use of banned substances is against French law.

Ricco has said he doubts the accuracy of the test.

He is the third racer to be tossed out of the event because of doping allegations, according to the London Telegraph.

EPO came into use about a decade ago, reports Scientific American. The substance increases both strength and endurance.

The perpetually scandal-plagued tour has exasperated many in the sport, including Australian star Stuart O’Grady, who has called for a lifetime ban for dope cheats.

“When are people going to realize that this is what puts our sport in jeopardy?” he told the Australian Age. “How many warning shots are going to be shot over the bow for them to realize? As far as I’m concerned they should be hit with a lifetime ban. They can go and pick cherries or do some other job, I don’t care. Just don’t come into cycling if you’re going to cheat.”

Sources: AFP, July 18 — Scientific American, July 18 — Australian Age, July 18 — London Telegraph, July 13.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 30 — Related Newsline story, May 29, 2007 — Related Newsline story, May 14, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 18, 2006.

In related news, KFC brokers an end to protest in Canada by introducing imitation chicken dish; also, Spain passes ‘human rights’ measure for apes

VARIOUS DATELINES
Items dealing with ethics and animals were featured in a variety of venues last week. Among the stories:

• The U.S. Army’s plans to shoot live pigs in order to provide training for medics heading to Iraq raised ethics questions, with both sides claiming the moral high ground. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) claims that the live-fire exercises, planned for an Army base in Hawaii, is outdated and cruel. But Army officials told Honolulu television station KITV that shooting the anesthetized pigs provides medics with the most useful and lifelike training possible and advances their skills in saving human lives.
• Chicken fast-food restaurant KFC has agreed to start offering imitation chicken in its Canadian restaurants, reports Canada’s National Post. The action is a brokered agreement between the firm and PETA, who has campaigned against the restaurant chain for years. According to the Post, PETA will call off its “Kentucky Fried Cruelty” campaign, which protests the way KFC suppliers slaughter chickens, in return for the introduction of the faux chicken to the menu.
• Spain is likely to become the first country in the world to extend limited “human rights” to apes, according to TIME magazine. From Madrid, TIME’s Lisa Abend writes: “[T]he environmental committee of Spain’s lower house of parliament approved a resolution supporting the Great Ape Project, an organization and manifesto founded by ethicists Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, which argues that three essential human rights — life, liberty and freedom from physical and psychological torture — should be extended to our closest hominid relatives. Joan Herrera, congressman for the Catalan Green Initiative party, justified the measure before parliament, saying that the primates ‘are capable of recognizing themselves, and have cognitive capabilities.’” The measure has run into opposition on several fronts, including the Catholic Church, which says it disrupts the Biblical hierarchy giving humans dominion over the earth.

Sources: KITV, July 18 — National Post, July 17 — TIME, July 18.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, May 27 — Related Newsline story, May 12 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 28 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3.

Question should not be based entirely on consideration of who can help the ticket win, argues BusinessWeek writer

NEW YORK
Picking a running mate in the heated U.S. presidential race should be viewed less as a strategic matter and more as an ethics question, according to an opinion piece in last week’s edition of BusinessWeek.

Columnist Bruce Weinstein writes: “Who should be the running mates for senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.)? This is one of the most debated questions in the presidential campaign, but it shouldn’t be viewed as merely a strategic concern. Whenever we ask what someone should do — and the rights or well-being of others hang in the balance — we are asking an ethical question. And that’s why the question of who our next vice president ought to be is an important ethical issue.”

Weinstein contends that because nine vice presidents have advanced to the presidency, and because the vice president has had an increasingly important role in shaping policy in recent decades, the primary ethical consideration should not be who will help win the election, but who would be best for the nation.

“It’s not just McCain and Obama but all of us in leadership roles who should keep in mind that what it’s all about is making a positive difference in the lives of others,” Weinstein writes. “This is why ethics must be a central concern — not an afterthought — when the time comes to find the best person to succeed us. ”

Source: BusinessWeek, July 15.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 9 — Related Newsline story, June 2 — Related Newsline Commentary, May 12.

Gallup poll finds that ’solid majorities of Americans believe McCain, Obama will not use personal attacks in campaign’

From Gallup:

“Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have both claimed that they will not engage in below-the-belt attacks during this race…. History has shown, however, that campaigns tend to get considerably more negative as Election Day approaches, so it is an open question as to whether the candidates will keep their promises for the duration of the campaign.

“A recent USA Today/Gallup survey shows that most Americans are at least somewhat optimistic that one or both candidates will follow through on that promise. But a variety of data show that many people view the tone of a race from a partisan perspective. As a result, there is likely to be little agreement about what constitutes fair or unfair attacks on the campaign trail once the general-election advertising season begins in earnest.

“In the June 15-19 USA Today/Gallup poll, Americans were asked about the likelihood that the presidential candidates would keep their promises to refrain from personal attacks….

“Thirty-six percent of respondents agree that Obama is ‘very likely’ to do so, compared with 27% who say the same about McCain. Combining the ’somewhat likely’ and ‘very likely’ responses yields a solid 73% and 68%, respectively, who think it is likely that the candidates will refrain from personal attacks. In other words, more than two in three Americans think there is a reasonable chance that each candidate will run a campaign focused on the issues….

“More than twice as many Republicans (40%) as Democrats (19%) think McCain is ‘very likely’ to conduct a campaign based only on the issues (along with 24% of independents). And while half (50%) of Democrats think Obama is ‘very likely’ to focus only on the issues, only 17% of Republicans agree, with independents falling in the middle at 38%.

“The partisan tilt of these results is consistent with data from past elections….

“For a different look at the question, I conducted an Internet experiment using a nationally representative sample of 425 American adults in November 2006. All respondents viewed the same 30-second attack advertisement against a fictional State Assembly candidate. The ad consisted of fairly standard negative advertising fare…. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of two ads: one where the sponsoring candidate was a Republican and the target was a Democrat; and the other, the same ad with the partisanship of the candidates reversed. When asked whether the advertisement was ‘fair,’ people who shared the partisanship of the sponsoring candidate were far more likely to think the ad was fair … than were respondents who shared the partisanship of the target of the ad…. In other words, simply switching the partisanship of the candidates significantly changed perceptions of the fairness of two otherwise identical advertisements….”

For the full release from Gallup, July 18, click here.

“The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.”

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (U.S. poet, 1802-1882)