Category: Teaching Ethics

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Bowls Behind Bars

Several cases this IEB and NHSEB season involve treatment of incarcerated persons – whether prisoners’ religious dietary needs should be accommodated, whether they should be allowed to trade organs or bone marrow for reduced sentences, at what age (if any) life without the possibility of parole might be a just punishment. It would be understandable for teams with little experience with the prisons system to base their judgments on what they’ve learned from movies and television, or to think only about criminals’ victims. So, here are two resources to help expand their empathy and enhance their views – a remarkable video of incarcerated students actually doing Ethics Bowl, and an excerpt from Ethics Bowl to the Rescue! chapter 12: Bowls Behind Bars.

One place you might not expect to find Ethics Bowls is in prisons. Then again, there was once a somewhat famous philosopher who did some of his best work while behind bars. We know this because conversations with friends who came to visit were later published. One friend tried to convince him to escape, even offering to help, which led to a discussion on the nature of justice and citizens’ duties.

On the final day, talk turned to logical arguments concerning the immortality of the soul. The imprisoned philosopher concluded that our soul most likely does survive bodily death, which might have made his ultimate sentence a little easier to bear. Anyway, you may have heard of him—Socrates?

While Socrates’s dialogues with Crito, Phaedo, Simmias, and others may not have constituted an Ethics Bowl, Ethics Bowls have been held in prisons in at least five U.S. states. And as you might imagine, they’re an opportunity to not only enhance moral reasoning, but to humanize, teach empathy and compassion for all involved.

San Quentin Pioneers

In the first known case, University of California Santa Cruz philosophy professor, IEB coach, and Northern California HSEB organizer, Kyle Robertson, coached a group of students at San Quentin State Prison (later renamed San Quentin Rehabilitation Center) in late 2017, then brought his IEB team to hold a friendly match in early 2018. Writing for UC Santa Cruz, Scott Rappaport covered the event, as well as the background leading up to it.

Twice a month from last September to February, UC Santa Cruz philosophy lecturer Kyle Robertson woke up early, dropped his kids off at school, drove north for one hour and fifty minutes, crossed the Richmond Bridge, and went to San Quentin.

He would park in the prison lot, walk past a gift shop selling art created by death row inmates, and enter the main gate, where he would sign in at the first of three consecutive checkpoints. Finally entering the prison yard, he would walk past prisoners playing on the basketball courts and others engaged in games of chess, to get to the education center of the prison.

Robertson was there to teach a course in Ethics Bowl—a non-confrontational alternative to the traditional competitive form of debate—in collaboration with the Prison University Project (PUP). At the same time, he was also teaching an undergraduate course and coaching a team in Ethics Bowl at UC Santa Cruz. He soon suggested and arranged a very unusual debate between seven philosophy students from UC Santa Cruz and a team of prison inmates from San Quentin. It took place in the prison chapel—in front of an audience of nearly 100 inmates. [1]

UC Santa Cruz IEB team member Pedro Enriquez was there that day. He was a junior at the time and recalled his initial unease.

I thought it was going to be a lot more like the movies where they’re locked down, and you know, they’re going to be hollering or whatever. So when we walked in after we passed the security and they were just walking around, I was like, “Wait, is anybody gonna do anything? Like, where are all the cops? What if they do something?”[2]

Enriquez and his teammates quickly realized they were safe. And when apart from an interruption for a mandatory headcount, the rounds progressed per usual.  The San Quentin team took the trophy, the UC Santa Cruz IEB team returned the next year, and word soon spread.

Contagious Compassion

Among the judges that day was none other than Ethics Bowl creator Bob Ladenson who had moved to California to be closer to his grandkids after retiring from the Illinois Institute of Technology. At his side was the IEB director at the time, professor Richard Greene from Weber State University in Utah. Greene spoke with many of the imprisoned students and was so impressed by their seriousness and dedication that he worked with Rachel Robison-Greene of Utah State University to found a similar program in Utah. By the spring of 2020, they had an Ethics Bowl class in both the men’s and women’s state prisons.

COVID derailed their efforts temporarily. But they restarted in 2023, and after an eight-week class, two Utah IEB teams, one from Weber State and another from Utah State, visited for a friendly at the women’s facility. Greene had nothing but good things to say about the event, as well as his experience working with the students… [continued with sections on Ethics Bowl in prisons in Washington, Maryland, and Massachusetts].

[1] “How to Find Truth in Today’s Partisan World” by Scott Rappaport for UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Public Philosophy, reports.news.ucsc.edu/ethics-bowl

[2] Ibid.

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Favorite Cases Ballot for Your Students

Cases Poll

I’ll often slide Ethics Bowl cases into my philosophy classes based on topic. The NHSEB’s case search function and IEB’s organized case archive make this pretty easy. But sometimes it’s fun to let students choose which cases and topics they’ll cover.

Below is a list of human-generated summaries of the 2025-2026 NHSEB and IEB cases. You could turn this into a paper ballot or load them into a BrightSpace/Canvas/Blackboard survey, allow each student to pick their top five, then work through the most popular as time allows. I loaded my poll into BrightSpace – happy to export and share on request.

They’re not in order – I moved them around a bit, listing NHSEB case 5: Grade Expectations first because I think that one will catch students’ attention. IEB case 4: Shutting Out Le Pen will probably also be hot given the connection to American politics, but we’ll see – might be a topic students (wisely?) choose to avoid.

I’m polling my community college Intro to Ethics students now and am eager to see which they select. If you do the same and would like to compare results, or if you have any trouble tying the descriptions back to the case titles (I realize most folks are doing NHSEB or IEB, not both), please reach out. Also feel free to list your own favorites in a comment.

  1. Whether it’s OK for teachers who ban student AI use to use AI to prepare lectures or assignments, or grade.
  2. Whether SNAP benefits recipients should be barred from purchasing soda or other junk foods.
  3. Whether to allow prisoners to trade organ donations or bone marrow for reduced sentences.
  4. Whether the U.S. should adopt France’s approach to presidential elections and allow candidates convicted of felonies to become president, or whether France should adopt the U.S.’s approach and allow candidates to become president regardless of their criminal records, so long as they haven’t been convinced of insurrection/government overthrow (France banned Le Pen from running for five years based on an embezzlement conviction, while the U.S. allowed Trump to become president despite a felony conviction for falsifying business records tied to election hush money – essentially whether democratic popularity should override criminal convictions or whether certain convictions should disqualify candidates from high office).
  5. Whether it’s OK for CGI to generate dwarfs in films or if dwarf acting roles should go to actual dwarves, whether it’s OK for Black Frenchmen to play traditionally White characters in The Beauty and the Beast, whether it was OK for Ariel to be African-American in the remake of The Little Mermaid, etc.
  6. Whether police officers and prisons should accommodate Muslims’ religious dietary requirements (no pork, fasting during Ramadan), similar to how Jews’ and vegans’ requirements are often accommodated.
  7. Whether it was OK for an activist artist to starve piglets to death in order to encourage scrutiny of the factory farming system.
  8. Whether the international community should provide aid to Afghanistan in order to help its citizens receive health care and food, or whether aid should be withheld in order to pressure the Taliban to improve conditions for women and girls.
  9. Whether the new “Golden Visa” program allowing foreign nationals to purchase U.S. residency and a path to citizenship for $1-5 million should be continued or ended.
  10. Whether it’s OK to sentence murderers who commit their crimes at age 20 or 19 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
  11. Whether more states should allow people to choose to “compost” their bodies in lieu of cremation or traditional burial.
  12. Whether it’s OK to require tourists to conduct community service or pay extra fees in order to visit crowded sites to reduce (or at least receive compensation for) over-toured sites.
  13. Whether killers of women should receive harsher sentences or whether “femicide” should be discouraged by addressing root causes that make women vulnerable such as improving access to education and small business loans, or programs encouraging  men to better value and respect women.
  14. Whether it was OK for a town in Michigan to ban all political and ideology flags on public property as a way to diffuse tensions between the conservative Muslim majority and the LGBTQ+ community.
  15. Whether paid surrogate mothering should be allowed across borders (wealthy couples hiring surrogates in poorer countries, for example).
  16. Whether it’s OK for a zoo to solicit aging pets to use as food for exotic animals.
  17. Whether it’s OK to allow AI-generated likenesses of murder victims to “testify” at their killers’ sentencing hearings.
  18. Whether prison visitors should be allowed to meet in person with their loved ones or only allowed to interact via webcam.
  19. Whether it’s OK to edit genes in heritable ways (so the changes don’t simply impact that person, but their offspring and the broader human gene pool).
  20. Whether a park trail should be paved so it’s more accessible to persons in wheelchairs or left unpaved in order to better protect the natural habitat.
  21. Whether a lady should tell her roommate that the man the roommate’s dating was previously married and has a child.
  22. Whether it’s OK for snack food manufacturers to modify their portions to better attract consumers on new GLP-1 weight loss drugs.
  23. Whether it’s OK for the Amish to pull their kids from school after the 8th grade.
  24. Whether it’s OK to use brain implants to improve one’s competitive video game playing abilities.
  25. Whether to limit or endorse AI as a personal therapist.
  26. Whether Home Owners Associations that impose fines on residents for using unapproved decorations or failing to care for their yard are OK.

Whether a political minority group in Sri Lanka should… I’m not sure. My team found IEB case 6: Tamil Autonomy especially technical and dense, and the moral upshot seemed to focus on whether a minority group should push for national independence. If you understand that case better than we do, please volunteer to write a guest case analysis! I’m sure other teams are struggling with it as well.

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New In-Class Ethics Bowl Resources from PLATO

Pre-college philosophy O.G. Jana Mohr Lone recently reached out to share a new Ethics Bowl Start-Up Kit created and curated by our friends at PLATO, the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization.

Designed to empower teachers to begin hosting Ethics Bowls in their classrooms ASAP, the description concisely explains what Ethics Bowl is, the lesson plan outlines the main steps, the rules confirm expectations, the rubric and scoresheet ensure judges are aligned, and the moderator script helpfully distinguishes what should be said aloud in red from context and instructions in black. For example, “Both teams now have up to 2 minutes to confer before they will engage in an open dialogue. Give the teams two minutes to confer. If they go to two minutes, tell them that time is up.”

PLATO has so many wonderful resources, and is leading the nation in promoting Ethics Bowls on the middle and elementary school levels in the U.S. Jana’s actually PLATO’s Executive Director, teaches philosophy for the University of Washington, and in 2012 published a book on my personal bookshelf, The Philosophical Child. Thank you, Jana and team for all you’ve done and are doing, including creating and sharing the new Ethics Bowl Start-Up Kit! It’s now permanently linked here on EthicsBowl.org’s Resources page.

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2025-2026 NHSEB Regionals Case 3 Public Record, Private Lives

Case 3 in the NHSEB case set winds up being largely about interpersonal ethics, but begins with a privacy policy frame. Coach Michael Andersen in Washington shared the below excellent study guide, which recommends the above excellent privacy-related video by Ethics Bowl researcher and advocate Michael Vazquez at UNC. My team discussed the case week before last, then revisited it briefly last week after watching the video – excellent context which helped sharpen their view. Thanks to both Michaels!

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Saturday Ethics Bowl Workshop Agenda

I’m excited to share the agenda for this Saturday’s free online Ethics Bowl workshop. There’s also a brief pre-session Friday evening, but Saturday’s the main show. The opening and closing sessions are for everyone, but attendees can choose to follow three themes in between: Ethics Bowl in the Classroom (focused on direct usage for education), Producing the Ethics Bowl (for current or aspiring organizers) or Engaging the World (for those most interested in expanding Ethics Bowl, using it as an outreach vehicle for philosophical ethics and/or a counter to the increasingly debased and violent political culture).

You can see from the details that these will be hosted by Ethics Bowl ALL-STARS. I’ll be in the Engaging the World Zooms, but whichever of these tracks speak to you, definitely take advantage – open to Bowlers on both the high school and collegiate levels, and I’m sure the organizers wouldn’t turn away Ethics Olympiad enthusiasts (same thing) or folks working on the middle school or other levels. One of the sessions is on non-Ethics Bowl variants such as Bioethics Bowl, so I’m sure Ethics Slam enthusiasts and others are welcome as well. Register for free for the Zoom links!

Session 1: 11:30 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. (I assume all these times are EST, New York)

Opening Plenary Facilitated by: Rachel Robison-Greene

The APPE IEB Chair Elect briefly welcomes participants. We will also take a quick look at our webpage to help folks new to Ethics Bowl navigate their way around it.

 Session 2: 12:00 p.m. to 12:50 p.m.

Getting Started with Coaching Facilitated by: Greg Wright
In this session we will discuss the most important elements a new coach will want to know such as how to go about preparing for competitions, structuring practices, basic strategies for success, getting team consensus on positions, etc.

 Session 3: 1:00 p.m. to 1:50 p.m. 

Advanced Coaching Facilitated by: Jeffrey Nielsen
In this session we continue the discussion from Session 1,but with an eye towards more nuanced issues, such as advanced coaching strategies, the distribution of responsibilities in case presentation, recent trends in presentation, ensuring that students aren’t entirely focused on winning, etc.

Session 4: 2:00 p.m. to 2:50 p.m.

4A: Track 1 Session: Ethics Bowl as a Class Facilitated by: Mike Ashfield and Rachel Robison-Greene
It is increasingly common for schools to offer Ethics Bowl classes for credit. In this session, we will discuss ways of engaging in this practice.  We will discuss syllabi, assignments, and common challenges associated with running Ethics Bowl as a class.

4B: Track 2 Session: Organizing Ethics Bowls Facilitated by: John Garcia
In this session we will discuss the various elements involved in organizing an ethics bowl such as recruiting and training judges and moderators, scheduling matches, planning for facilities and food, etc.

4C: Track 3 Session: Virtues of the Ethics Bowl Facilitated by: Mark Doorley, Deborah Mower, and Alex Richardson
In this session we ask our esteemed panelists to address questions such as “Why participate in Ethics Bowl?” and “What does Ethics Bowl do for our students?” 

Break: 2:50 to 3:30 p.m.

Session 5: 3:30 p.m. to 4:20 p.m. 

5A: Track 1 Session: Using Ethics Bowl in the Classroom Facilitated by: Jonathan Spelman and Rachel Robison-Greene
Some faculty members across the country use the Ethics Bowl as a component of their courses.  For example, some might use it in a general education ethics class populated by students from a wide range of backgrounds and interest levels. This session will explore strategies one might use to implement Ethics Bowl in such a class.

5B: Track 2 Session: Getting Buy-in Facilitated by: Alan Tomhave
A successful Ethics Bowl program depends on having a lot of support. This session will focus on getting the relevant university administrators, community members, faculty members, and students to support your program.

5C: Track 3 Session: Bioethics Bowl/High School Ethics Bowl/Community Facilitated by: Richard Greene, Leo Kirby, and Jennifer Parks
In this session we hear from folks who have been involved in non-IEB Ethics Bowl and Ethics Bowl adjacent programs about how their programs work and how others can participate.

Session 6: 4:30 p.m. to 5:20 p.m. 

6A: Track 1 Session: Community Engagement/Service Learning Facilitated by: Rachel Robison-Greene
There are a range of ways in which faculty across the country engage their students with their respective communities through the Ethics Bowl. In some cases, these methods can help students earn community engaged or service learning credit at their institution.  This session will explore ways in which this can be done.

6B: Track 2 Session: Case Writing Facilitated by: James Day
In this session we hear from the chair of the IEB regional case writing committee about what successful case writing involves and ways that those who are interested can become involved in case writing.

6C: Track 3 Session: Ethics Bowl in Challenging Times Facilitated by: John Garcia and Richard Greene
The current political environment poses a variety of challenges for both those who compete in Ethics Bowl and those who organize ethics bowls. We will discuss some of the recent problematic issues and anticipate some worries to come.

Session 7: 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

What Did We Miss? Facilitated by: Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene
Continuing a tradition dating back to the very first Ethics Bowl workshop in 2014, we’ve set aside some time for participants to generate the discussion topics. We encourage folks to consider what they would like to know about the Ethics Bowl that wasn’t discussed in the preceding sessions, and raise those topics in this one. 

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Free Ethics Bowl Summer Workshop July 25-26

One week from tomorrow, there’s a free online Ethics Bowl workshop for new and experienced coaches, team members and organizers at the collegiate and high school levels. Often, events like this are either college or high school. I’m so glad to see the cross-tier collaboration.

Attendees can follow one of three discussion tracks: Ethics Bowl in the Classroom, Producing the Ethics Bowl or Engaging the World. If you’re busy during the day Friday and Saturday morning, no sweat. Friday the 25th is simply a pre-workshop “ABCs of Ethics Bowl” session from 4-5. Then Saturday the 26th the fun will run from 11:30-6:30 Eastern.

Hosted by our friends at the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, sponsored by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, I’m signed up and very much looking forward. Only problem: can’t decide whether to follow the In the Classroom or Engaging the World track… Hope to see you there!

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2023-2024 NHSEB Regional Cases 12 Sartorial Shuffle, 15 Miners, Not Minors, and 16 Is Whatney Worth It? Study Guides

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! We’re enjoying it with a little snow here in East Tennessee – have sleds tied to the back of the family 4-wheeler ready to go. Hoping you’re staying cozy wherever you find yourself.

Coming into the home stretch of NHSEB regionals, here are three additional study guides from Coach Michael. His team will be participating in the Oregon HSEB February 3rd and 4th at Portland State.

Special kudos to Michael and team for being willing to share these with the full Ethics Bowl community, including teams they’ll go up against in a few weeks. Now that’s the spirit of Ethics Bowl!