Happy fall! With the 2023-2024 season fully underway, here are three important updates.
The NHSEB case pool is live here. Favorites include #1 on generative AI (my second favorite issue), #4 on Canada’s recent move to freeze the finances of certain protestors (PM Trudeau sparking considerable debate), and #5 on the morality of cruelty in video games (which is very likely to lead to callousness in the real world).
Per a recent email from our friends at UNC’s Parr Center and the National High School Ethics Bowl, “NHSEBAcademy’s popular Studio Hours program has been revamped and now offers on-demand appointments every day of the week and across multiple time zones.” Session foci range from case brainstorming to presentation consultation to commentary workshops to judge Q&A practice. Live, on-demand, free coaching on the core components of Ethics Bowling? That’s hard to beat. If you’re coaching a team or on a team, book some free studio time here. A big thank you to our friends at Parr for offering such a helpful and generous resource.
The first-ever Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics (AAPAE) Tertiary Ethics Olympiad (comparable to the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl sponsored by America’s Association for Practical and Professional Ethics) was held earlier this week. Australian National University took the Gold and Bronze medals, and Macquarie University the silver. Congrats to them as well as honorable mention winners at the University of Melbourne and Monash University. And thanks to multiple time zone international organizer extraordinaire, Matthew Wills, for the invitation to judge. It’s always a pleasure. Even when my mid-40s brain gets a little tired after midnight š Group photo below.
Congratulations to Australian National University in taking both the gold and bronze medals in the first international collegiate Ethics Bowl/Olympiad! I had the honor of volunteer judging the evening of the 18th (the morning of the 19th in Australia) and the competition was impressive on several levels, with ultra-prepared teams from the U.S. and Down Under, and a collegial, collaborative spirit running all the way from Ethics Olympiad Director Matthew Wills and Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Director John Garcia, through judges, coaches and teams.
According to organizer Matthew Wills, the winners were:
Gold – Australian National University Team 2
Silver – Tufts University
Bronze – Australian National University Team 1
Whitworth University was close behind in fourth, with honorable mentions awarded to Tufts University, University of Chicago and Monash University.
Kudos to Matthew and John for making this first collegiate-level international Bowl/Olympiad a reality, to the judges for volunteering their valuable time, and to the coaches and teams for spreading the goodwill of our unique approach to difficult moral and political issues across oceans and around the world. It’s needed in every country, and through partnerships like these the ethically-minded can combine forces, mutually empowering and elevating discourse one conversation at a time.
Earlier this week the first ever Tertiary Ethics Olympiad was hosted by Matthew Wills and team in Australia. I was honored to serve as a judge, and was supremely impressed with the quality of analyses and discussion. The results, shared by Matthew via email afterwards:
“[Australian National University, ANU] (Green) was awarded the Gold medal, ANU (White) the Silver medal and Monash University (Red)Ā receivedĀ the Bronze medal. Close behind and in order were; [University of Western Australia, UWA] (Aqua), UWA (Green), Monash University (Yellow), University of WollongongĀ (Blue), UQ (Orange), Curtin University (Black) and UQ (Plum). The following teams receivedĀ honorable mentions from the judges; Curtin University (Black), ANU (White), Monash University (Red & Yellow), UWA (Aqua & Green), University of WollongongĀ (Blue) & UQ (Orange and Plum).”
Super congrats to Australian National University for winning both 1st and 2nd place! But thanks and congrats to all coaches and teams for making this first event possible. I know Matthew was thrilled to expand Ethics Olympiad to the collegiate level, and the broader Ethics Bowl community couldn’t be more proud.
Ethics Bowl began in the U.S. on the college level, first in Bob Ladensonās classroom, then at APPE sessions under the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl. Ā Several years later, folks like Fred Guy in Baltimore, Roberta Israeloff on Long Island and George Sherman in St. Petersburg found success extending them into high schools. And slowly, innovators like Deric Barber in Houston tried Ethics Bowl in middle schools as well.
In Australia, the high school version came first, followed by middle and elementary school. And this fall, our friends down under are holding their first collegiate-level Ethics Olympiad.
Gold, silver and bronze awards will be determined by three Zoom-based heats on October 4th. Each team needs a coach, up to two teams are allowed per institution, members may be undergraduate or grad students and must be enrolled in āa tertiary institution in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore or Hong Kong.ā
Kudos, Matthew and team! I understand that several schools in India participated in a recent high school Ethics Olympiad. Awesome that youāre not only expanding geographically, but across age groups as well.
For more information click here or email admin [at] ethicsolympiad [dot] org.
Organizing an ethics competition is no easy feat. There are coaches, judges and moderators to recruit, venues to book, schedules to set, questions to finalize. People need training. Trophies need ordering. Everyone needs reminding. Doing it all online is easier in some ways, but tougher in others.
This is exactly what Matthew Wills has been pulling off on a consistent basis with Australiaās Ethics Olympiad, only heās shouldering the additional burden of working with people in different countries, on different continents, across different time zones ā sometimes radically different time zones.
Two Thursdays ago, I experienced an Olympiad firsthand as a judge. From the comfort of my home office in Tennessee, I had the pleasure of discussing dating after prison, defunding the police, and Netflixās Tiger King with teams in Australia, Canada and Hong Kong. The participant diversity was striking, even among the Australian teams ā one, an all-girls Catholic school; another, an agricultural school. All were well-prepared, the discussions highbrow, the scoresheets close ā comparable to many of the best teams in the States.
While other events struggled to transition from on-site to online bowling, Ethics Olympiad has thrived. One secret to its success is that Matthew brilliantly reduced the number of judges/moderators needed for each heat from four people to one. How? By empowering a single person to simultaneously moderate and handle all judging.
Iāve been an organizer, a coach, a judge and a moderator. But Iāve never been more than one at a time, so this was intimidating. Even more concerning was the fact that the event would begin at 9 pm Tennessee time, and end just before 1 a.m. However, two accommodations that made late-night judging/moderating completely doable:
An app that handled the coin flip, the timing, displayed the cases and questions ā all I had to do was share my screen and click. Iām of course familiar with Ethics Bowl/Olympiad procedures. But man, the app made everything super simple ā with fifteen minutesā practice, a complete rookie could have been fine.
Matthew worked with ethics professors beforehand to provide judges extra questions to explore during the Q&A portion of each match. I always prefer to engage the teams on the specifics of what theyāve argued, and didnāt need any help thinking of something to ask in rounds 1 and 2. But a backup question or two came in handy later in the evening as my other-side-of-the-globe-past-my-bedtime-brain began to fade.
These assists were welcome, but no real surprise. Matthewās been coordinating online Ethics Bowls/Olympiads for teams in different time zones and on different continents for at least a decade ā long before the pandemic forced the rest of us to go virtual. And that experience shows.
He even conceded at the opening of the event that his home internet had went down a mere hour before kickoff, and that he was joining ā and running the entire show ā using a cellphone hotspot. He shared afterwards how this had induced minor panic, which, as a former organizer, I can definitely appreciate. But from my seat, he was as cool as ever.
If you ever get the chance to join an Olympiad (in any capacity), definitely give it a try. Mathew even offers judge/moderators a modest stipend, something that likely improves their buy-in, preparedness and reliability. Most of us in the community would support even a poorly-run event. But itās the little things that make an ethics competition especially enjoyable, and our friends down under are pioneering improvements Iām hoping others will give a try.
P.S. Parts of Australia recently went back on COVID lockdown, which meant several teams had to unexpectedly join individually from their homes. There was a chance that some would choose to deliberate openly ā discussing how to answer the initial question, comment on and respond to commentary from the other team for all to hear, rather than in private. I thought this might be a cool experiment ā to see if teams discussing their strategies and responses live, on-air, might make the atmosphere moreā¦ deliberative. (A NHSEB case committee member recently shared the worry that some Bowls are devolving into āglorified debateā ā a concern I share.) Alas, in each of the rounds I moderated/judged, the teams found ways to deliberate privately, connecting via a separate live video chat during the conferral periods. But if any teams did discuss openly, or if any events have tested this separately, please shoot me an email ā would love to know how it went. For the further we can distinguish ourselves from the posturing and strategizing of traditional debate, the more transformative Ethics Olympiad and Ethics Bowl can be. And the more successful we are in that regard, the stronger the benefits not only for participants, but democracy, which is why most of us are here. The atmosphere at the Olympiad was laudable for sure ā Matthew does a good job setting expectations, leading by example, and recruiting the right folks.
