We offer seminars, classes, and mentorship for the student community at Princeton University. We also offer international courses in cooperation with our international partners. Our work also takes us into the community to offer opportunities to speak to various constituencies including Princeton alumni, scholars, and marketplace and corporate leaders.
Professional Responsibility & Ethics (Succeeding without Selling Your Soul)
ERG/ENT/REL219
The course objective is to learn basic ethical theory and develop practical tools for workplace ethics, including the potential role of religion in ethical frameworks and decision-making in workplaces that are increasingly religiously diverse. These tools will be applied to contemporary ethical dilemmas faced in organizational life (in both for-profit and non-profit entities), drawing on real-time news stories and visiting CEOs.
The presupposition of the course is that traditions within ethics and ancient wisdom literature, whether conscious or not, often shape and inform one’s conception of workplace ethics, professional behavior, and leadership. Students will be exposed to the predominant streams of ethical thought and the ethical resources of religious traditions (with focus on the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in a model that can be applied to any religious tradition) and identify an ethical framework and ethical tools they can use going forward in their respective fields.
Engineering & Ethics
EGR 501
This required course for graduate and post-graduate students in SEAS introduces the thorny issues of responsible conduct in research. In particular, it focuses on ethical challenges pertaining to engineering industries through case studies, the IEEE Code of Ethics, and varying ethical schools of thought.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life, Theology, and Ethics: A Legacy for our Times?
REL314
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is arguably one the most influential theologians, social figures, and activists of the twentieth-century. He was a philosopher, ethicist, pastor, theologian, and public figure. His ideas, life, and eventual martyrdom at the hands of the Nazis in the closing days of WWII have impacted social movements, countries, classrooms, and the church far beyond his native Germany This seminar will investigate and study the different aspects of Bonhoeffer’s identity (as a person, philosopher, pastor, theologian, and ethicist, and political activist), with particular attention to his ethical system and praxis.
Taught in a seminar style, this course will focus on selective but intense reading of Bonhoeffer’s broad corpus. Having some previous study in ethics, religious studies, philosophy, or European history is helpful but not required. Having a personal religious conviction or spiritual orientation is not required for the course; having respect for those who do is. Students will be challenged to apply their understanding of Bonhoeffer’s life, family and cultural milieu, ethics, and theology to a contemporary social issue of their choosing.
Humanities for Business
The webinar series presents the grand traditions of the Humanities as an untapped resource for business-world challenges. In a time where the Humanities are viewed as in decline or in threat of collapse altogether, the webinars will enact and extend the best of the Humanities toward prevailing challenges within the complex realities of our current cultural moment. The webinars cover topics like values, trust, responsibility, ethics, leadership, self-realization, spirituality, narrative, literature, music, and the arts in relation with and applied to current business challenges. The objectives of the course are: (i) To understand how the humanities can contribute to the renewal of business and other human professions through deep existential-spiritual questioning; (ii) to develop a broader view of the purpose of human life alongside today’s social and ecological challenges; and, (iii) to improve human creativity and sensitivity in facing big ethical dilemmas in personal and professional life.