Category: Ethics

  • Celebrating Walter Capps’ Impact on Religious Studies

    In a celebration of legacy and learning, the UC Santa Barbara Department of Religious Studies recently hosted a panel featuring renowned scholars of religion who were once graduate students of the late Walter Capps. The current chair of the department, Juan Campos, moderated the panel, which highlighted Capps’ enduring influence on the academic community and […]

  • How Modern Slavery Impacts the Environment

    There are 45 million enslaved people in the world today. The links between slavery, conflict, environmental destruction, economics and consumption began to strengthen and evolve in the 20th century. The availability of people who might be enslaved dramatically increased in line with population growth – and often, slaves are forced to do work that is […]

  • Artificial Intelligence with Kate Crawford 

    The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the capture of digital material for machine learning production. Kate Crawford, author of “Atlas AI: Power, Politics and Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence,” is a leading international scholar of the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. In two new programs, Crawford explores the ways training […]

  • Big Tech Critic

    With Amazon’s Alexa spying on her owners, a massive data breach masterminded by Cambridge Analytica, and evidence of election interference promulgated by Facebook, tech policy has never had more significant implications for our society and democracy. Goldman School of Public Policy Dean Henry Brady talks with Roger McNamee—noted tech venture capitalist, early mentor to Mark […]

  • Privacy, Practicality, and Potential: The Use of Technology for Healthy Aging

    That wearable fitness device on your wrist is measuring so much more than your exercise levels. Digital tools offer unprecedented opportunities in health research and healthcare but it can come at the cost of privacy. Six days of step counts are enough to identify you among a million other people – and the type of […]

  • Our Impact on the Earth

    “Mother Nature is not happy right now and she’s trying to tell us, in many ways,” says Kimberly Prather, Professor of Climate, Atmospheric Science, and Physical Oceanography at UC San Diego. New weather patterns and events are causing concern but how do we know these changes are caused by human activity? Climate scientists are looking […]

  • E-Cigarettes: What We Know, What We Need to Learn

    In 2014 with vaping newly on the rise, Dr. Laura Crotty Alexander joined us to talk about the potential health risks. Five years later, we revisit the topic to see how the research is bearing out how e-cigarettes and their usage has evolved. Dr. Alexander shares a physician’s view of the specific dangers of vaping. […]

  • Imaging Studies: A Revealing Look

    Research imaging studies are crucial to finding effective treatments and therapies. Protocols are in place to protect both the study participant and the science, but what if the images reveal a previously unknown condition? Or a false positive or negative? Unraveling this question is more than a simple task and the consequences can range from […]

  • What is in the Air We Breathe?

    “What we do in my group is we zoom in on the aerosols.” Vicki Grassian and her team look at aerosols at a microscopic level to determine their impact on our health and our climate. Aerosols can be mineral dust and sea spray from the ocean or created by human activity or stem from any […]

  • Neanderthal Among Us? Science Meets Fiction

    What makes us human is a question that not only science asks, but all disciplines of mind from philosophy to religion to sociology and ethics, and even to storytelling and the arts. Tim Disney’s new movie “William” is about a Neanderthal living in the modern world and forces us to ask about humanness and many […]