Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics
The Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics is a research center at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The center's mission is to "advance teaching and research on ethical issues in public life." It is named for Edmond J. Safra and Lily Safra and receives support from the Edmond J. Safra Foundation. The Center for Ethics was the first Interfaculty Initiative at Harvard University. The center has four categories of Fellowships: Undergraduate Fellows, directed by Arthur Applbaum; Graduate Fellows, co-directed by Mathias Risse and Meira Levinson; Fellows-in-Residence; and Ethics Pedagogy Fellows, directed by Christopher Robichaud. In 2016, the center entered into a partnership with the Berggruen Institute's Philosophy and Culture Center, as a partner institution for the Berggruen Fellowship Program. The Philosophy and Culture Center supports three Berggruen Fellows each year. Berggruen Fellows engage in scholarship of broad social and political importance from cross-cultural perspectives, and demonstrate a commitment to the public dissemination of their ideas. Founded by Dennis Thompson as the Program in Ethics and the Professions in 1986, the center has supported the work of more than 800 fellows and visiting scholars, many of whom have spent a year or more at the center. They include professors, graduate students, and undergraduates, journalists, physicians, lawyers, psychologists from many educational institutions and governments in the United States and throughout the world. The center does not promote a particular theory or conception of ethics or morality but rather encourages rigorous study of difficult ethical issues, informed by empirical research and philosophical analysis. Although the range of topics studied by fellows range widely, major themes have included professional ethics, institutional corruption, “Diversity, Justice and Democracy,” and "Political Economy and Justice." Faculty As of July 2023, Eric Beerbohm directs the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics. His predecessor was Danielle Allen, who was appointed in 2015. She succeeded Lawrence Lessig, who served from 2009 to 2015. Dennis Thompson, appointed by President Derek Bok in 1986, is the founding director. The center's Faculty Committee comprises Arthur Applbaum, Eric Beerbohm, Jeff Behrends, Selim Berker, I. Glenn Cohen, Angela Depace, Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Archon Fung, Nien-Hê Hsieh, David S. Jones, Meira Levinson, Mathias Risse, Christopher Robichaud, Gina Schouten, Tommie Shelby, Alison Simmons, Lucas Stanczyk, Brandon Terry, and Robert D. Truog. Harvard faculty who were key contributors to the center include John Rawls, Kenneth Ryan, Amartya Sen, Thomas Scanlon, Martha Minow and Michael Sandel. More than 50 Harvard faculty from all the schools at the university have been active in the center. History Harvard President Derek Bok argued that there was a pressing need for "problem-oriented courses in ethics" that would prepare students for the moral dilemmas and ethical decisions they would face throughout their careers. By his own account, he could not make much progress on meeting this need until he recruited Dennis Thompson, then a professor at Princeton, to come to Harvard to start a new program. With its decentralized structure, Harvard was not friendly to inter-faculty initiatives, but with the support of