The teams in the Big Ethical Question Slam were, quite simply, terrific. Critical. Thoughtful. Funny. Eloquent. Temperate in their competitive zeal. Knowledgeable. Clever. Patient with the fact that this was our first time. And they will be first in our hearts forever for helping us get the Slam started and for making it worthwhile.

In October 2010, we invited Bede Sheppard to talk about his powerful work as a human rights researcher in the children's rights division of Human Rights Watch. Bede's local school visit to talk with students and teachers about targeted attacks on the schools he regularly visits in conflict-affected regions in south Asia, was alarming. 

We consider attacks on education as a war tactic an issue of the greatest priority, and for us,  a 'forgotten' but imperative issue for the American public to become educated about.

A2Ethics.org has an abiding interest in the ethics of education across the globe. So what does this mean? It means we are interested in featuring and discussing a broad range of issues that universally impact the ethical prospects and well-being of students, teachers and the schools where they learn, wherever they live.

We are all familiar with the Red Cross and Red Crescent symbols which serve to warn off and prohibit armed groups and military forces from attacking places identified as medical facilities.

Many of us look forward to March. It is the month when we can try out our new 'quant' approaches or 'Blink!' systems to choose who will win the NCAA college hoops tournament. To be sure, March Madness bracket choices are now a science. Sad to say, my own approach remains stubbornly unscientific and partial to Michigan schools. So, unless Michigan State can get to the Final Four, I will have once again shown that state loyalty is foolish and farfetched, not to mention an obsolete way, given the status of loyalty today, to win an office betting pool. It is some kind of madness.  

Just in time for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Bill McKibben’s 350.org campaign is enlisting support in the form of candlelight vigils.  McKibben recently spoke at Ann Arbor’s Rackham Auditorium, at an evening sponsored by the Ecology Center.  The author of the first general-audience book on climate change (The End of Nature, 1989), his new organization recently pulled off what CNN called “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”