Original Case Studies & Simulations
I am a firm believer in the pedagogical power of case studies and simulations, especially when one’s goal is to build students’ deliberative capacities.1 I make frequent use of cases written by others, but I’ve also written a few cases and simulations myself, three of which I share below.
- John Rawls’s Original Position [instructor guide]
- John Rawls’s Original Position [utility calculator]
- Tolerance Online and Platform Censorship [case study]
- Integration and Democratic Ideals [case study]
I typically use the “Original Position” simulation after students have read the main idea of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (§§ 1 – 4 and 24), but before we’ve gone through the details of his argument for preferring justice as fairness to maximizing average utility. That way they have the opportunity to explore strategies with an open mind. The simulation includes an accompanying Excel file that can crunch the numbers for the activity to speed up the simulation and allow for greater in-class experimentation. I like to throw the spreadsheet up on a projector and let the class see how their decisions affect the resulting utility distributions.
The “Tolerance Online and Platform Censorship” activity is inspired by arguments from T.M. Scanlon’s article “The Difficulty of Tolerance.”2 For a different perspective, it also pairs nicely with Caroline West’s article “Words that Silence? Freedom of Expression and Racist Hate Speech.”3
And I like to teach the case study “Integration and Democratic Ideals” with Elizabeth Anderson’s book The Imperative of Integration4 and Tommie Shelby’s review of that work.5 I designed the activity to challenge both her claims and those of potential critics.
Scientific Citizenship Initiative
In 2019 – 2020, I helped design and teach the Governance & Ethics of Biotechnology nanocourse for the Scientific Citizenship Initiative at Harvard Medical School. The program is a 3-module nanocourse series designed to expose STEM graduate students to the complexity of ethical decisionmaking, communication, and leadership. Each module focuses on a different biotechnology and combines an ethical simulation, applied communication activities, and group discussions.
Instructor guides for my original simulations are available here:
- Gene Drives [instructor guide]
- Life Extension [instructor guide]
- Neuromodulation [instructor guide]
Building a Deliberative Classroom
From 2018 – 2020 I was an Ethics Pedagogy Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. One of the projects I created during this time is an activity for teaching how to deliberate productively without expecting a consensus to emerge.
The slides for the activity can be found here, and this video is a lecture I gave describing and modeling the activity.
1 For an extended argument on the benefits of teaching with simulations, see Tomer J. Perry & Christopher Robichaud (2020) Teaching Ethics Using Simulations: Active Learning Exercises in Political Theory, Journal of Political Science Education, 16:2, 225-242, DOI: 10.1080/15512169.2019.1568879.
2 Scanlon, Thomas M., ‘The Difficulty of Tolerance’, in The Difficulty of Tolerance: Essays in Political Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 187–201.
3 Caroline West, “Words that Silence? Freedom of Expression and Racist Hate Speech,” in Speech and Harm, edited by Ishani Maitra and Mary Kate McGowan (2012).
4 Anderson, Elizabeth, The Imperative of Integration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
5 Shelby, Tommie, ‘Integration, Inequality, and Imperatives of Justice: A Review Essay’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 42.3 (2014), 253–85 <https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12034>