UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility Hosts Second Moral Forum Competition Offering $15,000 in Scholarships

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The University of Alabama Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility will host the final round of the second annual Moral Forum Tournament Monday, Oct. 16 at 7 p.m. in the Ferguson Theater on campus.

Two exemplary pairs of students from this semester’s Moral Forum course will debate on the topic “Organ Selling: The Role of a Moral and Just Society.”

The debate will address whether the United States should permit the sale of human organs to allow monetary compensation for cadaver organs as well as organs from the living (such as kidneys) which do not unduly jeopardize the donor’s health.

Congressman Artur Davis will give remarks and present the awards at the end of the competition. $15,000 in CE&SR scholarships will be awarded at the event. Each member of the winning team will be awarded a $4,000 scholarship, two finalists will each receive a $2,000 award, and four semifinalists will be awarded $1,000 each. A $500 award will also be given to the individual debater who has most distinguished himself or herself during the competition, and $500 will be awarded to the best written case.

“Moral Forum helps students understand how to evaluate and respond to moral claims, overcoming a reluctance to have their views and beliefs subjected to serious scrutiny by others,” says Stephen Black, CE&SR director.

Moral Forum was designed to help students at the University develop the skills to evaluate and respond to moral claims and engage in moral discourse. Striving to foster both open-mindedness and conviction, Moral Forum seeks to help students distinguish between making reasoned judgments about the moral legitimacy of views as opposed to being intolerant or disrespectful toward individuals or cultural groups.

To these ends, the Moral Forum initiative is organized around the analysis of one particular controversial “moral” resolution. In teams of two, students conduct research, attend a six-part lecture series, and construct position statements that address both sides of the current resolution in preparation for two required preliminary debate rounds. Each team must be prepared to argue both affirmative and negative sides of the same resolution.

“When addressing values-based issues, we need more than two-minute split-screen ‘conflict’ segments. That format only reinforces the deepening polarization of the citizenry and contributes much to the decline of public trust in the possibility of meaningful dialogue,” Black says.

It is anticipated that Moral Forum will become a required component of the honors curriculum at UA beginning in spring 2008, with the number of student participants competing for scholarship money exceeding 400 per year.

Moral Forum is one of the founding initiatives of the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, which began in fall 2005 as a result of a gift from Mignon C. Smith, to establish a university-based ethics program that would support the study of ethics and develop projects to nurture social responsibility and reflective, thoughtful citizenship.

This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments and breakout discussions, co-sponsored by UA Creative Campus, will follow the debate. For more information on Moral Forum and the work of the Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, contact cesr@ua.edu, 205/348-6490.

NOTE TO MEDIA: Stephen Black, director of the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, will be available to speak to media before the event Monday, Oct. 16 at 5 p.m. at the UA President’s Mansion. Also, Congressman Artur Davis is scheduled to present awards to the winners of the 2006 Moral Forum Tournament at the event.