UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility to Host Moral Forum Competition, Award $13,000 in Scholarships

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The University of Alabama Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility will host the semifinal and final rounds of the fourth annual Moral Forum Tournament. The semifinals will be held at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 22 in the Ferguson Center Forum (room 360) and the final round will be at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 27 in Morgan Auditorium. Scholarships totaling $13,000 will be awarded the final night.

Two exemplary pairs of students from this semester’s Moral Forum course will debate the resolution, “The continuing success and expansion of Wal-Mart has led to a more just society for American citizens,” addressing issues such as the effects of globalization, employee wages and healthcare, and the influence of the giant corporation on American cities and towns.

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; this semester, that resolution centers on the effect of the big-box retailer Wal-Mart on the realization of equality and fairness in American society. 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.

Moral Forum is one of the founding initiatives of the Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, which began in fall 2005 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. For more information on Moral Forum and the work of the Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, contact cesr@ua.edu, call 205/348-6490 or go online to http://cesr.ua.edu/.