The growing friction between the US and China in trade and tech competition is raising fundamental challenges in global engineering ethics education. The widely-accepted values and meanings of important ethical concepts such as privacy, responsibility, human right, democracy defined in the western context, have no longer served as “universal rules” that legitimate and govern the development of technologies emerging from non-western societies. In the meantime, the increasing nationalist rhetoric in technological development also poses great concerns in pressing global issues such as climate change or cybersecurity which requires international collaborative solutions. How then, do we reimagine and reposition engineering practice and responsibility in the rapidly changing world? What and how to teach global (engineering) ethics across border? And what forms of international collaboration could be developed among engineers, social scientists and humanities scholars to facilitate cross-cultural understanding and mutual learning in global engineering/ethics education? 

SCHEDULE:

11:00-11:25  History of Engineering Ethics Education in China 

Liao Miao, Department of Philosophy, Changsha University of Science & Technology

Li Yu-yen, Vice Dean/ Professor, School of Marxism, CUST

 11:25-11:50   When Eagle and Dragon Learn Together: US-China Engineering Ethics Classroom in the context of US-China Trade War

Sharon Ku, Engineering & Society, UVA

Li Ping, Graduate School in Tsing Hua University

12:05-12:30   Faculty perceptions of engineering ethics in China and the United States

Qin Zhu, Ethics & Engineering Education, Colorado School of Mines

12:30-1:00   Round Table Discussion

~Lunch will be provided, please RSVP~

Global Ethics WG is a newly established working group under the Assessing China's Belt and Road Initiative Project sponsored bythe Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, the East Asia Center, and a generous gift from Mr. James H. T. McConnell, Jr.It is a self-organized group constituted by faculty from SEAS, College, Darden who are interested in asking questions about the ontology, epistemology and practice of global ethics and ethics of globalization. Our 2019-2020 Networking Lunch Seminars aims to identify a core-set of faculty interested in developing an institutional culture to collectively explore cross-disciplinary language/framework enable cross-disciplinary understanding and capacity building on global ethics research pedagogy, as well as stimulating cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional and international collaborations. We will invite faculty from different disciplines to share how they conceptualize “global ethics” in their research and teaching, ranging in topics from bioethics, military ethics, business ethics, climate change, artificial intelligence and ethics, etc. Proposed outcomes include planning further research and curriculum developments. If you are interested in joining, please contact Sharon Ku (tk9na@virginia.edu)