Ethics Bowl
To support the Ethics Bowl Program, the Department of Philosophy and Religion offers a course titled Debating Ethical Issues that is based on Ethics Bowl cases.
The Ethics Bowl team is a collegiate debate competition where teams of between 4-6 students present arguments on specific cases based on ethically complex and controversial cases that will be the subjects of debates. The most challenging aspect of Ethics Bowl is that teams must be prepared to argue both sides of a topic or case, since the cases are chosen randomly during each round of competition, and teams choose the position they defend based on the flip of a coin.
For more information about the program, please contact Prof. Benjamin Yelle.
Marian University, Indianapolis, Indiana,
November 6, 2021
Check out photos from the competition here.
Salisbury University, Maryland,
November 22-24, 2019
During the Fall semester of 2019, the Northeastern University Ethics Bowl team was privileged to host a local Boston-area Ethics Bowl competition, featuring some of the area’s newest collegiate teams. The Northeastern team reached out to teams from Boston College and Harvard University, both of whom agreed to compete. These teams have the mutually beneficial goal of creating and maintaining a friendly, collaborative collegiate ethics community among schools in the greater Boston area. The competition was organized with the assistance of the Northeastern team’s coaches, Professors Benjamin Yelle and Katy Shorey, and the team’s captain, MPH student Kaleem Ahmid. Beyond the team members themselves, many additional Northeastern students attended the competition, served as judges, and provided constructive feedback to teams. The competition took place on a Friday evening in Renaissance Park, after inter-team socializing around many shared pizzas, and served as a valuable experience-builder in competitive ethical debate for all teams involved. In particular, the Northeastern team found the exercise to be central to their preparation for the National Ethics Bowl competition in Maryland, which they attended later during the semester. Although each team benefited from exposure to an Ethics Bowl style debate, this competition also served as a symbol of the inter-collegiate community that we strive to create. We hope that this partnership and collaboration will continue far into the future, and as a result the region will grow to be a leader in the field. As for the next steps in continuing to grow and strengthen this community, the Northeastern team hopes to host another local Boston scrimmage debate competition during the Spring semester; we hope to see you and your friends there! We take great pride in the fact that newly formed teams feel comfortable working with us, and we are excited to see what the future for Boston-area collegiate Ethics Bowl teams holds.
To see more pictures, click here.
