Former director of ISP, Professor Karen Detlefsen, coordinates Philadelphia Ethics Bowl!

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The first Philadelphia regional Ethics Bowl has just concluded. Two people can be credited, more than any other actors, with the success of this inaugural Bowl: Ph. D. student Dustin Webster and Dr. Karen Detlefsen, professor of philosophy and former director of the Integrated Studies Program. Dustin first learned about the Ethics Bowl while a master's student at Columbia University, but realized that there was no Ethics Bowl in the Philadelphia area. He contacted Professor Detlefsen who was preparing to teach her ABCS course, Philosophy for the Young, and the two decided to use the class as a means to prepare high schoolers to participate in the Ethics Bowl hosted at Villanova. Instead, persistent efforts by Professor Detlefsen led the National High School Ethics Bowl to approve a regional competition in Philadelphia. And so, Perry World House saw high school students from around the city enter its doors equipped (and excited!) to discuss some of the country's most pressing ethical issues. Webster and Professor Detlefsen have shown that Philadelphia's youth have both talent and interest in the field of philosophy. Professor Detlefsen had this to say about  the connection between her work with ISP and her work teaching philosophy to high schoolers:

"The same kinds of skills we seek to cultivate in our students in ISP are valuable in helping the high school students to prepare for the Ethics Bowl. The Ethics Bowl cases are complicated not just because of the complexity of the philosophical material, but also because grappling successfully with the cases often requires drawing upon materials from a range of fields outside of philosophy, and integrating that material into the philosophical thinking."

Read more about the Ethics Bowl on Penn Today!

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