The Program in Ethics in Society is designed to foster scholarship, teaching, and moral reflection on fundamental issues in personal and public life. The program is grounded in moral and political philosophy, but it extends its concerns across a broad range of traditional disciplinary domains. The program is guided by the idea that ethical thought has application to current social questions and conflicts, and it seeks to encourage moral reflection and practice in areas such as international relations, politics, science, medicine, law, and business.

Stanford's Ethics in Society Program brings together scholars, students, citizens and citizen activists to reflect critically about the political and moral challenges which have arisen in our collective life. We hope that such reflection can improve society: through raising the quality of our deliberation, in bringing research to bear on important local, national and global problems, and perhaps most importantly, by preparing our students to live lives committed to the values of personal integrity and social justice.

Current, and planned initiatives of the program include:

1. Supporting and fostering ethics research.
2. Supporting innovative teaching which focuses on the ethical dimensions relevant to the different disciplines across the curriculum.
3. Establishing a yearly faculty-graduate seminar focusing on topics in ethics and public life.

The program also sponsors a public lecture series, including the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, the Wesson Lectures in Problems of Democracy, and the Ethics in Society lecture series on a current social issue. Students interested in pursuing studies which bring moral and political theory to bear on issues in public life should consult the director.