Events
Center for Ethics programs and events are designed to foster a sense of community, engage in productive discourse, and encourage critical thinking about important ethical issues. Whether you are a student, faculty, professional, or simply curious about ethics, there is something for everyone.
Upcoming Events
Date/Time: Dec 6 & 7, 2025
Location: Plaza Theatre and The Supermarket
Program Organizers: Emory Center for Ethics, Atlanta Film Society, Video Consortium
Do you wonder about what responsibility documentary filmmakers have to their participants throughout the filmmaking process and beyond? Should filmmakers compensate participants? When we use AI to create images, what could go wrong?
This interactive workshop invites filmmakers to grapple with the real-world ethical challenges of documentary filmmaking. Together, we will:
- Explore the nuances of ethical responsibility to film crews and participants (past and present) through disseminating multiple ethical frameworks
- Discuss and analyze dilemmas from contemporary documentary filmmakers
- Workshop participants’ own projects in facilitated small groups
While documentary ethics rarely offer simple answers, engaging with case studies and peer discussions can offer guidance as you wrestle with dilemmas from your own projects. This event is designed for filmmakers at all stages of their careers and offers concrete tools, resources, and community support to strengthen your filmmaking practice.
More Information and to RegisterSAVE THE DATE!
More information to come in the next few weeks.
Date/Time: Wed Jan 28, 2026
Location: Center for Ethics, 1531 Dickey Drive, First Floor
SAVE THE DATE: Feb 9, 2026, Time TBA
Watch here for more information.
Location: Emory Center for Ethics, 1531 Dickey Drive, Room 102
In partnership with Alliance Theatre, we organize events that draw conversations about ethics from storylines. The purpose of Ethics on the Stage is to create a space for deeper engagement through media, whether it's a performance, reading, or panel discussion.
Join Center ethicists as they explore, through moderated public scholarship, the ethical and social implications of Fires, Ohio with the audience in this fascinating perspective on the play.
Inspired by the classic family drama Uncle Vanya, FIRES, OHIO brings an old story into our painfully absurd present, exploring how today’s most toxic forces impact our everyday lives.
2026 Healthcare Ethics Consortium (HEC) Annual Conference
The Stories We Tell: Putting Ethics Into Practice in Caring For Our Patients, Our Colleagues, Ourselves
Date/Time: March 23 & 24, 2026
Location: Virtual and In-Person at the Emory Conference Center
In a healthcare environment punctuated by a lack of patient trust, increased burdens on providers, and the unprecedented incorporation of technology into care delivery, we are called to attend to the ethical questions that arise in stories in the patient-provider relationship.
While considering current tensions and values present in the delivery of care, we will explore ways in which listening to the stories of patients and healthcare professionals (narrative practice) can improve care for patients, restore the humanity of providers, and empower both to advocate for change.
Through hands-on skill-building, we will dive deeply into the power of sharing and understanding narratives to build trust and empathy, enhance effective patient care, better support vulnerable patients, & mitigate burnout in healthcare professionals.
For More Information & Registration2025 Fall Semester Events
Date/Time: Sep 4, 2025 - 7:00 pm
Location: Center for Ethics, 1531 Dickey Drive, Room 252
SPECIAL GUESTS
David Harrington, Violinist, Founding Member of the Kronos Quartet, Kluge Chair in Modern Culture, Library of Congress.
John Fenn, Head of Research and Programs at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress
One of the Center's aims is to bring thoughtful people into conversation, so they talk through their efforts to be conscientious in a particular domain. This event arose from the thought that "appropriation" is a term to mark a failure of appropriately acknowledging one's creative sources, where "appropriate" might involve showing respect for, being generous with, even honoring the source, whether a person or a tradition.
The founding question for this event is thus: Beyond honest credits, how does one acknowledge, even honor the artists and cultural traditions that any artist inevitably relies upon in generating their own work?
Date/Time: Sep 11, 2025 - 7:00 pm
Location: Center for Ethics, 1531 Dickey Drive, Room 102
SPECIAL GUESTS
Teresa Morgan, PhD, D. Litt, Yale Divinity School
Louis E. Newman, PhD, Carlton College
Wrongdoing, suffering, and repairing are part and parcel of the human condition. Yet these are variably understood across traditions. Some traditions speak of such experiences in terms of transgression and atonement, others use terms like sin, guilt, and repentance. Forgiveness and reconciliation, dignity and humility, vulnerability and trust mix and mingle in this eternal pursuit to mend profound wounds. Come and hear this conversation between scholars of religion, theology, and ethics.
Healthcare Ethics Diaglogue Series
Date/Time: Sep 24, 2025
Location: Center for Ethics, 1531 Dickey Drive, Room 162
SPECIAL GUEST
Renee McLeod-Sordjan, DNP, PhD, MBA, FNAP, FAAN, Founding Dean & Professor of Nursing, Morehouse School of Medicine
We explored how the shifting information ecosystem (social media, AI, intentional misinformation and fragmented expertise) reshapes patient and family willingness to trust clinical recommendations. Using case-based discussion, ethical principlism will be connected to practical communication tools (e.g., Ask–Tell–Ask, transparency about uncertainty, equity-minded framing) to navigate misinformation without eroding autonomy. Participants leave with a concise, measurable trust-building plan tailored to their own professional and clinical practice.
Learning Objectives (by the end of this session, participants will be able to…)
- Analyze at least three drivers of patient/family trust and mistrust (e.g., historical harms, digital misinformation ecosystems, clinician communication behaviors) and then link them to core ethical principlism
- Apply an ethically grounded culturally sensitive conversation framework (e.g., Ask–Tell–Ask with teach-back and transparency about uncertainty/evidence strength) to complex ethics scenarios to address prognostic uncertainty.
- Design a brief trust-building ethical action plan including risk/benefit framing, transparency, and equity-minded/community-engagement strategy, along with practical consult metrics to evaluate impact.
October 27, 2025 - 2:30 pm
Location: Center for Ethics, 1531 Dickey Drive, Room 162
SPECIAL GUESTS
Aaron Gross, PhD, Assoc. Professor at Univ of San Diego, Founder/CEO of Farm Forward
Ani Satz, PhD, JD, Founding Director of the Health Law, Policy & Ethics Project at Emory. Professor of Health, Policy & Management at the Rollins School of Public Health, a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Center for Ethics, and an Affiliated Professor at the Goizueta Business School.
Even in polarized times, most Americans agree that compassion for animals matters. Yet for decades our laws and institutions have failed to protect animals when it’s most consequential. Can we hope to change course in the Anthropocenic era when compassion itself seems under attack? Join us for a heartfelt conversation about legal and policy protections for the well-being of animals with scholars who see enormous scope for positive change.
November 5, 2025 - 7:00 pm
Location: Center for Ethics, 1531 Dickey Drive, Room 252
SPECIAL GUEST
Meghan O’Rourke, Poet, Author of NYTimes Bestseller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimaging Chronic Illness and Editor, The Yale Review
How should medicine and society respond to patients whose illnesses resist conventional diagnosis? Drawing on The Invisible Kingdom and her own experience, Meghan O’Rourke examines the harms of disbelief and neglect and reflects on the ethical responsibility to recognize and care for suffering even when its causes remain elusive or hard to "see."