Videos

November 29, 2021

Jeff Behrends is Associate Senior Lecturer on Philosophy (FAS) and Director of Ethics and Technology Initiatives at Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. His research interests are largely concerned with meta-ethics and practical reasons, or reasons for action. His published work includes papers in applied political philosophy, normative ethics, and metaethics. He has written, for example, on moral epistemology, the metaphysical grounding of reasons for action, and the conditions under which an action promotes or serves a desire without satisfying the desire. As Director of Ethics and Technology Initiatives, Jeff assists the Director and Executive Director in advancing the Center’s goals related to its new research theme, the Ethics of Technological and Biomedical Innovation. He also works with departments and other academic units across Harvard that are eager to integrate ethics education into their curricula, inspired by the approach developed in the Embedded EthiCS @ Harvard program, of which he is Co-Director.

James Mickens is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science (SEAS). James studies distributed systems—how to make them faster, more robust, and more secure. Much of his work focuses on large-scale web services, and how to design principled system interfaces for those services. His contributions to computer science and life have been so fundamental that, as his web bio puts it, he “ran out of storage space for his awards in 1992. He subsequently purchased a large cave to act as a warehouse/fortress from which he can defend himself during the inevitable robot war that was prophesied by the documentary movie The Matrix. In his spare time, James enjoys life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, often (but not always) in that order, and usually (almost always) while listening to Black Sabbath.”

Trystan Goetze is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Philosophy (FAS). Trystan is a professional philosopher, writer, educator, and game designer. He works with philosophers and computer scientists to integrate ethics lessons into the computer science curriculum. As “Bridge Fellow,” Trystan builds connections and collaborations with other organizations who are developing computer ethics training. His areas of research specialization are social epistemology, especially epistemic injustice; meta-ethics, especially moral responsibility; and computer ethics, especially ethical issues particular to the web and to artificial intelligence.