The Levan Institute is the first U.S. partner of the Carnegie Ethics Studio, a new media venture proposed by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. The Carnegie Studios are located at affiliated institutions around the world, operate in partnership with the Council, and provide a multi-media venue for the exchange of ideas and experiences. Carnegie’s New York studio will bind its programming with the networked university partners through the changing landscape of the digital world.

The vision of the Ethics Studio is a “global, interactive network sharing content and discourse” on international policy issues. Carnegie’s institutional partnerships around the world—from Taiwan to Australia to Egypt—will deliver content from the New York studio and add their own content for use by the other partner universities.

Programs will feature recognizable personalities discussing new ideas about human rights, economic fairness, the just use of force, and the resolution of conflicts. The initial program, established in the Fall of 2008, will result in podcasts, transcripts, teaching modules, and development of new curricula applying to three basic principles:

• Pluralism: the empathy for diversity while seeking what is common in the human experience
• Rights: a basis for moral deliberation which implies both protections and responsibilities
• Fairness: the most extensive basic liberty compatible with similar liberties for others

The Levan Institute will develop an undergraduate course in Ethics and Global Affairs to take advantage of this unique partnership. The course will incorporate discussions with students and professors in Tokyo, Taipei, Beirut, Cairo, and Canberra on issues of the day. Students will produce short videos on the weekly discussion topics that can be broadcast to partner universities to spur student discussion.

For example, the USC class may begin by watching a one-minute video made by a student from Taipei or Cairo giving his or her view on the environment, global terrorism, or the United Nations. Our USC class would then discuss and make a response video to be viewed by classrooms at  these partner universities. Technically, USC has the capacity to hold a split screen discussion with eight global points simultaneously. The overriding vision is of a class that introduces USC students to alternative world views on ethics and global affairs.

Carnegie initially plans, as a test run in Spring 2009, to have each partner university host an in-house panel of professors to address what, in their opinion, are the five global ethical decisions facing our world. The panel will link to the international partners (professors and students) for real-time discussions. The podcast will be sent to Carnegie for editing into a thirty-minute format shown on their World in Focus program.