Welcome to the Salisbury area Community Ethics Network, a multi-year collaboration between the departments of Philosophy and Psychology at SU. Tim Stock is the chair of Philosophy and has had the good fortune of directing philosophy outreach programs from our local schools to our prisons, libraries and beyond. Michèle Schlehofer is a Professor in Psychology who has designed and implemented a number of public psychology and community-engaged projects. You’ve recently been contacted by David Jackson, our Community Outreach Specialist, to join our network, and we will be having our first listening session next week.
Ethics can mean a lot of different things, but to us it means communicating about the ways in which we understand the public good, and reflectively approaching how we make decisions, set rules, and share information in the course of making those goods a reality. An ethical community embraces transparency, dialogue, and the ability to revise its own practices; establishing this network has been a long-desired goal towards increasing SU’s and Salisbury’s engagement with public ethics in this sense.
One of the biggest barriers to this sort of work is establishing trust and mutual understanding of how we all articulate the public good to ourselves, our team members, and our constituents. We all play different roles, from businesses to non-profits to government and social enterprises. By coming together, we can establish that mutual understanding, pathways to collaboration and mutual aid, identifying and acquiring needed resources, and guaranteeing increased accountability. Our core team: Dr. Tim Stock of the Philosophy Department, Dr. Michele Schlehofer of the Psychology department, and Community Outreach Specialist David Jackson, have designed this series of sessions to be illuminative for you, and to help us create a realistic understanding of the most significant ethical issues in our community. We look forward to your participation, and thank you.
Because we want the broadest picture of the community possible, we have invited over 40 leaders to participate in this first phase, and each of you represents a unique perspective we
are hoping to understand, and so submitting your consent form and scheduling your participation is not only meaningful, but decisive for the success of our project. You will play a foundational role in identifying what our community needs are, with the ultimate goal of establishing a campus center to facilitate ethical dialogue around the biggest challenges our community faces. With the heightened environment of a COVID pandemic, policing, partisanship and public accountability, there is no time like the present to find new ways of communicating, solving problems, and how best to take responsibility for our community, and for each other.
Thank you again! We look forward to seeing you next week.
Best,
-Tim, Michèle, and David
For more information on the R.E.A.C.H. Initiative:
https://www.salisbury.edu/academic-offices/liberal-arts/philosophy/reach.aspx
