CAPE - Center for Applied and Professional Ethics

Call Directions Website

CAPE - Center for Applied and Professional Ethics One of the virtual homes of the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University. The Program was officially given Institute status in 1995.

Background and Goals of IAPE:

The IAPE was founded (as a Program) in 1988 as a result of an Ohio Board of Regents’ Academic Challenge Grant. The original grant was written under the auspices of Associate Provost David Stewart by the following Ohio University faculty members: Donald Borchert and Arthur Zucker (Philosophy); Ralph Izard and Michael Bugeja (Journalism); John Stinson and Richard Milter (Business); Willaim Duerfeldt (Osteopathic Medicine); and Nicholas Dinos (Engineering). The first Board of Directors consisted of Borchert, Zucker, Izard, Bugeja, Stinson, and Milter. Zucker was chosen as Director while the other Board members served in an advisory capacity. Dr. Arthur Zucker retired in 2011. The Institute's Director from 2011 to 2016 was Dr. Alyssa R. Bernstein (Philosophy). In July 2016, Dr. Bernhard Debatin (Journalism) was named director of the Institute. The institute, originally funded through grants, used to have an annual budget of up to $100,000, which allowed for hiring an associate (managing) director and occasionally some faculty, too. It also enabled the institute to develop systematic programming with diverse events, faculty and student workshops, and interdisciplinary collaborations. During the 2008 recession, however, the institute lost almost all of its funding. Today, it has an annual budget of only several thousand dollars, which means that programming opportunities are rather limited. This is why in the past six years, the institute's activities focused mostly on promoting well informed, critical reflection about climate change and economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Despite these limitations, it is the aim of IAPE to put a stronger emphasis on professional and applied ethics, particularly in the different departments and disciplines with a professional orientation, such as media and communication, engineering, medicine, nursing, and business. In addition to organizing events on ethics issues, the Institute's goal is to contribute to both educating future professionals and providing training workshops for faculty in these disciplines.

Check out our spring newsletter:
03/10/2026

Check out our spring newsletter:

# CAPE Newsletter - Spring 2026 # WELCOME TO CAPE Welcome to the Spring 2026 Newsletter of the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics (CAPE) at Ohio University! We very much hope that this CAPE Newsletter finds you well. The following overview provides you with information about upcoming CAPE ev...

03/17/2025

The Center for Applied and Professional Ethics (CAPE; formerly IAPE), together with OU's Department of Psychology, is very pleased to invite you to this year's Spring Ethics Lecture. We are excited that Kent Berridge (James Olds Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Michigan) will present on Friday, 3/28, 12:55-1:50pm (Porter Hall Rm 102).

"Pleasure, Desire, and Addiction in the Brain"

We hope to see you at the event!

About the lecture: Wanting and liking for pleasant rewards usually go together. But the brain separates wanting and liking mechanisms, creating potential for the two to diverge. Addictive desires can arise even without expectation of pleasure or actual pleasure when reward is received. I’ll show a laboratory example as 'wanting for what hurts’, which can also create narrowly focused addictions. Counterintuitively, reward ‘wanting’ may also overlap in mechanisms with forms of fear. These conclusions have been applied to several clinical conditions, ranging from addictions, to anhedonia, to paranoia.

11/13/2024

The IAPE is pleased to invite you to this year's Virtual Fall Ethics Lecture. We are excited that Sorin Baiasu (Keele University, UK) will present on Wednesday, 11/20, 6-7:30pm.

"Overcriminalisation and Dishonesty."

The registration link is active: tinyurl.com/CAPEFall24Lecture

We hope to see you at the event!

Abstract: The paper begins with a presentation of one way in which the distinction between civil and criminal justice can be drawn. This distinction relies on a particular reading of Kant’s Universal Principle of Right, in the Metaphysics of Morals. The paper next considers the vexed issue of the appropriate standard for testing dishonesty and the risk of overcriminalisation that an inappropriate standard might bring about. I will make reference particularly to Ghosh, Hayes and Ivey. In the final part of the paper, I will draw some lessons for what an appropriate test of dishonesty should be, given the particular Kantian distinction between civil and criminal justice presented at the beginning of the paper.

About the speaker: Sorin Baiasu is Professor of Philosophy at Keele University and Distinguished Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford University. His publications include: Kant and Sartre: Re-discovering Critical Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), Kant on Practical Justification: Interpretive Essays (edited with Mark Timmons, OUP 2013), Sincerity in Politics and International Relations (edited with Sylvie Loriaux, Routledge 2017) and Kantian Citizenship: Grounds, Standards and Global Implications (edited with Mark Timmons, Routledge 2025 forthcoming). His work has been financially supported by the British Academy, the European Commission and the European Research Council. This year, he has been awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant on “Kantian Justice: A Desert-sensitive Responsibility-enhancing Theory."

IAPE Reminder: Stefan Bird-Pollan Lecture, Today! -
03/29/2024

IAPE Reminder: Stefan Bird-Pollan Lecture, Today! -

Join us for an important public lecture!
03/04/2024

Join us for an important public lecture!

IAPE Newsletter Spring 2024 -
02/21/2024

IAPE Newsletter Spring 2024 -

Bringing together faculty and students from a variety of Ohio University's departments and disciplines, the Institute aims at:

02/14/2024

Address

Ohio University
Athens, OH
45701

Telephone

+17405939147

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when CAPE - Center for Applied and Professional Ethics posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category