First Guest Lecturer of the Course

On the afternoon of May 18, 2011, the 12th session of SEM undergraduate course “Critical Thinking and Moral Reasoning” took place in the auditorium of Tsinghua SEM. This session featured a special guest lecturer, Professor Michael Sandel of Harvard University, who led a heated discussion on the dilemmatic conflict of loyalty and general moral principles.

A Professor of Government at Harvard University, Michael Sandel is well known for his course "Justice," one of the most highly attended at Harvard. In past two decades, over 15,000 students have been exploring ethical and moral dilemmas in the class, trying to figure out “what is the right thing to do.” It is also the first Harvard course to be made freely available online through the Harvard Extension School.

Professor Michael Sandel in the lecture

"Critical Thinking and Moral Reasoning,” largely inspired by “Justice,” is a required general education course of Tsinghua SEM’s new undergraduate curriculum and is taught by Professor YANG Bin. Students enrolled in this class participate in one lecture and one section discussion each week. Professor Sandel is the first guest lecturer invited in the course.

Calling the course “a heroic, and perhaps historic venture,” Dean QIAN Yingyi said: “I believe that it is the first of its kind in the Chinese universities.It is part of a great experiment of undergraduate education reform currently underway at our school...This is not just one class, it is the beginning of an era.”

Dean QIAN Yingyi gives opening remarks

 

Loyalty as a Virtue versus Moral Principles?

Quite similar to what he does in his Harvard class, Professor Sandel opened discussion with a case from his book: William Bulger, an American politician and educator, refused to turn in his murderer brother Whitey Bulger to investigators. He challenged the students to think whether William Bulger did the right thing and why.

"William Bulger him should protect people in Massachusetts. He should set an example for the others.” The first responding student opened a stream of debate and reasoning. Two students even had a "phone conversation" by role-playing the Bulger brothers.

"People are individuals first. One should take responsibility for what he did. Connections in families are just emotional. That’s not as important as justice,” said undergraduate student TANG Xueying.

Professor Sandel interacts with students

Without coming to a conclusion, Sandel raised another question: if what the brother comitted is not murder, but cheat in an exam, is it right to turn him in?

This turn in articulation led to a change of mind in some students, who would turn in a murder family member, but tolerate with his cheating, for the former obviously violates the law.

Subsequently coming were several alternative settings: would you report to the authority if you find the food company you belong to applies harmful additives in products? Would you tell an evaluation committee that a professor is irresponsible if it will lower the rating of your school? Will you, as a coach in the Olympics team, disclose an underaged athlete even it causes the country to lose a gold metal?

As discussion went on, new perspectives were constantly raised with minds refreshed. Some say it is also part of social order to remain loyal to one’s own community, while some think true loyalty means having the courage to revealing the truth for the community’s sake. Sandel described concepts of two kinds of loyalty: independent loyalty, which could in principle compete with the universal principle of justice; and derivative loyalty, which exists insofar as the community is doing the right thing in the first place.

 

At last, drawing an end to his speech, Professor Sandel said, this choice between above two kinds of loyalty depends on deeper understanding of “what it is to be a human being and what it is to be a moral agent.” He said: “this choice between loyalty being an independent virtue and loyalty as a derivative virtue depends on whether you think that we are individual first and members of community second...in the sense that all of our obligations arise from choices we freely made, from contracts we voluntarily enter into. Or, you think that we are, in our moral identities, not just a matter of feeling, shaped by our families that raise us, communities that educate us, countries that shape our values, so there is a deep difference in principle underlies the discussions we made.”

Public Discourse on Global Scale

"Thanks to this new course by Tsinghua University, we have already achieved much more than I think we can in such a short time,” said Professor Sandel at the end of the lecture.

Lively classroom atmosphere

However, he also revealed that he has a bigger picture in mind for “Justice” and similar courses. According to him, putting “Justice” online is the first step of an experiment. He would like to see that, inspired by the course, students in China and around the world can take similar issues, cases and texts to adapt for their own education. In the next step of the experiment, with the bases built by existing discussions, a global classroom could be created by technology to allow students to discuss issues on morality and justice together.

"If we can do that, we will achieve not only a historic moment in undergraduate education, but maybe we will develop new possibilities for global public discourse that we really haven’t seen in the history of diplomacy or global politics,” said Michael Sandel.