Each year, The Murphy Institute’s Center for Ethics invites distinguished academics to present their current work at the Center for Ethics Speaker Series. The CE public lectures serve as a vital platform for intellectual exchange, where scholars and practitioners from a broad range of intellectual and professional disciplines and concerned citizens can engage with pressing ethical questions.
Since 2001, the Center for Ethics has hosted more than 200 guest speakers discussing contemporary topics in ethics. Lectures are free and open to all members of the Tulane community as well as the general public.
The 2025-2026 Center for Ethics Public Lecture Series featured Carl Hart, Mamie Phipps Clark Professor and Chair of Psychology at Columbia University, and Fabio Rojas, Virginia L. Roberts Professor of Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Hart’s lecture, “Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Where the Liberty, Policy and Science Collide,” held on October 9, 2025, examined the historical and scientific foundations of U.S. drug policies and the disconnects between science and legislation. On March 11, 2026, Rojas presented “A Plea for Good Society Science,” exploring the disproportionate fixation on social problems within the social sciences, and how researchers can shift toward studying what creates flourishing, resilient, and successful human institutions.
The 2024–2025 Center for Ethics Public Lecture Series featured Nicholas Buccola, Elizabeth and Goodwin Stoddard Professor of Political Science at Claremont McKenna College, and Virgil Storr, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Senior Vice President of Research & Programs at the Mercatus Center. In his lecture, “Love Is a Battle: James Baldwin’s Patriotism,” Buccola examined love as a central concept in James Baldwin’s political thought and its relation to patriotism. Storr addressed the pivotal question: “Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals?” presenting his research on the intersection of economics and morality, challenging the common perception that markets inherently corrupt moral character and exploring the ethical dimensions of commercial life.
The 2024 CE Public Lecture Series featured three internationally known scholars who delivered public lectures at Tulane: Jonathan Simon of UC Berkley’s School of Law, who discussed ways to stem mass incarceration; Beatriz Magaloni of Standford University’s Department of Political Science and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies investigated humane policing; and Subramanian Rangan of INSEAD, the global business school founded in Fontainebleau, France, who explored how we can restore fairness to the economic system.