Ethics for Professionals

A Human Rights, Internationalist Perspective

S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Michigan State University, USA

Mariyahl Mahilmany Hoole Generations for Peace, Jordan Dushyanthi H. Hoole Michigan State University, USA Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher Mark Combes, Senior Field Acquisitions Editor Sean Adams, Project Editor Jess Estrella, Senior Graphic Designer Alisa Muñoz, Licensing Associate Gustavo Youngberg, Interior Designer Natalie Piccotti, Senior Marketing Manager Kassie Graves, Director of Acquisitions and Sales Jamie Giganti, Director of Academic Publishing

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A Human Rights, Internationalist Perspective IV

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Samuel Ratnajeevan H. Hoole, b. 15 Sept. 1952, DSc (Eng.) London, PhD Carnegie Mellon, MSc Eng. Distinction London, BSc Eng. Hons. Ceylon, is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University, where he has taught Ethics for Engineers, Engineering Electromagnetics, and Computer Aided Design for Electromagnetic Products and Nondestructive Evaluation. His work there is funded by the US Army’s Tank Automotive Research Development Center, TARDEC. Previously, he has worked at Harvey Mudd College University of Peradeniya, Drexel University, and the National University of Singapore. He is a Life Fellow of the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) with the Citation: “For contributions to computational methods for design optimization of electrical devices.” Prof. Hoole is presently on leave as a member of the three-person inde- pendent Election Commission (responsible for presidential, parliamentary, provincial, and local government elections and national referenda) appointed by the Sri Lankan Parliament’s Constitutional Council under the Nineteenth Amendment, which consists of persons from the government, opposition, and civil society. Previously, he has been on the University Grants Commission, which ran all Sri Lankan universities. He has pioneered the teaching of human rights to engineers and is the recipient from India’s Institute of Electrical and Telecommunication Engineers of the IETE Gowri Memorial Award for 2015 for his work on Professional Ethics.

Mariyahl Mahilmany Hoole, b. 4 June 1985, BA Univ. of Pennsylvania, MA Columbia (in progress), is Grants Proposal Specialist at Generations for Peace, an international nongovernmental peace-building organization based in Amman, Jordan. In her work, Mariyahl is involved in program strategy and fund-raising for grassroots conflict transformation, addressing issues rang- ing from the impact of the Syrian crisis on local communities in the Middle East to gender-based sociopolitical disempowerment in Africa. Previously, she was at the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, leading proposal development, research, and community-driven program design. Her papers and publications reflect her interests in grassroots peace building, gender, and the processes of social transformation in crises. She is presently with Global Fund for Women in San Francisco, CA. V

Dushyanthi Hoole, b. 20 June, 1955, PhD Southern California, MSc Organic Chemistry Drexel, MSc Analytical Chemistry Colombo, BSc Hons. Chemistry Peradeniya, is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Michigan State University, where she works on converting bio-oils into foam and depolymerizing biomass. Previously, she has been a Professor of Chemistry and Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at Drexel University, the University of Connecticut, Central Connecticut State University, the Open University of Sri Lanka, and the University of Peradeniya. She was also Assistant Government Analyst for the Sri Lankan government. She has worked as Child Rights Specialist for Plan International and as Senior Program Specialist (Education) for Save the Children Fund. She has written extensively on laboratory work in distance education, child rights, women’s rights, women engineers and chemistry, and chemical engineering degrees for late starters. She has co- taught ethics for engineers with the first author and written two chapters of this book as identified. VI

PREFACE/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Ethics for Professionals is very important in Engineering Criteria 2000 from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) listed below. That is why there are many books on ethics for professionals. So why another, one might ask. This book is unique in that it caters to the increasingly multicultural audience in engineering classes and the international challenges that professionals face. The most salient characteristics of this textbook are that it: 1 Presents a rights-based, internationalist perspective that moves away, as best as we can make it, from the commonly adopted US-centric perspective while we were developing this textbook for the American classroom. We hope that American students will learn to think more broadly from following this textbook and many non-US students will find the material of refreshing relevance to them for a change; 2 Uses several contemporary examples while retaining the older examples that traditional engineering courses cover in class and draw lessons from. These older examples include the Ford Pinto and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) disasters; 3 Encourages sensitive, yet open and frank discussions of relevant topics that do not water down lessons with euphemisms. Specifically, this is in consideration that if we refuse to take the bull by the horns and write directly, we often detract from the lessons we wish to put across to the audience. That, we hope, will not be one of the weaknesses of this text; 4 Includes a broad array of new topics relevant to professionals in the modern world. Examples are outsourcing, sexuality, accents, and new human rights legal frameworks which we operate in and which we must understand to navigate successfully through their myriad rules and subtleties; 5 Brings innovative images, graphs, charts, and statistics to engage the reader’s senses; 6 Is a frank account sustained by real-world ethics issues that professionals have grappled with in different parts of the world, with names and places altered or redacted when necessary. This book is meant for all professionals but uses engineering codes to flesh out troubling ethics questions that any professional would come across in day-to-day work. A word on this too is in order. A book on ethics for VII professionals must necessarily include general ethics. Indeed, the intellectual tools and the associated moral compass that inform professionals engaging every day with general ethics issues are the same tools and compass that empower professionals to be sharp in their discernment of professional ethics challenges. So the subjects of this book include general ethics issues that come up in a professional’s life. Examples include issues that are not always black and white, such as engineers advertising services they are not competent to offer, or having to make a hiring decision about someone based on his or her sexuality, or having to offer health insurance covering abortion for employees. Professional ethics is also about writing grammatically and communicating well with the intended audience with respect. We are not grammarians, but we write for our work; actually, we write quite a lot. Therefore, this book also attempts to point to several aspects of writing of relevance to professionals and their ethics responsibilities without making them the focus of this book. The book is deliberately subdivided into 11 chapters that we hope make light reading rather than the heavy philosophical treatment of an ethics course. Just a couple of these chapters may each take two weeks of teaching—and the rest a week each. Overall, we have designed the book to be covered over a 15-week semester, with allowances for taking more than a week for some chapters and skipping those that are less relevant to the course according to the instructor’s viewpoint. This permits instructors to personalize the coverage and put their own stamp on the course they teach, as good instructors always do. The 11 chapters are also designed to be covered as reading assignments if necessary to allow the particular instructor to focus on some of the other chapters within the limitations of classroom times. The sections titled “Food for Thought” interspersed throughout the book are meant to assign homework as well as be the basis of in-class activity (where the class is broken up into small groups and each group writes a joint response). The responses to the bulleted questions at the end of each “Food for Thought” item are expected to be related to the ethics paradigms of Chapter 1 or the ethics codes of Chapter 2. As the advantages of flip-teaching are being discovered,1,2

1 S.R.H. Hoole, S. Sivasuthan, V.U. Karthik and P.R.P. Hoole, “Flip-teaching Discipline-Specific Engineering Optimization for Electromagnetic Device Synthesis and Nondestructive Evaluation,” Computer Applications in Engineering Education. Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 374–382, May 2015. DOI: 10.1002/ cae.21607 2 Tina Rosenberg, “In ‘Flipped Classrooms,’ a Method for Mastery,” New York Times, 23 Oct. 2013. VIII

the material may also be usefully covered by assigning readings from the book and then reserving class time for discussions rather than lecturing. The course out of which this book grew is Michigan State University’s ECE390: Ethics, Professionalism and Contemporary Issues. We believe the words of the course title capture the coverage of this textbook, which suit most courses on ethics for professionals and the Year 2000 Criteria of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, which remain current.3 This document, known commonly as EC2000, states, Engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have 1 an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering 2 an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data 3 an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs 4 an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams 5 an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems 6 an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility 7 an ability to communicate effectively 8 the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context 9 a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning 10 a knowledge of contemporary issues 11 an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice. Accordingly, ECE390 and this book make an attempt to address item 6 in the context of item 8 explicitly, and items 7 and 10 as associated goals. We also acknowledge our experiential dependence and growth as scholars on the subject while teaching The Software Engineer and Society at University of Peradeniya, and PHIL315: Engineering Ethics at Drexel University, a Philosophy Department service course for engineers, to which the first author was lucky to be assigned when no instructor from the Department of Philosophy was available. Parts of the book are deliberately designed for outright dissection of the political events of our times. One of the foundational aspects of ethics in a

3 ABET, Engineering Change: A Study of the Impact of EC2000, Baltimore, MD, 2006. IX global world is that we must grow comfortable addressing issues that chal- lenge our prejudices and inveterate notions about ourselves—our heritage myths. Not only are professionals conflicted by the intersection of our own ethics with that of other cultures in their workplace, but we must also step away from subjectively judging other people’s ethics, disturbing the safe world in which we cocoon ourselves. We would like to hear from you, the reader (both students and teachers) and look to making improvements in future editions. Thank you. We thank our mother and wife, respectively, who first taught ethics with the first author at University of Peradeniya. She helped in contributing to aspects of the book like participatory development, SWOT analysis, and child rights that grew out of her work at Save the Children and Plan International. We also thank Elilini, Anbini, and Yovahn for being awesomely awesome siblings and children and making useful comments as this text was developed, catching the tendency to make politically incorrect statements and sentiments to which we too are victims. We also thank our most helpful book development team:

Mirasol Enriquez (Project Editor), Mark Combes (Acquisitions Editor), Danielle Boag and Dani Skeen (Marketing), Arek Arechiga (Royalties), Sean Adams (Editor), Jess Busch and Miguel Macias (Cover Design), Luiz Ferreira (Licensing), and Jennifer Levine (Student Ordering Setup and Desk Copies).

They were immensely helpful in putting this book together (especially with licensing the extensive graphics legally used here without letting the cost of buying copyright go out of control) and kept us to our schedule and in conformity with the law, which is particularly important given the subject we treat. In particular, we are grateful to them for bringing to this book the modern production features and graphics experience of Cognella Publishers. Mariyahl Mahilmany Hoole Generations for Peace, Amman, Jordan ([email protected]) S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA (srhhoole@gmail. com) and Election Commission, Sri Lanka TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VI

1 ) WHY ETHICS FOR PROFESSIONALS? 2 1.1 Is there a Universal Moral Standard? 2 1.2 Ethics Terminology 7 1.3 The Deontological Standard 11 1.4 The Utilitarian Standard 14 1.5 Human Rights as a Basis for Ethics 16 1.6 The United States, the Whipping Boy 22

2 ) CODES OF ETHICS 28 2.1 Ancient Codes 28 2.1.1 Tracing the Historical Development 28 2.1.2 Landmark Legal Documents 36 2.1.3 Non-Western Cultures and Their Contributions 38 2.1.4 Islam and Human Rights 38 2.1.5 Human Rights in Ancient India: Duty 40 2.2 The IEEE Code of Ethics 48 2.2.1 The Code Itself 48 2.2.2 Case Study: Article 1 on Endangering the Safety of the Public: The GM Ignition Switch Debacle 50 2.2.3 Case Study: Article 2 on Disclosing Conflicts of Interest 57 2.2.4 Case Study: Article 3 on Being Honest in Stating Product Claims 59 2.2.5 Case Study: Article 4 on Honesty 62 2.2.6 Case Study: Article 5 on Improving Knowledge 63 2.2.7 Case Study: Article 6 on Undertaking Tasks for Which We Are Qualified 63 2.2.8 Moral Tenor of Articles 7 to 10 64 2.2.9 Respect for and Courtesy to Others, Including the Use of Profanity 67 2.2.10 The IEEE: Preacher or Doer? 71 2.2.11 Rules to Make Hiring Fair: Freedom of Information 73 2.3 Code of Ethics by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the NSPE 76 XI

3 ) HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ENGINEERS 90 3.1 Globalization, Outsourcing, and Offshoring: Work in a Multicultural Workplace 90 3.2 Company Image, Employee Morale, and Product Image 99 3.3 Product Label: Addressing Consumer Activism 101 3.4 Operating in War Zones: International Humanitarian Law (IHL) 102 3.5 Criminal Liability Abroad: The Rome Treaty 107 3.6 Specialized Labor Laws: Focus on Child Labor 112 3.7 Liability through Partners: The Unocal Experience 113 3.8 Most-Favored-Nation Status and Generalized System of Preferences in Duty 114 3.9 The Inspection Panel and Funding Restrictions 115 3.10 Engineers as Negotiators 116

4 ) SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT 120 By Prof. Dushyanthi Hoole 4.1 Social Impact of Engineering Projects 120 4.2 Working in the Absence of Expertise 121 4.3 Strategic Consultancy Work: The Ethics of Guessing and Hand-Waving 123 4.4 SWOT Analysis 126 4.5 An Exercise in Social Impact Assessment 127

5 ) COVERING UP MISTAKES/DISASTERS AND WHISTLE-BLOWING 130 5.1 Admitting Mistakes Early 130 5.2 BART: Bay Area Rapid Transit System 132 5.3 The Ford Pinto 136 5.3.1 The Arab-Israeli Conflict as Background 136 5.3.2 Imperative on Ford 139 5.3.3 A Footnote: The Emerging Volkswagen Scandal 140 5.4 The Challenger Disaster 142 5.5 The Cooked-Up Miles-per-Gallon Claims: Hyundai and Kia 145 5.6 Whistle-Blowing 149 5.6.1 What Is Whistle-Blowing, and Why Whistle-Blow? 149 5.6.2 Whistle-Blowing in the Engineering Curriculum 151 5.6.3 Mixed Responses to Whistle-Blowing 153 5.6.4 Alternative Forms of Whistle-Blowing 155 XII | Ethics for Professionals

5.6.5 Political Whistle-Blowing 156 5.6.6 The IEEE Model for Professional Societies 159 5.7 Whistle-Blowing and the Church 161

6 ) PARTICIPATORY WORK AND DEVELOPMENT 168 By Prof. Dushyanthi Hoole, Department of Chemical Engineering, Michigan State University 6.1 Sustainable, Participatory Development 168 6.2 Case Studies in Participatory Development 171 6.2.1 General 171 6.2.2 The Apatite Episode (Sri Lanka) 172 6.2.3 The Bridge to Nowhere (United States) 176 6.2.4 The Drinking Water Fiasco (Bangladesh) 178 6.2.5 Chinese Settlements in Tibet 180 6.3 Participation 181 6.4 Issues in Applying Participation 183 6.5 Practicing Participation 186 6.6 Ethical Considerations 187 6.7 Involving Employees in Decision Making—The Toyota Model 188 6.8 Concluding Remarks 190

7 ) ETHICS IN RESEARCH 192 7.1 Integrity 192 7.2 Interviews and the Rights of Subjects 194 7.3 Record-Keeping for Integrity of Findings 199 7.4 Ordering of Authors—A Case Study 202 7.5 Plagiarism 206 7.6 Patents and Papers 208 7.7 The Carlo Fonseka Summary of Ethics of Research for Professionals 212

8 ) INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: NEW DIMENSIONS IN ETHICS 216 8.1 Ease of Cheating and IT 216 8.1.1 Copying at Exams 216 8.1.2 Copying Off the Internet 219 8.1.3 Reverse Engineering 220 8.2 Message/Bulletin Boards, Chats, and Blogs: Changing Expectations in Freedom of Speech and Libel 222 8.3 Hate Speech: The Charlie Hebdo Episode XIII

and Racism as Free Speech 228 8.4 Pornography 235 8.5 Spamming 237 8.6 Stalking and Online Threats 238 8.7 Cooperation with the State’s Security Apparatus 240 8.8 Provision of Internet Services 241

9 ) CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL ISSUES IN ETHICS 242 9.1 Political Correctness 242 9.1.1 The Practical and the Ideal 242 9.1.2 Generalizations 246 9.1.3 Political Correctness Gone Too Far 248 9.2 Legitimacy of Accent as a Consideration in Recruitment 252 9.3 Human Sexuality 254 9.3.1 Gays and Lesbians 254 9.3.2 Homosexual Numbers 266 9.3.3 The Power of the LGBT Community 266 9.4 Abortion and Euthanasia 268 9.5 The Death Penalty 269 9.6 Sexism and Sexual Discrimination 272 9.6.1 Sexual Discrimination against Women 272 9.6.2 Feminist Ethics 275 9.7 Gender 277 9.7.1 Male and Female by Genetic Tests? 277 9.7.2 Equality Engendering Inequality 279 9.7.3 Women and Sexual Harassment 280 9.8 Cultural Appropriation 286 9.9 Racism 288 9.9.1 Racism as a Forbidden Topic 288 9.9.2 Passing 296 9.9.3 Addressing Racism 298 9.9.4 Racism in the Use of English 298 9.9.5 Cultural Imperialism in Names 306 9.9.6 The Muslim Factor 308 9.10 Affirmative Action 313 9.11 Ethnic Criminal Syndicates 324 XIV | Ethics for Professionals

9.12 Racism and Its Global Forms: The Freedom of Labor to Move About 334 9.13 Eugenics 342 9.14 Cross-Cultural Lifestyles 345

10 ) CONTEMPORARY TECHNOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC ISSUES IN ETHICS 350 10.1 Self-driving Cars 350 10.2 Climate Change 352 10.2.1 The Earth Has a Fever 352 10.2.2 The Paris Climate Deal 358 10.3 Drones and Parallels to 9/11 359 10.4 Legalized Drugs 365

11 ) CREATING THE IDEAL SOCIETY 370 11.1 Operation Flavius: The European Court of Human Rights’ Malta Judgment 370 11.2 Gaming the System—Setting an Example 375 11.2.1 Ethos for a Course on Ethics—Do Engineers Believe? 375 11.2.2 Gaming by Universities 377 11.2.3 Gaming by Professors 382 11.3 The Affordable Health Care Act 385 11.4 Learning from Doctors 385 11.4.1 Doctor-Engineer Rivalry 387 11.4.2 The Hippocratic Oath 388 11.4.3 The AMA Code 390 11.5 Taking Risks for the Underdog 404

APPENDIX A: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 406

INDEX 413 Ch 1 Why Ethics for Professionals?

1.1 IS THERE A UNIVERSAL MORAL STANDARD?

Ethics is the field of moralphilosophy that systematizes, defends, and recommends what is right and wrong behavior. As we broach the topic of ethics,1 it behooves us first to ask ourselves what ethics is, and why be ethical. It is also important to understand the difference between ethics, morality, and legality. Ethics is an individual’s “internal compass” of right and wrong, while morality is the recognized normative behaviors of a society. A crucial distinction is that, unlike morality, ethics can come from outside oneself from a professional organization or one’s religion and its institutions. While both coexist in society, understanding morality is at the crux of understating and formulating ethics. Legality, on the other hand, can be completely devoid of either. It is instead the codified norms of behavior that govern society. Standards of ethics are relative and often time bound. Herodotus, the Greek from the fifth century BC who wrote History, recounts the Persian emperor Darius being intrigued by cultural contrasts. He found that Callatians from India ate body parts of their dead before burial, while the Greeks cremated their dead. When ques- tioned separately, the Greeks were shocked by Darius’s suggestion

1 The word ethics is singular. If it were plural, as often used, then there must be “an ethic.” The pluralization of ethics tends to go the way politics has gone, as in “his politics are.” Many grammatical barbarisms like this get legitimized when many educated persons fall victim. Thankfully, the word math (as a shortened form of mathematics in US English) has saved mathematics from this indignity. Why Ethics for Professionals? | 3

that they eat their departed, as were the Callatians to the suggestion that they burn their dead. Today, we observe upper-caste Indians cremating their dead (while the lower castes are excluded from the privi- leges of the higher castes and enjoined by caste customs to bury their dead2), and being shocked by the practice of burying the dead because dead persons turn to worms upon being buried. As a result, we have cultural relativism, an axiom that one’s beliefs and morality are the product of that individual’s culture. As Figure 1.1 Herodotus Massimo a result of the innumerable cultures that exist, each with its own definitions of right and wrong, there is no absolute code of morality. Some go so far as to say that morality is merely a convenient term for socially approved habits. In this view, every society has its own moral code, ours being just one of many. Thus, it is ethnocentric to demand that others live by our standards—although we may make value judgments on the lifestyles they adopt. This relativistic argument for the absence of morality is not correct. As Geertz (1984) writes, the absolution of moral deviations by cultural relativism opens doors for questionable philosophies, including Machiavellianism, nihilism, and Nazism. What is correct to say is that what people believe to be right or wrong may be relative. It is incorrect to extend this to say that there is no absolute right and wrong. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), the German philosopher who insisted on faith with reason in Christian dogma, has argued for absolute standards in what is considered his masterpiece of Western thought, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). He took the Christian view that man has intrinsic worth, that is, dignity, and occupies the highest place in creation. As a Moral Animal, in this view, man follows “Universal Laws.” These are moral laws imprinted in all cultures and driven by our reason, the categorical imperative (German: der kategorischer Imperativ). As such, the

2 What we see here is the original Indians who buried their dead in Darius’s narrative, upon being conquered by the ancient Aryan invaders carry on their custom of burying as the lower castes, while the cremation customs of the Mediterranean and the Caucasus of those who invaded and became the ruling class high castes are carried on by their descendants. In the cities where there is no rigid caste control, everyone now tends to cremate. 4 | Ethics for Professionals

divinely imprinted categorical imperative must be obeyed without conditions. It is an end in itself. Kant argued for the absolute standard using his “The Case of the Inquiring Murderer.” Here, a murderer intending to kill a victim approaches a person in whose house the victim is sheltered and asks if his victim is inside or not. Kant’s argument is that in such a situation, we do not know with certainty what the consequences of our answer would be, and therefore we must always speak the truth. We will revisit Kant’s moral imperative, which comes under duty ethics. We may therefore, given these controversies, have our own moral codes and dearly hold on to them, but it becomes unethical (if there is such a thing anymore) to have our standards imposed on others. This is Figure 1.2 Immanuel Kant not a judgment against personal faith or standard. It simply is an expression based on the experience from the internecine religious wars of the past that, while we may hold on to our personal faith and even assert that it is uniquely true and the only one that is true (which indeed it might be), we should not impose it on others and have no right to do that. We know, however, that there are certain common standards of morality that are imposed by the state and society for the sake of an ordered society in which all can participate willingly. Murder and lying are commonplace, Food for thought: Violating although even here, rare exceptions Traffic Light Rules—Immoral, exist. Caring for children is another Unethical or simply Illegal? shared value among most societies. You drive up to a four-road junc- And yet, all these commonly held tion where the lights are red for you. beliefs have exceptions. We might It is an open area in the middle of hold that murder is wrong and that nowhere. You see no traffic, traffic law-abiding citizens have the right camera or traffic policeman. to life; however, the right to life of Should you run the red light? the unborn may have no consensual What are the moral, ethical and standard in society. These argu- legal considerations in deciding ments have both ethical and moral whether or not to run the red light? connotations. Given the murky and Why Ethics for Professionals? | 5

complicated nature of complex societies, having a plethora of cultures and values, codified standards of right and wrong are integral to coexisting. This is where legality comes into play. Life cannot go on without set rules and laws, such as driving rules at the mundane level and the right to life at a more moral level. We must seek at least the minimum set we can agree on and impose it through law, for Are Royalty communities to understand the basic rules for coexistence. the Biggest Food for Thought: Social Welfare—Legal but Unethical? Bums? A medical doctor practicing in Scarborough, Ontario, in Canada says 25 to 30 percent Everything of his patients, mostly immigrants, are in “common-law” marriage. The couple being paid for, but from tightly knit immigrant communities, no work. the common-law marriage is safe and there is little danger of a common-law husband deserting the wife. Legally, they merely live together, but customarily, they are husband and wife on account of the religious ceremonies by which their marriage was bound. The male spouse works. The female spouse with children declares herself a single mother and is eligible to receive subsidized housing and a living allowance for herself and her children. The husband lives with her, but scoots off when welfare officials visit. If he is found there, he claims to be an uncommitted boyfriend on a visit. It is a situation where the setup is perfectly legal. But is it ethical? Is gaming the system ever ethical? How do we, in our personal lives, game the systems in which we operate? More Food for Thought: Abortion Abortion might be legal in the United States but not necessarily viewed as moral or ethical by all citizens. In many countries, it is all three: unlawful, unethical, and immoral. A person who considers abortion to be immoral, allowing the performance of abortion in the United States as, say, a hospital administrator might, is behaving ethically. • Why is the hospital administrator’s behavior ethical?

• Categorize as ethical or immoral or illegal the action of a person in going against his or her own moral faith. 6 | Ethics for Professionals

• Classify the behavior of a police officer3 who sympathized with student demonstrations of the Occupy Wall Street movement on September 17, 2011, in Zuccotti Park, New York City. Having been ordered by the court to clear the demonstrators, he does so. Is he moral? Ethical? Legal?

• Classify former US presidents and other political bigwigs in terms of ethicality, morality, and legality, who will speak at a public event only on payment of a huge speaker’s fee. USA Today (July 31, 2015) reports, based on the tax filings of President Bill Clinton and Secretary Hillary Clinton, that “The 2014 total included $10.5 million in Hillary Clin- ton’s speaking fees, $9.8 million in Bill Clinton’s speaking fees, and $6.4 million the former president earned from ‘consulting.’”4

• Since morality is borne of personal belief about the rightness or wrongness of an act, can everything be moral? Can anything be moral?

• It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote in the Virginia Assembly Statute on Religious Freedom: “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.” Relate this to religious and other opinions in establishing an ethics standard.

More Food for Thought: Credit Reports, and Legality and Morality Here is a situation we can find ourselves in, like James and Jane, two high-earning software engineers from the Bay Area in California. When housing was booming, they purchased a house for $800,000 with a 10 percent down payment and soon found themselves underwater, with housing values collapsing and their house devalued to $600,000. They determined that it was not worth their while to repay. So they stopped all repayments and squirreled away the repayment money with relations. It took the bank over a year to eject them. At that point, they declared bankruptcy. Their only visible asset was the house, which had been taken away by the bank. So their debt (on the housing loan and unpaid monthly payments) was wiped clean. Home prices were now low. Together, they had a good income. A bank gave them a loan to buy a house again, despite their bankruptcy record, because their combined

3 Note that now the generic term policeman is displaced in the United States by the term police officerbecause the word policeman generalizes a police officer to be always a man as was once the case. See the section on political correctness. But the language is weakened as a result because in many countries, there are police constables commanded by police officers above them (sub-inspectors, inspectors, superintendents, etc.). 4 http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/07/31/hillary-clinton-tax- returns/30957755/ Why Ethics for Professionals? | 7 income was quite high. Today, seven years later, Food for Thought: the bankruptcy is off their credit record. They own Employer Checking Credit their house and are rapidly paying off their 15-year Reports loan, structured as usual where capital repayment As an employer, can you ask grows rapidly in the second half of the loan. It is for the credit reports of your 2015 as we write, and their new house grew by employees? Yes, you may, after getting the employee’s (or $100,000 in value in the past year alone. They are potential employee’s) permis- sitting pretty. What they did was financially wise sion, and indeed you would be management of assets. Was it legal? Ethical? Moral? well advised to do it if the rele- … vant job is sensitive and involves responsible financial Presumably, an employer does a background transactions. What you will get check before hiring. This may include asking for as an employer is a redacted credit reports.5 But what more can a credit report report without the credit score. reveal except for missed bill payments and disputes If you are the employee being with a trader? (See box.) We note that a trader has asked for your consent by your employer who wants to see much latitude in entering a debt he alleges, and the your report, it would be awk- person associated with the report will have little ward (and indeed may even choice in the matter. seem suspicious) if you refuse. In these circumstances, why would you as a So be advised not to refuse, but as a precaution, get your potential employer want to see the credit report? reports and negotiate with the Is it ethical to ask for information that is of little credit bureau to remove any- real value and may simply be embarrassing to the thing in the report that is an potential employee? incorrect reflection of your record. • Is the legal declaration of a 1.2 ETHICS TERMINOLOGY bankruptcy by a potential employee a relevant hiring issue? • Is it ethical to ask for information In a formal course on philosophy, many terms will that is of little real value and may simply be embarrassing to the be encountered in discussions on ethics. We will potential employee? deal only with some of the more important terms • Is the legal declaration of a in this taxonomy and confine ourselves thereafter bankruptcy by a potential employee a relevant hiring issue? to a few key terms. • Is it ethical for an employer to ask for personal details from a 5 For those who do not know, a credit report tags you by potential employee? name and unique social security number and contains infor- • How much privacy should an mation detailing your credit history, such as the loans you have employee have? taken, how regular you are in paying off your loans and bills, how much credit lenders have extended to you, whether you have ever declared bankruptcy, and whether your lenders have ever had to refer your bills to bill collectors because of nonpay- ment, etc. This information is used to make up a credit score for you, which is an indication of your financial worthiness. 8 | Ethics for Professionals

Ethics bifurcates into normative ethics (concerned with the right or wrong of actions, attempting to develop rules for human conduct) and nonnormative ethics (also called descriptive ethics, which is about what people really believe to be right and wrong and makes no attempt to prescribe what they should believe, as does normative ethics). Nonnormative ethics includes meta ethics, which tries to answer the meaning and nature of moral judgments and how to defend them. By default, when we speak of ethics in this text, we simply mean normative ethics. Ethics theory (also called ethical theory, a misnomer6) deals with a philosopher’s attempt to classify actions into right and wrong (good and bad). There are several ethics theories:

a. Subjective ethics involves the person constructing right and wrong going by his or her own beliefs; b. Relative ethics is like subjective ethics but from what society as a whole believes; thus, beleaguered communities supporting their youth win community rights through acts of terrorism might argue for the ethics of kidnapping for ransom and bank robberies as justifi- able ways of righting wrongs; c. Divine command ethics avers that right and wrong are from God. Thus, accepting the Ten Commandments or ethics laid out in the Scientology Handbook would come under this; d. Egoistic ethics postulates that people act to maximize their own interests; for example, one might argue against the death penalty because one’s son has just been caught for murder, or for the death penalty because of wanting revenge for one’s child having been murdered; e. Utilitarianism, or consequentialism, is that ethics system under which right and wrong stem from the utility or consequences of an action— practically, this means that actions that produce more happiness than pain are good, and bad if otherwise. This makes it easy to justify, as Winston Churchill did, letting German U-boats—which he knew from Alan Turing’s work7 on breaking the secret code used by the Germans’ Enigma machine were on their way to sink Allied troop carriers—carry on with their deathly mission without warning the

6 If there are such things as ethical theory and ethical issues, it means there is some moral or other value to the theory or issue, which makes it either ethical or unethical. Likewise, the book/ course title Engineering Ethics suggests that there is something engineering about ethics. 7 BBC, “Alan Turing: The code-breaker who saved ‘millions of lives,’”: http://www.bbc.com/ news/technology-18419691 Why Ethics for Professionals? | 9

troop ships. Warning the troop carriers would have told Hitler that his communications were no longer safe. In the larger picture, sac- rificing a few hundred men saved thousands of lives in winning the war. It is said that in Churchill’s estimation, Turing shortened the war by two years; f. Deontological, or right-based, ethics (or Kantian ethics), also called duty ethics, is where right and wrong are determined by whether an action is consistent with duty and is done from a motive of ful- filling one’s moral obligations (meaning respect for persons). The deontological rules are said to bind one to one’s duties. So one tithes 10 percent8 to the church because it is a biblical commandment and not because one identifies with the specific work the church will use that money for; g. Virtue ethics is where right and wrong are defined according to what a virtuous person might be expected to do in a given situation. Thus, virtue ethicists are always kind because of virtuous moral character and not because it is their duty or to gain favor; h. Theories of justice establish an action to be just (right) when that action emerges from the correct use of principles that have been agreed to under conditions that are fair. Food for Thought: Categorizing Ethics Scenario 1: In the Bible (Deuteronomy 12:3) God commands, “Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.” (Transl. New Intl. Version)

8 Although the word tithe means gifting 10 percent, the biblically ordered tithe really amounts to over 20 percent of one’s income. A tithe each was ordered for the Levites, for the use of the temple, and for the poor, as seen in the following two passages, especially the one from Numbers: Leviticus 27:30 A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD; Numbers 18:26–29: “Speak to the Levites and say to them: ‘When you receive from the Israelites the tithe I give you as your inheritance, you must present a tenth of that tithe as the Lord’s offering. 27 Your offering will be reckoned to you as grain from the threshing floor or juice from the winepress.28 In this way you also will present an offering to the Lord from all the tithes you receive from the Israelites. From these tithes you must give the Lord’s portion to Aaron the priest.29 You must present as the Lord’s portion the best and holiest part of everything given to you. The Christian Church probably simplified it to 10 percent of the total. How does the biblical deontologist justify altering this mandate? 10 | Ethics for Professionals

Accordingly, the Portuguese broke down pagan temples in their colonies (or overseas territories, as they preferred to call them) but let stand Islamic mosques because mosques contain no graven images of God. Other religious extremists continue to carry on the mandate in this day and age. A glaring example of recent destruction involves the images of the Buddha in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan built in the Gandhara art form in the sixth century AD. These were dynamited by the Taliban in March 2001 after their leader declared them idols. Scenario 2: Trico is a company in Nigeria. The manager is paid $6000 a month. He also makes $2000 a month under the table in awarding contracts to suppliers. Trico practices an easygoing work ethic. Employees come by cumbersome public transport, sign in, and greet each other for the first 15 minutes. Then they eat breakfast together before beginning work. There is an unofficially extended lunch “hour,” during which the employees pick up their children from school. Employees sign out at 5:00 PM. Trico is now acquired by a Western conglomerate which sends John, a Western university MBA/engineer, as a manager at $20,000 a month. John imposes a strict work day by the clock—no greetings or breakfast on office time or extended lunch breaks. John asks for no commissions. Procurements that now bypass friendly channels take longer. Suppliers and employees are unhappy. Productivity drops. • Analyze what the Portuguese and John were practicing—a) ethical sub- jectivism; b) ethical relativism; c) divine command ethics; d) egoistic ethics; e) utilitarianism; f) deontological ethics; g) virtue ethics; or h) theories of justice?

Professional ethics is a branch of applied ethics. Professional ethics applies ethics theories to the real world, examining controversial issues such as abortion and infanticide, animal rights, environmental degradation, capital punishment and euthanasia, homosexuality, and nuclear war. In turn, these ethics theories are applied to people within a certain profession. A profession being defined as an occupation requiring training and certification, engineering is not a profession in some countries, although one may be engaged as an engineer. On the other hand, a tonsorial artist (or barber) might be a professional if training and license are required, as is often the case. Thus, ethics for the professions may have numerous branches as for engineers, doctors, nurses, barbers, tailors, etc. More Food for Thought: Facebook and Its Provenance Recall that Facebook, going back to its origins, began at Harvard when Mark Elliot Zuckerberg cofounded the social networking website from his Harvard Why Ethics for Professionals? | 11 dorm but was soon shut down by authorities because some were offended that their photographs were being used without permission; the network had crashed, unable to withstand the traffic. Zuckerberg has since claimed to follow what he called the “Hacker Way” and encouraged being bold and describing hacking as exploring the boundaries of what can be done.9 However, when Aran Khanna, a bright lad at Harvard, discovered vulnerabilities in Facebook Messenger and exploited them in his application, Marauder’s Map, Zuckerberg seemed to abandon all that he had previously encouraged rather boastfully about being bold. Khanna used data from Facebook Messenger to show the locations of Messenger users to within 3 feet. His upcoming internship at Facebook was promptly rescinded, even though he immediately complied with Facebook’s request to take Marauder’s Map down. He was told that his post did not meet the high ethical standards expected of an intern. In describing this episode, writer Allison Pohle commented acerbically in the Boston Globe (12 Aug. 2015) that Khanna had been too bold. • Categorize Facebook’s ethics in objecting to Aran Khanna’s application.

• Would Facebook have come out better by not canceling Khanna’s internship?

• What was Facebook trying to accomplish by rescinding an internship that had been committed?

• Did Khanna’s application violate any particular rights?

• Was Khanna completely ethical? (Read one of the many pubic accounts of this episode.)

1.3 THE DEONTOLOGICAL STANDARD

If we all belonged to the same religion with similar unchanging persuasions based on some book such as the Bible or the Koran whose duty-like rules must be obeyed, that is called deontological ethics. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the Oxford-educated British philosopher, coined the phrase using the Greek word deont (being necessary). Thus, in deontological ethics, “The Book” dictates

9 http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2015/08/12/harvard-student-loses-facebook-internship-after-pointing-out-privacy-flaws/zASZFdUjn6PoliUiR9kVHJ/story. html?s_campaign=Email:BComToday 12 | Ethics for Professionals

what we must necessarily obey as our duty. Ethics becomes simple. We know the rules and simply follow them. Unfortunately, in today’s multicultural, multi-faith world, we do not have one Book. Even as in the Bible (Acts Chapter 10), God tells St. Peter to slaughter and eat so-called unclean animals like pigs; Koran 6:145 is explicit that pork is impure. Since Muslims are also “People of the Book,” this Koranic prohibition probably comes from the Old Testament of the Bible (Deuteronomy, Chapter 14:8–10), which enjoins us “And the pig, because it has a split hoof, but does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You shall Figure 1.3 Jeremy Bentham neither eat of their flesh nor touch their carcass.” Jews therefore also will not eat pork. We thus note that even from a deontological perspective, there is no clarity. While one can, based on the Acts of the Apostles from the New Testament, say that Christians may eat pork, other Christians might say no because Deuteronomy is explicitly prohibitive. Those taking the latter position would argue that the passage from Acts is not about eating pork but about non-Jewish people being taken as unclean, and that that passage has been misused by the Church as an excuse to eat pork. Thus, even under an ethics exercise in deontology, reason has to play a role in interpreting faith—what in theology is termed “faith with reason,” the theological position that reason properly employed and faith properly understood will never produce contradictory or competing claims. This becomes paramount in interpreting hierarchies among standards. The Ten Commandments include “Thou shalt not lie” and “Thou shalt not kill.” We have met problems with the former in Kant’s Inquiring Murderer. The Christian Church has debated for centuries about whether the latter prohibition on killing covers capital punishment and a nonvegetarian diet for which there is precedent in the biblical vision of the heavenly future where lions are vegetarians10 and “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb.”11 Indeed, in

10 Isaiah 65:25: The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD. 11 Isaiah 11:6: The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. Why Ethics for Professionals? | 13 this tradition, John the Baptist, Jesus Christ’s cousin, is held up as the first Christian vegetarian who lived on honey and locust.12 A more disturbing example—if not a lesson in helping us discern the subtle nature of ethical hierarchies within the deontological world—is where God is seemingly a liar. In the First Book of Samuel (15:34 to 16:13), we read the story of the people of Israel, having rejected rule by judges and asked God for a king, got Saul as their king. But then, they find themselves rather unhappy with him. Indeed, we read that God, the all-knowing giver of the laws of deontology, is sorry that he had made Saul the king. God then sends Samuel, the last of the judges in the Bible, to anoint David, then a ruddy young shepherd boy, as the next king of Israel. But Samuel fears the wrath of Saul for anointing the next king when he, Saul, is already the king. God then advises Samuel to go with a heifer to the house of Jesse, the father of David, dissembling as if he is going there to sacrifice it rather than to anoint David as the successor to Saul. We must discern here the exercise of a utilitarian balancing act—seen in the next section—by God Himself between the need to protect Samuel and the obligation not to lie. As we will examine later under political correctness that it is chic to say that all religions are the same, they surely are not. Indeed, while there may be common articles of faith for the different religions, they come from very different worldviews. For example, although because of the colonial period the statute books of many countries might prescribe hanging for the murder of any person, in Hindu law, we see that the laws prescribe punishment only for transgressions against the high-born (who include one’s gurus, i.e., teachers):

The slayer of a Brahmana, a twice born who drinks the spirituous liquor called Sura, he who steals the gold of a Brahmana, and he who violates a Guru’s bed, must each and all be considered as men who committed mortal sins.” Manu’s Dharmasastra, Buhler’s Translation.

In a modern workplace, therefore, we must respect all sensibilities and cannot impose the same deontological standard on all. We cannot serve pork to all in an office that includes Muslims and Jews and Hindus who might be vegetarians (although Hindus have no one Book defining that which necessarily must be obeyed). It is recognized that different persons come with their varied deontological standards which they might apply to their own life.

12 Contrary to popular assumption, the locust that John the Baptist ate was not the locust as in a grasshopper, but the locust as in the leguminous peas which are a source of water in the desert. 14 | Ethics for Professionals

This recognition sets off a search in the modern world for a commonly applicable ethics standard that does not draw from religion.

1.4 THE UTILITARIAN STANDARD

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), who we have noted coined the word deontology, is credited with defining and advancingutilitarianism as an ethics standard in place of the older deontological paradigm. Utilitarianism judges actions as right or wrong based only on their consequences. Right actions have the best consequences. What, then, is the best consequence? This is assessed using the amount of happiness or unhappiness caused by that action being judged or contemplated. And this assessment must not recognize persons—each person’s welfare is equal to anyone else’s, and no one person’s happiness must ever be reckoned as more important than that of any other. John Stuart Mill, in his classic Utilitarianism (1861), avers “that the utilitarian doctrine is that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable.” Another English philosopher, G.E. Moore (1853–1958), broadens this idea of happiness a little to pleasure, friendship, and aesthetic enjoyment. The proponents of utilitarianism feel that using utility is the only standard whereby prejudices, feelings, and nonrational intuition are kept out of moral theory. We hear echoes of the classical Greeks’ hedonism, which appears to define good and bad in terms of how we feel in assessing happiness. We all practice hedonism (or utilitarianism, in more respected terminology) to different degrees in our personal lives. Indeed, by rejecting deontology, which dictates actions on the say-so of our particular “Book,” even when they entail self-sacrifice, and choosing utilitarianism instead, we take virtue, justice, and rights out of the picture. Under utilitarianism, happiness from an action is weighed against the unhappiness it might cause, and so long as the happiness is greater, the action contemplated is set in motion. In our lives, we all do something like this. For example, a father may forego a promotion that entails a move to another city because the change of schools for the children would come with a lot of unhappiness. One child’s admission to a prestigious private university may be declined because acceptance would leave little money for the younger children’s higher education. A father deciding on his job acceptance has no obvious moral dimensions since only he is affected, but his deciding on his elder child’s university does. The father is making an immense sacrifice that Why Ethics for Professionals? | 15 goes unrecognized under utilitarianism; as does a mother who stays at home to care for her children and, a fortiori, an expecting working woman who chooses to carry the child (rather than abort it) and face the embarrassment at the office from repeatedly asking for maternity leave. We may also use utilitarianism to decide whether to give money to a beggar on the street—the goodness in feeding him and making him happy as against the badness of giving him the money and encouraging his continuing dependency. The same question can be posed in religious terms too, but even there, we use elements of utilitarianism to make that judgment call. We shall, because utilitarianism interjects itself into deontology, examine utilitarianism in greater detail than the other systems. It is the absence of a moral dimension to utilitarianism that makes many philosophers reject it. Utilitarianism, because it tends to weigh the overall happiness against overall unhappiness to take moral decisions, breaks down on some three key moral arguments as listed by James Rachels:13

1 Utilitarianism can go against concepts of justice: Consider Euro-Caucasian persons, i.e., Food for Thought: Suppose the whites coming from Europe, same policeman, our Peeping rioting with the active partic- Tom from Chino in item #2, had ipation of the police over an taken the photos through the com- unknown African American plainant’s bedroom window with- raping a white woman. You out her knowledge and used them are the utilitarian. The ri- for his private, voyeuristic pleasure ots would stop if the culprit without anyone else seeing them. were identified and charged. Then, utilitarianism clearly jus- You then feel called upon to tifies what the Peeping Tom did: bear false witness against for he derived much pleasure and any African American you no one was hurt or made unhappy. spot on the street because it How do the complainant’s rights would stop the riots. While come into this? just one man might be un- justly punished, the greater good would be achieved by the killings of many being stopped.

13 James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1986. 16 | Ethics for Professionals

2 Utilitarianism has no concept of rights: In a real story from Chino, California, a woman who had been assaulted complained to the police, who insisted she should undress and allow photos to be taken in various postures although the complainant objected. These photographs were then reproduced and circulated among other policemen, who derived much pleasure from them. Although the complainant went to the US Court of Appeals and prevailed over the police, the utilitarian could argue the complainant’s violation of rights was far outweighed by the pleasure derived by the many policemen who had viewed her nude photographs. (See the box for another argument where utilitarianism seems to break down.) 3 Utilitarianism has no concept of honoring promises: You accept a dinner invitation from a friend. When it is time to go, you think of the homework you need to do. You argue that your happiness of finishing your homework and going to bed early is much greater than your friend’s unhappiness of not having you to dinner14 after all that work of cooking. Where does honoring promises come in this scheme of utilitarianism?

1.5 HUMAN RIGHTS AS A BASIS FOR ETHICS

In seeking a source for professional ethics where people with different religious faiths can and must work together with a system of ethics that is not theistically informed, we must not rely on deontology. Deontological ethics is, in a way, a theistic view of ethics—what Thomas Aquinas called divine providence or natural law, which he discusses at Question 94 of his Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae.15 It assumes that for every law, there is a lawgiver who has given us a “Book” or something like that giving us rules that must be obeyed as a matter of duty. The theistic position of the preceding paragraph, where there can be no law without a lawgiver, is challenged by humanists asking who then gave the law to the lawgiver? Humanists hold up a traffic light system (of the box in Section 1.1) as an example to show that we humans can construct rules for an organized, consensually governed society that we all obey. We are our own lawgivers. In the middle of the night when at a red light where we can see far into all roads

14 A grammar point to think about: An American asked his Indian friend, “Would you please come home for dinner?” and the Indian replied, “My God! I have no wish to be eaten.” The better phrase is “Would you please come home to dinner?” 15 Stanford Encyclopedia of Ethics. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-law-ethics/ Why Ethics for Professionals? | 17 leading to our intersection and realize that there is no traffic or policeman in sight, whether we should jump the red light or wait for the light to turn green is a question that our constructed system cannot answer. For that, we need deontology or utilitarianism or some other system to obtain the answer. So in constructing our own system—in our context, a system for our ethics for professionals—we do not reject or put away our deontological or other ethics systems. We simply construct our own and work with it. Our theistic systems, if any, stay with us and inform us in special circumstances where our own created ethics paradigm fails us. Human rights, the body of laws voted on by the UN and agreed to by the collective of nations, has been proposed as a sound basis for professional ethics.16 Human rights laws have binding conventions that most countries have acceded to; that is, they have consensus. The strict regime of human rights we now live under draws heavily from Immanuel Kant’s concept that man and woman were created with dignity. Yet, because it is presented as a regimen of laws passed by the nations of the world, that underlying ethos of human rights law—that all are created equal and endowed with dignity—goes by default and not harped on. For, in some thought systems and religions, we are not all born equal—we are royals and commoners, or Brahmins and coolies. A wise strategy to promote the human rights regimen will not make an issue of it to avoid culture wars. For our purposes, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948 is a basic document spelling out our human rights principles that came out of the then new United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. The name “United Nations” was coined by US president Franklin D. Roosevelt and first used in “The Declaration by the United Nations” of 1 January 1942.17 The document was heavily influenced by the atrocities of World War II, which gave the nations the determination to see they are never repeated again. The UN General Assembly adopted UDHR on December 10, 1948. Perhaps because of America’s strong position after winning the war, Eleanor Roosevelt, widow

16 a) S.R.H. Hoole, “Human Rights in the Engineering Curriculum,” Int. J. for Eng. Educ., Vol. 18, No. 6, pp. 618–626, 2002. b) S.R.H. Hoole and D. Hoole, “Theocracy, History and Historiography: An Exploration in Professional Ethics,” Current Science, Vol. 85, No. 12, pp. 1681–1684, 25 Dec. 2003. c) S.R.H. Hoole and D. Hoole, “Asian Values and the Human Rights Basis of Professional Ethics,” Int. J. Eng. Educ., Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 402–414, April 2005. d) S.R.H. Hoole, Human Rights as a Basis for Dialog among Cultures: The Dilemma, in Hans d’Orville, Clare Stark, and Caroline Siebold (Eds.), Dialog among Civilisations. Paris: UNESCO, pp. 71–77, 2006. 17 http://www.un.org/en/aboutun/history/ 18 | Ethics for Professionals

of President Roosevelt, wielded a heavy influence and chaired the drafting committee. With her were René Cassin, the French jurist who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Peace and the UN Prize for Human Rights, Charles Malik of Lebanon, Columbia-educated Vice-Chairman Peng Chung Chang of China (which then was not yet Communist and its president, Chiang Kai-shek of the Kuomintang, was under heavy US influence), and John Humphrey of Canada, director of the UN’s Human Rights Division. The UDHR was perceived as a draft bill expressing the collective values of the comity of nations. It is not a treaty and therefore not binding on the parties. However, because it expresses the will of the world, it has the moral force of law, especially because many countries have invoked it to make their points on many legal matters. As such, there are those who argue that it is law. The full text of UDHR is given in Appendix A. We may note Immanuel Kant’s “human dignity” coming through in the preamble itself: “The inherent dignity of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Technically, the associated binding law itself flows from human rights treaties, which are now numerous and give teeth to the high principles of UDHR. These treaties originate in the UN Human Rights Council, where they are adopted, but they do not make the law of any country at that point because those who vote for it are often the governments which may not necessarily have the backing of their legislative bodies or the required consent of the head of state or other authorized institution or statutory authority. In the United States, for example, even after the president signs a treaty, it becomes law only after the Senate ratifies it by a two-thirds majority; it is a high bar for passage. A treaty adopted by the UN is first signed by a state making the treaty subject to ratification: “the signature does not establish the consent to be bound. However, it is a means of authentica- Food for Thought: The tion and expresses the willingness of Free Wolf or the Pet Dog? the signatory state to continue the trea- Would you rather starve ty-making process. The signature qual- and have the freedom of ifies the signatory state to proceed to speech, or be free to speak ratification, acceptance or approval.”18 while having no food to The adopted treaty becomes law when eat? it is ratified—“the international act

18 http://ask.un.org/faq/14594. Why Ethics for Professionals? | 19 whereby a state indicates its consent to be bound to a treaty. This process grants states the necessary time-frame to seek the required approval for the treaty on the domestic level and to enact the necessary legislation to give domestic effect to that treaty” (ibid19). There is also provision for a state to ratify a treaty expressing reservations on some clauses. Two key treaties that enshrine the principles of UDHR into domestic law worldwide are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The ICCPR became a tool used during the Cold War against the Soviet Bloc. Free elections, free speech, etc., are provisions in the ICCPR that the Soviet Union technically subscribed to but restrained in indirect ways. As if to counter such criticism, the Russians then successfully sponsored the ICESCR, which emphasizes the right to work, the right to vacations with pay, etc., and for that reason, the enshrined rights are called the Russian rights—the Russian argument was that the right to free speech is meaningless to a man who is starving without a job. Both ICCPR and ICESR basically give teeth to the human rights principles relating to political rights and economic rights, respectively, that are enunciated in UDHR. Ironically, the United States, after having played such a bold and useful hand in framing UDHR and the early human rights treaties, now stands as a pariah state by not cooperating with the world’s ethos on human rights, especially by engaging in renditions (that is, the practice of illegally transporting interdicted suspects from one country to another where prisoners have no guarantees of humane treatment, including protection against torture) and bombing countries not at war with the United States in targeted killing of enemies. There are many treaties that the United States signed but has not ratified. A prime example is the widely respected Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UN adopted it on November 20, 1989; with 193 states having ratified it, it is the most widely and quickly ratified of all UN human rights treaties. The only two countries that have not ratified it are Somalia (which had no government for a long time) and, keeping Somalia good company, the United States. (A third country, South Sudan, has also not ratified it but is not counted here because it came into existence only in 2011, and we expect it would ratify it in time.) A more serious

19 A professional ought to know what ibid means. It is short for ibidem, which is a reference that is the same as the preceding cited reference. It is used to save space, and sometimes italicized because it is in a foreign language, Latin in this case. Because it is now internalized to English, it may be considered an English word and not italicized. Similarly, op cit, short for opere citato, is a reference pointing to something already cited but not the immediately preceding reference, although that reference is also a part of what op cit covers. 20 | Ethics for Professionals

law, the Rome Treaty, which sets up the International Criminal Court (ICC), is another that is undermined by the United States. Essentially, the ICC gives no reprieve to criminals who can be apprehended by any signatory country and charged, holding everyone to a uniform, global standard of justice. Why is the United States against it? Food for Thought: The Child Rights The United States does not want its Treaty nationals to be charged by another Read the treaty and identify sec- country. Why do you think that is? tions, if any, that warrant American The United States took long to fears that it would deny parents sign the Convention on the Rights their rights on how to raise their of the Child, which it finally did only children. on February 16, 1995, and had done little since to move it to ratification. US objections to ratification are20 that the treaty would

a. Give the UN the power to tell parents how to raise their children, especially in relation to religion and sex education. It is further feared that the treaty’s prohibitions on cruel and degrading punishment might curb smacking because a third of US states allow corporal punishment in schools, and no state bans it at home; b. Make illegal the US practice of jailing even children (i.e., those below the age of 18) for life without parole. Originally, there was a worse problem with the death penalty which was meted out in the United States to children; but this is no longer a tenable objection after the 2005 Supreme Court decision that found issuing the death penalty to juveniles is unconstitutional (Roper v. Simmons); and c. Cause problems for the US Army, which recruits children (defined as those below the age of 18). This too is no longer an objection after the United States ratified the optional protocol on child soldiers, which in its first article provides:

“States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.”

20 Economist, “Why won’t America ratify the UN convention on children’s rights?” Oct. 6, 2013. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/10/economist-explains-2 Why Ethics for Professionals? | 21

The United States continues to recruit to the armed Food for Thought: Age forces at and after age 16, but now, in accordance Discrimination with her treaty obligations, does not deploy her Very experienced people child soldiers in military operations. sometimes apply for junior positions because they are With Republican-leaning parents’ groups being unable to find a position at utterly opposed to ratification, it is unlikely the US their level. And, although Senate can muster the two-thirds majority required well-qualified, they often get for ratification. In the meantime, as the United turned down on grounds such as “He will not be happy in that States zealously pushes child rights worldwide, position and will move on the response is invariably—“hey, we subscribe when a suitable position to the CRC, but you do not.” The point is that by comes his way.” Is that age not signing treaties, the United States is seen as discrimination? a hypocrite and is losing influence among both In the United States, the Age friends and detractors as a result. Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protects in- Similarly, there are many other human rights dividuals who are 40 years of treaties where US leadership is blunted and the age or older from employment United States is even seen as hypocritical because discrimination based on age. of lack of ratification. Some of these are: Say a person who is 65 years of 1 Convention on Enforced Disappearance: age applies for a job for which he is well qualified and is Adopted on December 20, 2006. Signed by turned down. 81 states; ratified by 12. US action: none, not He then files action with the even signing. federal government for viola- 2 Mine Ban Treaty: Adopted on September 18, tion of his civil rights based on 1997. Ratified by 156 states. US action: none. age. The company then re- sponds that it recruited a (Although the United States has not used 41-year-old man, a person in antipersonnel mines since 1991, it has not the protected class, to show it produced land mines since 1997 and is the does not discriminate based biggest donor to mine clearance efforts in on age. And that is considered a valid defense by the former war zones where they wreak havoc, Department of Civil Rights. President George W. Bush’s administration Discuss. declared that it did not ever intend to sign the treaty because the military capabilities provided by land mines remained necessary for the US military to protect its forces.) 3 Convention on Cluster Munitions: Adopted May 30, 2008. Signed by 98 states; ratified by 15. US action: none. (Cluster bombs on explosion “spray” smaller bombs that wreak 22 | Ethics for Professionals

havoc among personnel and vehicles. They are indiscriminate and take their toll on civilians close by, especially the unexploded bombs trig- gered accidentally by civilians well after a battle. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in a directive in July 2008, declared cluster munitions as “legitimate weapons with clear military utility.”) 4 Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities: Adopted December 13, 2006. Signed by 140 (Bush said the Americans with Disabilities Act is comprehensive, and signing this was unnecessary. President Obama, while campaigning for office, said on July 24, 2009, that he would sign it.21) 5 Optional Protocol on the Convention against Torture: Adopted December 18, 2002. Signed by 48 states. US action: none (The Bush administration felt the Optional Protocol was overly intrusive.)

1.6 THE UNITED STATES, THE WHIPPING BOY

The United States is a unique country—every country is, but here we refer to the ideals she professes and tries to put into practice worldwide. You will find this book a little critical of the United States, and we would like to put that in context. The United States was founded on ideals advancing an egalitarian world when she broke away from Britain in 1776. The ideals were sound, but Figure 1.4 The Whipping Boy the problem was that those who enunciated them did not think that black people were humans (except as mistresses) to whom the principles and ideals of their liberal words applied. This is often the focus of angry charges of hypocrisy against the United States. The United States is criticized for how blacks are treated, for having engaged in traditional colonialism and practicing neocolonialism, while teaching schoolchildren that she had and has nothing to do with that sordid chapter of the last 500 years, etc. The United States is almost everybody’s whipping boy as a result.

21 https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-rights-persons-with- disabilities-proclamation-signing Why Ethics for Professionals? | 23

However, ideals make for greatness. It is because these ideals are public: from blacks as slaves in 1776 to a black as president in 2009; from spying on her own citizens to severe restrictions on that activity just passed22 (June 2015). Sure, there is terrible racism in the US. Indeed, there is police brutality and several other signs that democratic institutions are still not strong, particularly for the protection of minorities. However, people are pushing for change and change is always ongoing. And so long as change is ongoing, there is hope. The ethics battles in the United States are many and ongoing and touch much on ethics for engineers—the use of new technologies to spy on others and targeted murders of opponents, seemingly arguing that killing noncitizens is all right.23 The advances on the rights of the child and the elimination of discrimination against women are yet to be complete, but they surely will be one day so long as the ideals are loudly proclaimed. Indeed, in many countries, new immigrants are resented because they make the neighborhood different from the comfort zones in which we grew up; in the United States too. With change come problems and the social turmoil we encounter, particularly against people of the Muslim faith, is very much a part of those problems attending change. This social discomfort is natural to the process of change as America goes “brown.” Engineers in particular must learn to deal with this in a principled, ethical way. The human rights framework provides the means for addressing that. Food for Thought: Favoritism, Trust, or Familiarity? As the ethnic salad mixes more and more in the United States, we will be faced with recruitment choices that cross traditional race boundaries. If you look around in the major American research universities, you will find (not always,

22 The Freedom Act, approved on June 2, 2015, reverses post-9/11 policies under which various communications were tapped by the National Security Agency, the NSA. These were exposed by Edward Snowden, who now stands vindicated. He was a computer professional who worked for the CIA and was a government contractor. He leaked NSA documents, revealing massive spying on US citizens, as well as routine telegrams from US embassies. On June 21, 2013, the Department of Justice charged Snowden with violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property. He lives in Russia, having received political asylum there. Still a fugitive, would he, should he, now be allowed to return without being arrested? As a whistle-blower, what is the hierarchy between the duty not to break the secrecy laws he promised to uphold as a contractor and his duty to tell us that we were being spied on by our own government and on our allies, and even engaging in industrial espionage while collaborating over 10 years with our Internet service providers like AT&T, as reported in the New York Times (Aug. 16, 2015) to gain access to our personal files? 23 In May 2013, President Obama’s administration declassified information about the 2011 drone strike that killed Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen, and strikes that killed three other American citizens. The president said, “I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen—with a drone, or with a shotgun—without due process, nor should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil” (National Public Radio, Feb. 14, 2014). 24 | Ethics for Professionals

but by and large) that Indian students have been hired by Indian professors, Chinese students by Chinese professors, and white students by white professors. The white-white correlation may be weaker because there are not enough white professors for white students to choose and work with, although white students, euphemistically called American, have earmarked scholarships from federal sources and are therefore admitted in larger numbers than warranted by their GPA and GRE achievements. That is, “white students were three times more likely to be admitted than Asians with the same academic record.”24, 25 • Is this correlation correct? If so, is it because Indians and Chinese applicants apply to professors they are comfortable applying to? Or is racism at play? Or are applicants applying to a professor they are socially networked to? Do professors feel that taking students they are connected to in some way and trust ensures loyalty and hard work from the hired student? Why is this correlation, if indeed it is there, rarely discussed? Is the practice harmful to a university and society, or is it a good thing for research when teams that work well come together through racial networks?

… We may note that Americans from countries where they will not give citizenship, even to children born there on the grounds they are of foreign origin, will argue vociferously in the United States for greater immigration. For example, until the 1999 reforms in the Bundestag, German citizenship was bestowed only if a parent was a German citizen, irrespective of place of birth—this is by right of bloodline, jus sanguinis. Now, post-reforms, citizenship may be claimed subject to some conditions by birth in Germany (jus soli) to parents with foreign nationality, and naturalization is also permitted to foreign nationals after eight years of legal residence in Germany. For this, we must thank globalization through the new human rights regime. India, Sri Lanka, and several other countries still follow jus sanguinis and as a result, the husband of a citizen could not get residence, but the wife of a citizen could. But now, thanks to CEDAW (the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), the practice has become fairer. Few in Sri Lanka or India would think of carrying out a campaign to widen the scope of citizenship. The process of obtaining citizenship or residence there would be to somehow get an introduction to the minister-in-charge of the subject and appeal on some grounds of sympathy for waivers. Although this

24 Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women, p. 100, 2008. 25 Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women, p. 100, 2008. Why Ethics for Professionals? | 25

is how democracy works, the waiving of the rule of law, the foundation of an organized democracy, by political authorities is one of the worst abuses and makes for patronage gov- ernance, the bane of many countries, even when they are democracies. But the fact that in the United States it is possi- Figure 1.5 Delhi protests-students, Raisina Hill ble to push the system to change is why people feel free to complain about bad laws and agitate for their change. It is the strength of the American system. The further fact that people throw brickbats at the United States also is an indication of the freedom to protest. That culture spreads worldwide as we saw massive demonstrations in India when a young woman was raped on December 16, 2012, in New Delhi. We saw something never seen before in India: women jumping on policemen and attacking them. The clothes the English-speaking protesters wore (see picture) demonstrate the influence the United States has on democratization throughout the world, despite all the criticism it takes. More Food for Thought: Is Ethics Dispensable in the Face of Injustice? Andrew van der Bijl, better known as Brother Andrew, was a Dutch missionary to Eastern Europe during the Cold War. His best-seller, God’s Smuggler, is about his famed and intrepid smuggling of bibles into Eastern Europe at a time bibles were prohibited. He was once pointedly reminded of the Jews, seeking to trap Jesus, asking him whether they should pay the imperial tax to Caesar. Jesus, using the image of Caesar on a denarius coin, had replied, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:15–17). The point being made to Brother Andrew was that Jesus himself had said that he had an obligation to obey governments. Brother Andrew retorted that he fully agreed and that Jesus was asking the Jews to give Caesar a kick in the back because that was what was owed to him.

• In the face of oppressive laws, do we need to obey those laws, or does our ethics stance call for defiance and disobedience? 26 | Ethics for Professionals

Figure Credits

Fig. 1.1: Marie-Lan Nguyen, “Herodotus Massimo,” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Herodotus_Massimo_Inv124478.jpg. Copyright in the Public Domain.

Fig. 1.2: Becker, “Immanuel Kant,” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kant_foto.jpg. Copyright in the Public Domain.

Fig. 1.3: Henry William Pickersgill, “Jeremy Bentham,” Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Jeremy_Bentham_by_Henry_William_Pickersgill_detail.jpg. Copyright in the Public Domain.

Fig. 1.4: M.L. Kirk, “The Whipping Boy,” Source: http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/69600/69634/69634_teach- erwhip.htm. Copyright in the Public Domain.