PRINCETON – Is it always wrong to take an innocent human life? Many philosophical defenders of the Roman Catholic natural-law tradition argu…

PRINCETON – When Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, went to Ukraine for talks last month, his Ukrainian counterparts reportedly l…

PRINCETON – A sense of fairness is universal among humans, but people often differ about exactly what fairness requires in a specific situat…

PRINCETON – Last month, Oxfam, the international aid organization, launched a campaign called “Behind the Brands.” The goal is to assess the…

PRINCETON – The moral progress of a society, it has often been said, can be judged by how it treats its weakest members. Individual chimpanz…

MELBOURNE – Should rich countries – or investors based there – be buying agricultural land in developing countries? That question is raised …

PRINCETON – On which problems should we focus research in medicine and the biological sciences? There is a strong argument for tackling the …

PRINCETON – No doubt many people around the world, if not most, breathed a sigh of relief over the re-election of US President Barack Obama.…

PRINCETON – My grandmother was one of the first women to study mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna. When she graduated, in 1…

PRINCETON – In contrasting decisions last month, a United States Court of Appeals struck down a US Food and Drug Administration requirement …

MELBOURNE – In the Dominican Republic last month, a pregnant teenager suffering from leukemia had her chemotherapy delayed, because doctors …

UTRECHT – Gloria Taylor, a Canadian, has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Over a period of a few yea…

MELBOURNE – What are the proper limits of religious freedom? Marianne Thieme, leader of the Party for the Animals in the Netherlands, offers…

MELBOURNE – With daily headlines focusing on war, terrorism, and the abuses of repressive governments, and religious leaders frequently bemo…

WARSAW/MELBOURNE – Jenna Talackova reached the finals of Miss Universe Canada last month, before being disqualified because she was not a “n…

MELBOURNE – We are getting fatter. In Australia, the United States, and many other countries, it has become commonplace to see people so fat…

PRINCETON – Last year, I told a colleague that I would include Internet ethics in a course that I was teaching. She suggested that I read a …

PRINCETON – Forty years ago, I stood with a few other students in a busy Oxford street handing out leaflets protesting the use of battery ca…

PRINCETON – Dudley Clendinen, a writer and journalist, has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a terminal degenerative illness. In The New …

PRINCETON – US President Barack Obama’s doctor confirmed last month that the president no longer smokes. At the urging of his wife, Michelle…

PRINCETON – Three significant events relating to the death penalty occurred in the United States during September. The one that gained the m…

PRINCETON – The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is known internationally for two things: high visa fees, which reduce the influx of touris…

MELBOURNE – Two new movies released this month – one a science-fiction blockbuster, the other a revealing documentary – raise the issue of o…

PRINCETON – Mahatma Gandhi acutely observed that “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are …

OXFORD – Can moral judgments be true or false? Or is ethics, at bottom, a purely subjective matter, for individuals to choose, or perhaps re…