Forty-five years of leadership
in ethics for a complex world.

The Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University helped to invent the field of bioethics, beginning a tradition of creative leadership in practical ethics that continues into the twenty-first century.

KIE Senior Research Scholars Powers & Faden Publish New Book

KIE Senior Research Scholars Madison Powers and Ruth Faden recently published Structural Injustice: Power, Advantage, and Human Rights through the Oxford University Press. Powers and Faden identify structural injustice and present a well-being account that assesses systematic patterns of unfairness. Their theory explains the interconnectedness of human rights violations, advantage, and unfair power patterns. Learn […]

Senior Research Scholar Karen Stohr Publishes New Book

KIE Senior Research Scholar Karen Stohr recently published Minding the Gap: Moral Ideals and Moral Improvement through the Oxford University Press. Professor Stohr assesses the gap between what we are like and what we think we should be like. The goal of moral improvement is to narrow that gap. Learn more and order here. […]

August 5, 2019

KIE Scholars Respond to Proposed Aid-in-Dying Laws

KIE Acting Director and Andre Hellegers Professor of Biomedical Ethics Dr. Daniel Sulmasy and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics John Keown both responded to new efforts to change assisted dying laws. In the United States, the state of New Jersey recently enacted an Aid-in-Dying law where clinicians can prescribe pills to terminally ill patients. […]

July 17, 2019

Senior Research Scholar Receives Praise for New Book

KIE Senior Research Scholar John Keown recently published the 2nd edition of his book Euthanasia, Ethics, and Public Policy: An Argument against Legalisation. In a review of Prof. Keown’s book, Charles Foster, barrister at Serjeants’ Inn Chambers, and a Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, describes Keown’s book as “A meticulous, highly readable, and profoundly disturbing […]

Senior Scholar Maggie Little Publishes Guidance with PREVENT Working Group

KIE Senior Research Scholar Maggie Little and the Pregnancy Research Ethics for Vaccines, Epidemics, and New Technologies (PREVENT) Working Group published a guidance article entitled “Pregnant women & vaccines against emerging epidemic threats: Ethics guidance for preparedness, research, and response.” This Guidance continues the efforts to include pregnant women in clinical research, from which they have been […]

July 1, 2019

Senior Research Scholar responds to Victoria’s ‘voluntary assisted dying’ law

In an opinion piece for ABC Religion and Ethics, KIE Senior Research Scholar John Keown writes about ‘slippery slope’ concerns from laws permitting physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and voluntary euthanasia (VE). Read the full article here.