This course, offered at HKS as DPI-202, examines moral leadership in the context of professional public service. It focuses on cultivating proficiency in a range of skills that together help to ground moral action. These skills include: 1) accurately perceiving the moral dimensions of situations that arise in public service, 2) adequately weighing moral tradeoffs that have to be made as part of strategic action, and 3) effectively putting into reflective equilibrium, the verdicts of the heart and those of the head. Additionally, the course promotes 4) the capacity to entertain different moral perspectives, that is, the ability to temporarily live in another person’s moral universe and see the world through their eyes. The ability to do this well is an essential component to successfully practicing the skills needed for virtuous action. The class will be largely case-based, but also introduce moral and political theory and material from adjacent fields as needed to work through the cases. We will also prominently integrate quite a number of movies, both for the sake of making the cases come alive and to conceptualize how media representation of human experience can influence how people think about challenges.

This course is offered by HKS as DPI 202. 

The course will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:30-2:45 in Starr Auditorium. The review session takes place 12-1:15 on Fridays in Wexner 332. 

See HKS website for information on Course Preview Days, which take place on September 2 and 3. 

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