The University of Michigan is initiating a series of undergraduate courses on ethics. Here’s one description:

“Forums to facilitate discussion about ethics are undefined right now, but their basic function is clear — providing a discussion setting on topics such as military action in Iraq and Harvard President Lawrence Summers’s controversial comments on women in science.”

It is an interesting moment in Harvard’s history—although not inherently a bad one—when its president has become a topic in other universities’ classes for a conversation about ethics.

Funnily enough, the Michigan program is taking shape just as Harvard seems to be phasing out its own undergraduate requirement in “moral reasoning”…..