EA syllabi and teaching materials
I’ve been collecting a list of all the known courses taught about EA or closely related topics. Please let me know if you have others to add!
Pandemics Interventions course
January 2024, Lin Bowker-Lonnecker
Pandemics course
BlueDot impact, 2023
“Global Priorities” at University of Edinburgh
Fall 2023, Sean Brocklebank
SERI Biosecurity Interventions Technical Seminar
January 2023, James Lin and Victor Warlop
Law x Effective Altruism Introduction Fellowship at McGill University
Fall 2022, Julian Guidote
“Safeguarding the Future” at MIT
Spring 2022, Kevin Esvelt and Michael Specter
Biosecurity reading list
February 2022, Chris Bakerlee
Post
AGI safety fundamentals
For 2022, Richard Ngo
“Are we doomed? Confronting the end of the world” at University of Chicago
Spring 2021, Daniel Holz & James A. Evans
“Ethics and the Future” at Yale
Spring 2021, Shelly Kagan
“The Great Problems” at MIT
Spring 2021, Kevin Esvelt
Improving Science Reading Group
2021, EA Cambridge
Longtermism syllabus
2021, Joshua Teperowski Monrad
Biosecurity and biorisk reading list
2021, Tessa Alexanian
“Changing the World” at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2021, David Manley
Syllabus, alternate copy of syllabus
Effective Animal Advocacy Fellowship
Winter 2021, EA at UCLA
Social Sciences & Existential Risks Reading Group
Winter 2021
Global Development Fellowship
Winter 2021, Stanford One for the World
“Ethics for Do-Gooders” at University of Graz
Summer 2020, Dominic Roser
Cause Area Guide: Institutional Decision Making
May 2020, EA Norway
Guide, with reading list (focused on forecasting)
Intro to Global Priorities Research for Economists
Spring 2020, David Bernard and Matthias Endres
Description, with link to reading list and materials
Governance of AI Reading List
Oxford, Spring 2020, Markus Anderljung
EA course at Brown University
Spring 2020, Emma Abele and Nick Whittaker, based on Harvard Arete fellowship syllabus
GCBR (global catastrophic biorisk) reading list
2020 or before, Gregory Lewis
“Philanthropy and Social Difference” at Columbia University
Spring 2017, Spring 2020, Victoria Rosner
“Psychology of (Effective) Altruism” at University of Michigan
Winter 2020, Izzy Gainsburg
“Philosophy and Philanthropy” at University of Chicago
Winter 2020, Bart Schultz
Syllabus: Artificial Intelligence and China
Jan. 2020, Ding, Fischer, Tse, and Byrd
In-Depth Fellowship at EA Oxford
“Topics in Global Priorities Research” at Oxford University
Spring 2019, William MacAskill and Christian Tarsney
AI alignment reading group at MIT
Fall 2019
“Normative Ethics, Effective Altruism, and the Environment” at University of Vermont
Fall 2019, Mark Budolfson
Arete fellowship at MIT
Fall 2018, MIT EA group
Syllabus with discussion prompts
“Safety and control for artificial general intelligence” at UC Berkeley
Fall 2018, Andrew Critch and Stuart Russell
“Artificial Intelligence and International Security”
July 2018, Remco Zwetsloot
“The Psychology of Effective Altruism” at University of New Mexico
Spring 2018, Geoffrey Miller
“Training Changemakers” program
Spring 2018, Philanthropy Advisory Fellowship at Harvard University
“The Ethics and Politics of Effective Altruism” at Stanford University
Spring 2018, Ted Lechterman
“Effective Philanthropy: Ethics and Evidence” at London School of Economics
2017/2018, Luc Bovens and Stephan Chambers
Seminar on EA at University of Toronto
Fall 2017, Jordan Thomson
“Effective altruism” course at University of St Andrews
2016-2017, Theron Pummer and Tim Mulgan
“How to actually change the world” session at MIT
Fall 2016, Angelina Li and Daniel Ziegler
Evaluation and course materials
EA course at St. Catherine’s University
Fall 2016, Jeff Johnson and Kristine West
EA course at University of Saint Andrews
Fall 2016, Theron Pummer and Tim Mulgan
EA course at University of York
Spring 2016, Richard Yetter Chappell
EA Syllabus
Stefan Schubert and Pablo Stafforini
This syllabus is intended for use in philosophy, political science, or general humanities programs.
EA courses at UC Berkeley
In spring 2015 and 2016, students at UC Berkeley have led a full-semester class on effective altruism.
Organizers spring 2015: Ajeya Cotra, Oliver Habryka
Organizers spring 2016: Ajeya Cotra, Rohin Shah
Materials:
Retrospective after leading the first class
Practical Ethics course at Oxford
Michaelmas term 2014, Julian Savulescu
Outline (with syllabus available)
Stanford “Doing Good in the 21st Century” course for high schoolers
Taught Spring 2014 by Michael Dickens and Kelsey Piper
Ethics course at UC San Diego
(with EA emphasis)
Taught Winter 2014 by Theron Pummer
Peter Singer’s Coursera MOOC
(Adapted from Practical Ethics course at Princeton, fall 2013)
You can join the course to see all materials.
Other resources
EA teaching resources database from EA St. Andrews
Suggested reading list by Pablo Stafforini
Facebook group on EA and education
Charity elections for high schools, from Giving What We Can
AI Governance reading lists and syllabi by Michael Aird
- How to run a high-energy reading group by (1 Mar 2021 2:38 UTC; 145 points)
- Possible gaps in the EA community by (23 Jan 2021 18:56 UTC; 96 points)
- Co-Creation of the Library of Effective Altruism [Information Design] (1/2) by (10 Jul 2022 17:31 UTC; 73 points)
- 's comment on Julia_Wise’s Quick takes by (29 Apr 2021 17:50 UTC; 40 points)
- List of lists of EA syllabi by (9 Jan 2023 6:34 UTC; 31 points)
- 's comment on EA Hotel Fundraiser 5: Out of runway! by (1 Nov 2019 4:12 UTC; 30 points)
- 's comment on A curriculum for Effective Altruists by (28 Aug 2020 9:57 UTC; 22 points)
- EA reading list: other reading lists by (4 Aug 2020 14:56 UTC; 17 points)
- 's comment on A full syllabus on longtermism by (7 Mar 2021 3:20 UTC; 13 points)
- 's comment on Ramiro’s Quick takes by (23 Aug 2023 14:24 UTC; 8 points)
- Potential strategies for improving EA-related research distillation, recruitment, and pedagogy by (17 Mar 2022 17:32 UTC; 8 points)
- 's comment on Shelly Kagan—readings for Ethics and the Future seminar (spring 2021) by (29 Jun 2021 16:58 UTC; 8 points)
- 's comment on Shoot Your Shot by (18 Feb 2020 17:34 UTC; 8 points)
- 's comment on List of AI safety courses and resources by (26 Sep 2021 18:33 UTC; 4 points)
- 's comment on MichaelA’s Quick takes by (22 Sep 2021 9:20 UTC; 3 points)
Check out the new EA teaching resources database (built at St Andrews University): https://effectivealtruism.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/?_ga=2.220916632.1221540258.1574519560-1711956814.1566911816
I took this class, Are we Doomed? Confronting the End of the World which I thought was fairly EA-aligned (in terms of addressing existential risk, and including a link to 80k): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YSs8_COvHQBiE2msm37C2Nt6Sc29GcJJq3fpl2Tii0I/edit?usp=sharing
*edit Oh, and Philosophy and Philanthropy explicitly read EA texts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NnhmKR-hXcyHkVPWFQ7roeVzTlSMIYnh0mWD3obSV-k/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks! I added the first one to this list.
Thanks, added to the post!
I taught a class in Winter, 2020 called “Psychology of (Effective) Altruism” at University of Michigan.
Here’s the syllabus link!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hVMTHtJRG_gmscIZDa3aEUE4SAx8jDoQip1EfpB938I/edit
Thanks! Added.
“Preventing Human Extinction” at Stanford (first year undergraduate course)
Syllabus (2022)
Additional subject-specific reading lists (AI, bio, nuclear, climate) (2022)
@Pablo Could you also your longtermism list with the syllabus, and with the edit that the class is taught by Steve Luby and Paul Edwards jointly? Thanks and thanks for keeping this list :) .
GCBR reading list
Btw… this should be wiki maybe
Thanks for this collection! I send people the link to this decently often (maybe monthly?)
One addition: I made a Collection of AI governance reading lists, syllabi, etc.
If MIT’s alignment reading group is here, this course should also belong to the list: AGI Safety @ UC Berkley (Fall 2018).
This is an excellent collection—thank you!
Here is a syllabus I developed for an EA-aligned introductory research writing course, which could easily be adapted by other instructors. The course is aimed at a freshman audience (at UW Bothell) and is largely taken by first-year students fulfilling composition requirements.
Looks like the doc isn’t publicly shared—I get “You need access” when I try to view it.
Thanks, Erich, I’ve gone ahead and changed it! Hopefully everyone can access it now!
Updated link for the LSE Effective Philanthropy course: https://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/calendar2019-2020/courseGuides/PH/2019_PH332.htm
Thanks for making this collection! One thing I don’t think has been mentioned yet is the “sample syllabus on existential risks” from the website associated with The Precipice.
Here’s another one: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8i3Wdy4FuJbSDQr5k/a-semester-long-course-in-ea
AGI Safety Fundamentals curriculum, by Richard Ngo
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mTm_sT2YQx3mRXQD6J2xD2QJG1c3kHyvX8kQc_IQ0ns/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you!
Other than the one from David Bernard and Matthias Endres, do you know if any of these are Economics-focused and/or involve formal maths and/or quantitative content?
Thanks for this resource! @velutvulpes just posted one that you may want to add: Ethics and the Future seminar at Yale.
Just added this to save Julia some time :-)
Thank you!
Also the EA Oxford In-Depth Fellowship
If you were to organize an effective altruism course around William MacAskill’s book Doing Good Better, what additional readings would you give to students to fill in the holes of the book?