Definitely do the Ethics Project! Indeed, if you want to do it, hit me up! I have something like $20,000 a year to seed it at other colleges.
Other things I do: 1. Teach incentives and perverse incentives. 2. Teach moral psychology and the psychology behind giving behavior. (It’s depressing but teach it anyway.) 3. Ask students to write a critique of a charity or NGO. Have them identify what a charity is doing badly, why they are messing up, what perverse incentives or psych mechanisms cause it, and what they could do to change the culture or incentives to produce better outcomes. 4. Have students write an op-ed encouraging donations to a charity. 5. Have students do the giving game. I tell students I will donate $500 of my own money. They break into groups and make presentations defending the charity of their choice. I tell them not to use GiveWell charities because the work is already done for them. I then donate $500 to the best group’s choice.
P.S. Regarding funding, we can give the money to any other US college or university. We’ll have to figure out the mechanics—it may be that we can directly donate it to your school to use it, or, more likely, you’d have your class do it and we’d pay for students’ expenses.
Definitely do the Ethics Project! Indeed, if you want to do it, hit me up! I have something like $20,000 a year to seed it at other colleges.
Other things I do:
1. Teach incentives and perverse incentives.
2. Teach moral psychology and the psychology behind giving behavior. (It’s depressing but teach it anyway.)
3. Ask students to write a critique of a charity or NGO. Have them identify what a charity is doing badly, why they are messing up, what perverse incentives or psych mechanisms cause it, and what they could do to change the culture or incentives to produce better outcomes.
4. Have students write an op-ed encouraging donations to a charity.
5. Have students do the giving game. I tell students I will donate $500 of my own money. They break into groups and make presentations defending the charity of their choice. I tell them not to use GiveWell charities because the work is already done for them. I then donate $500 to the best group’s choice.
P.S. Regarding funding, we can give the money to any other US college or university. We’ll have to figure out the mechanics—it may be that we can directly donate it to your school to use it, or, more likely, you’d have your class do it and we’d pay for students’ expenses.