To be offered in the Fall 2008 semester. In this course students will consider a range of ethical, political, and economic issues about sports: Why are sports so universally popular? What physical and psychological values do they provide? Does the playing of sports develop good character? Why are many sports fans so fanatical? What is the proper place of sports in higher education? Is there anything wrong with ticket-”scalping”? How should mega-sports complexes be funded—politically or through the market? See the Sports Ethics flyer.

Philosophy Professor Shawn Klein, co-editor of Harry Potter and Philosophy, will be speaking at a colloquium at Tufts University in Massachusetts, his alma mater, on the theme Why Take Harry Seriously?

Update: Here’s a Tufts Daily article about the talk and Professor Klein’s web log entry.

Rockford College, the Department of Philosophy, and The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship are proud to welcome our new professor of philosophy, Shawn Klein.

Professor Klein received his Bachelor’s degree from Tufts University in Massachusetts in 1995, obtained his Master’s in Philosophy from Arizona State University in 2001, and he is completing his Ph.D. at Arizona State.

Professor Klein’s specialty is normative ethics. In addition to his various publications, he is the coeditor of Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, published by Open Court in 2004.

For more information about professor Klein and the courses he will be teaching, view the announcement in PDF format.