UW News

October 1, 2009

Legendary Harvard “Justice” professor visits UW School of Law

A course called, simply, Justice is one of the most popular in Harvard University’s history, with nearly a thousand students filling a Harvard theater each week to hear Michael Sandel, professor of government, talk about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship.


On Friday, Oct. 2, students at the UW can make the same journey in moral reflection when Sandel visits the UW School of Law. Sandel’s lecture will be held at 2:30 p.m. in 133 William H. Gates Hall.


Sandel’s course aims to help students become more critically-minded thinkers about the moral decisions we all face in our everyday lives. Would it be just to torture a suspect to get information? Is it OK to steal a drug that a child needs to survive? If you didn’t think you’d get caught, would you pay your taxes? What is the right thing to do? He asks audiences to examine their answers in the light of new scenarios and the results are often surprising.


Sandel’s recently published book, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? follows the same vein as his lectures. Sandel “dazzles in this sweeping survey of hot topics — the recent government bailouts, the draft, surrogate pregnancies, same-sex marriage, immigration reform and reparations for slavery,” writes Publisher’s Weekly.


Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard, where he has taught political philosophy since 1980. His writings have been translated into 11 foreign languages and have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, and the New York Times.