Looking for reasons to hope? Ethics Bowl is an antidote to toxic discourse.; Des Moines Register, September 18, 2025

 Kate Padgett Walsh, Des Moines Register ; Looking for reasons to hope? Ethics Bowl is an antidote to toxic discourse.

"At a time when political conversations too often devolve into shouting matches, personal attacks, or worse, there's a new model taking root in high schools and colleges across Iowa. It's called Ethics Bowl, and it points the way forward to heal our fractured public discourse.

Since co-founding the Iowa High School Ethics Bowl in 2019, I have seen hundreds of Iowa teenagers thoughtfully grapple with real-world moral dilemmas and respectfully present arguments. Teams succeed by demonstrating careful reasoning, genuinely listening to their opponents, and engaging with questions from judges and fellow competitors in a civil manner. Students learn that acknowledging complexity isn't weakness—it's part of how people disagree productively."

Anthropology grad students bring Ethics Bowl home; Cornell Chronicle, May 1, 2018

Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, Cornell Chronicle; Anthropology grad students bring Ethics Bowl home

"Cornell’s team won the Society for American Archaeology Ethics Bowl April 12 in Washington, D.C. Cornell was making its first appearance in the competition, which has been held for 14 years.

The Ethics Bowl pits teams of undergraduate and graduate students from different universities in debates about ethical dilemmas archaeologists encounter during their work. Teams are given hypothetical cases and must use their academic knowledge of various ethical guidelines and laws, as well as their research and fieldwork experiences, to formulate and defend their solutions.

Teams are graded on their responses and their handling of “curveball” questions. The cases for this year’s bowl were on occupational safety and heritage management, colonial monuments and indigenous rights, looting and the antiquities trade, plagiarism, and funding for research and ethics training."