Her cremated remains were buried in a Clearwater cemetery more than two years ago. But even in death, just as in life, Terri Schiavo’s polarizing case—and the end-of-life issues it raised—has endured.

Meanwhile, it’s been almost six years since Enron, once the world’s seventh-largest company, crumpled into bankruptcy proceedings after years of accounting tricks and cooking the books. But the debate over corporate fraud still lingers.

They are cases that seem worlds apart; yet, they are linked by a commonality that permeates almost everything we do.

“Just read the headlines of any major newspaper,” says Anita Cava, codirector of the University of Miami Ethics Programs and associate professor of business law in the School of Business Administration. “You’ll find ethical issues everywhere.”

Indeed they are, and not just in high-profile stories such as Enron or Terri Schiavo (on which Ethics Programs codirector Ken Goodman and other UM faculty served as expert sources). We labor perpetually over a seemingly endless set of challenges: Should there be a limit on compensation for CEOs? Should there be restrictions on freedom of the press or on the Web? Is it ever ethical to breach patient confidentiality? Stem cell research—do the ends justify the means?

“I had been writing about ethical issues since the late 1980s,” says Cava, who focused at that time on intellectual property and employment issues. “Ken Goodman, an expert in bioethics and information technology, came to Miami in 1991, so it was natural that we got together to share ideas. There was a clear need for a campus-wide ethics program, and we’ve worked very hard to bring together expertise to meet that need.”

“A solid ethics program is truly interdisciplinary,” says Goodman, associate professor of medicine and philosophy. “Anyone who isn’t concerned about ethics and values and with how society addresses different policy issues just hasn’t been paying attention.”

The UM Ethics Programs has been paying attention. Over the years it has evolved into a suite of University-wide, interdisciplinary initiatives that generate an extraordinary range of classes, conferences, research projects, and seminars. It consistently earns widespread publicity in the national media, and recently it received a major grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to oversee an expert team that will provide guidance on how to ensure the privacy of electronic patient health records.

The Ethics Programs collaborates with many other organizations, including the CITI program in human subjects protection and the responsible conduct of research, the Journal of Philosophy, Science and Law, the Miller School of Medicine’s Jay Weiss Center for Social Medicine and Health Equity, and the Pan American Health Organization. One of the most successful long-term collaborations is the Clinical Ethics: Debates, Decisions, Solutions conference, sponsored by the Bioethics Program (a subset of the UM Ethics Programs) and the Florida Bioethics Network. The 15th annual conference this April drew more than 300 people to analyze such topics as “Ethical Issues in Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Response,” “Ethics and Error: Managing Patient Safety,” and “Pediatric Ethics: From Infants to Teenagers.”

“We have cast a wide net to engage students and faculty in robust conversations about issues that matter,” Cava says about the growth of the University’s ethics initiatives.

Goodman attributes growth to top-level administrative support. “From the president to the provost to the deans, we have enjoyed a level of encouragement that is truly enviable.”

Support extends beyond the administration. One example: Adrienne Arsht, community leader and chairman of the board of TotalBank, contributed $1 million to the UM Ethics Programs last year. The gift initiated the Arsht Ethics Debates program; launched a distinguished speaker series; and established the Arsht Ethics and Community Research Grants, which will be awarded annually to up to five faculty-student teams. A University-wide Ethics Advisory Board has been established to referee research project proposals.

Ethics programming now permeates nearly every aspect of University life, and the key issues reflect what’s happening in the global sphere. This year at Sports Fest, an annual spring competition among the University’s residential colleges, a first-ever ethics component had students tugging at sports-related questions such as, “Should Mark McGwire be denied admission to the Hall of Fame even though there is no proof that he took steroids?”

“In the age of Enron, we now have a Business Ethics program. In an era of stem cell research and complications with end-of-life care, we have a Bioethics Program. In an era in which people are interested in environmental ethics and international ethics, we’ve managed to identify resources to ensure that UM is at the table,” Goodman says.

Ethics is also a topic to which students are devoting their extracurricular time. Cava and Goodman are faculty advisors for the UM Ethics Society, a student club established 13 years ago. A more recent component of the club is the Ethics Society debate team, established three years ago and supported by gifts from Karl Schulze, the UM Citizens Board, and Adrienne Arsht. Competing for the first time ever, the team emerged victorious from the 13th National Championship Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl.

The competition was fierce: 32 schools from across the United States, including the Naval Academy, West Point, the University of Southern California, the University of North Carolina, and Williams College. The preparation had been intense: endless hours learning how to present a powerful case on any side of any issue, such as: Should parents be allowed to use GPS and cellular phone tracking devices to monitor their children’s movements? Should a deaf couple be permitted to adopt a deaf child?

Joshua Morales, a senior business law major and member of Miami’s victorious team, explains his team’s winning edge. “The other teams had top-notch debaters, but we worked incredibly hard on the substance, and we also debated with style and flair. We took the room in our hands and compelled the audience to listen.”

Civic engagement is another important branch of applied ethics. Cava designed a summer program that gives grants to four M.B.A. students to provide public service to a nonprofit organization. Jason Madden, M.B.A. ’07, spent the summer of 2006 developing a Web site and consulting on financial and marketing issues for Sant La, a Haitian neighborhood center in Miami. “I was able to create my own project and apply my business background to a real situation,” Madden notes. “My work really made a difference.”

Above all, ethics requires critical thinking. “We’re trying to help students reason through issues and make good decisions that will withstand scrutiny,” Cava says. “Personal reputation matters. It’s more important to make the right decision than to worry about keeping this job or that friend.”

“By the same token, we’re not out flogging evildoers or waving our arms in celebration of virtuous behavior,” Goodman says, identifying those behaviors as shallow. “Rather, we’re teaching people how to think critically about difficult contemporary and traditional challenges, which is precisely what a great university is all about.”

Good Lawyers Have Great Ethical Judgment

The beauty of the UM Ethics Programs is its interdisciplinary nature as well as its beyond-campus reach. The same is true of the UM School of Law Center for Ethics and Public Service. Founded in 1996 and directed by UM law professor Anthony Alfieri, the center encompasses six in-house clinics and educational programs that offer pro bono legal representation to low-income communities in the fields of children’s rights, public health entitlements, and nonprofit economic development.

The center’s core mission is to train “citizen lawyers,” which Alfieri describes as lawyers who remain true to ethical judgment and civic professionalism. Through partnerships throughout the University, the center involves undergraduate as well as law students. It is also one of the few centers that provide Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits in ethics to both nonprofit and for-profit entities.

“Good lawyers have great ethical judgment, not only in litigation and legal transactions but also in terms of a higher law tradition,” Alfieri says. “From philanthropy to government to international tribunals like Nuremberg, lawyers were key players in American history. Citizen lawyers go beyond serving an individual client to serving a community and a country. We want to convey that you can do well and do good at the same time.”

David Treadwell is a freelance writer in Miami, Florida.