Ethics Bowl

Tulane Ethics Bowl

The Tulane Ethics Bowl program brings rigorous ethical reasoning to students at every level — from Tulane's graduate and undergraduate programs to local high school classrooms across the New Orleans area.

The program is built on a layered model: Philosophy faculty set standards and design curriculum; graduate students provide content expertise and coaching; undergraduate service-learners mentor and run practices at partner high school sites; and high school teachers co-coach and sustain weekly preparation at their schools. Each layer has a distinct function, and the structure is what makes the program scalable without diluting quality.

Why Ethics Bowl

Ethics Bowl is not debate. Teams are evaluated on the quality of their reasoning — the clarity of their analysis, their responsiveness to other perspectives, and their ability to handle complexity honestly — not on whether they "win" an argument. The format rewards careful thinking and genuine engagement with disagreement, which makes it a natural extension of the kind of philosophical reasoning we teach at every level.

The program is part of the Murphy Institute's Center for Ethics and operates in partnership with the National High School Ethics Bowl.