Architects of Sustainability

The Heller School for Social Policy and Management

The Heller Programs in Sustainable International Development (SID) are holding their annual capstone panels this week. The panels feature SID students, many of whom have returned from year-long field work, discussing topics ranging from climate change to educational policy. I just attended an excellent panel on Ethics and Development, moderated by visiting lecturer Rajesh Sampath, an expert in comparative philosophy and religion. Prof. Sampath explained that ethics and development is a new area for a new field, since the field of development itself is only 60 some years old. It’s useful to draw on examples from law, medicine, and business, but many of those ethical questions are different from development. For example, in problems of poverty — this is a global issue that we know needs fixing, but there is little consensus on how to fix it. Many of the “solutions,” Prof. Sampath explained, were Western models that are now being challenged in various ways by a post-colonial, emerging global South.

The session featured two SID students giving some case studies of ethical dilemmas from their own experiences in development work. Because the material is sensitive, I won’t go into too much detail here. But, issues brought up included the relationship between “big” funding agencies and “little” NGOs, and the struggle between loyalty to the agency and loyalty to the community you are serving. Another case study presented a remarkably challenging case of local cultural needs and practices versus the international pressures of human rights. The group discussed how human rights discourse makes sense at a state/country level, but becomes far more complicated at a group or individual level. Do certain communities and local groups have a right to opt out of human rights, out of their own choosing?

As the Heller School celebrates its 50th anniversary, the SID program was profiled in the latest issue of Brandeis Magazine. You can download the issue and find more information at http://heller.brandeis.edu/

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Bryan McAllister-Grande
Assistant Director, Office of Global Affairs
Brandeis University
Research/Scholarship Network Leader
NAFSA: Association of International Educators

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