SMU’s Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Responsibility seeks to honor and celebrate ethics throughout the campus and in the Dallas community. In keeping with its mission, the Center will sponsor a “Guarding the Guardians: The Ethics and Law of Domestic Surveillance,” on Friday Oct. 20.
The conference will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Ethics Center, and will honor the scholarly career and work of the center’s former director, Dr. Richard O. Mason.
Mason served as director of the center from 1998 to 2005. His current areas of interest include the ethics of information, the history of systems in organizations, the strategic use of information and the management of information and emerging technologies.
Conference coordinator Terri Gwinn said, “Dr. Mason is retiring from teaching for over 20 years at the end of this fall semester. He led the helm as director for so long here at the Ethics Center, and one way to honor him is to hold this conference that will address topics that relate to the work he has devoted his life to.”
The conference will include discussions about information technology and privacy and the problem of creating a “culture of ethics” within business organizations.
The free conference, open to all SMU students, as well as the public, will tackle questions about the degree of privacy the public should expect in an electronic age and to what degree the President’s power to protect the country through homeland security is subject to checks and balances.
For professionals in the law and business worlds, these questions raise many issues of urgency in the post-Sept. 11 world.
One of the keynote speakers is Joe W. Chip Pitts III, an attorney and technology entrepreneur. Pitts will give a talk entitled “Privacy and Pragmatism.” Dr. David L. Perry, Professor of Ethics at U.S. Army War College, will give a talk entitled “What May Americans Legitimately Expect of Their Intelligence Agencies?”
Michael J. Marchand, president of the Center for American and International Law, will speak on the mutual exclusivity of national security and personal privacy.
Professor of Law at Southern Illinois University School of Law Paul E. McGreal will give a speech entitled “Counteracting Ambition,” which will tackle the issues of domestic surveillance and separation of power.
According to Ethics Center Director Tom Mayo, the conference was planned to make a valuable contribution to the continuing national dialogue concerning the proper balance to strike between individual rights and liberties and national security.
The conference will be held from 12:30 – 5:30 p.m in Georges Auditorium in the Cox School of Business. Although the conference is free, pre-registration is required by Tuesday.
For more information contact Terri Gwinn at [email protected] or call 214- 768-4255.
