This post is part of an ongoing reflection series featuring the 2024–2025 Maguire Public Service Fellows. In his contribution, Ph.D. student Collin Yarbrough shares insights from his Fellowship work—detailing the projects he supported, the communities he worked alongside, and the impact of that work on the ground. Last summer, through the Maguire Public Service Fellowship, […]
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Here, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. calls out silence as a moral failure in moments of injustice—when not speaking becomes a way of allowing harm to continue. But other traditions see silence […]
The Maguire Ethics Center is proud to introduce the inaugural members of our Student Advisory Board. This first group of students represents a wide range of majors, organizations, and experiences across campus, united by a shared commitment to advancing ethics and public responsibility at SMU. As the founding members, they will play a key role […]
SMU’s Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility has named Grant Moise, CEO of DallasNews Corporation and Publisher of the Dallas Morning News, as its new board chair. The appointment comes as the center marks its 30th anniversary and secures new funding to advance character education research. “This is a unique time in our society where ethics and social […]
Southern Methodist University (SMU) has been selected as one of 42 colleges and universities nationwide to receive a 2025 Capacity Building Grant from the Educating Character Initiative (ECI), a national program led by the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University. The $40,400 grant will support SMU’s project, From Nodes to Networks: Defining, […]
Each summer, the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility supports a select group of SMU students as they pursue service-driven projects across the country. These students, known as Maguire Public Service Fellows, receive funding to dedicate over 200 hours to community work or ethics research with organizations of their choice. Thanks to […]
The Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at Southern Methodist University is pleased to recognize the 2024-2025 Graduate and Undergraduate Ethics Essay Prize recipients. This distinguished competition is designed to encourage SMU students to thoughtfully engage with challenging ethical questions and develop their capacity for careful moral analysis. By participating, students are […]
Artificial intelligence is reshaping political power in ways we barely understand, embedding itself into economic and governance structures that shape human behavior—often without our explicit consent. That was the stark warning delivered by Dr. Brian Brock, a theologian and ethicist from Aberdeen University, during the 2025 Scott Hawkins Lecture at SMU. In a talk that […]
Working with the South Texas Equality Project (STEP), SMU anthropology graduate student and 2024 Maguire Public Service Fellow Sara Beth Becker is amplifying the voices and stories of the Rio Grande Valley’s queer community, contributing to a broader understanding and appreciation of their resilience and efforts to carve out spaces of acceptance and joy. “I want […]
The Maguire Ethics Center proudly announces its 2024 cohort of Public Service Fellows – four exceptional graduate students from SMU dedicated to advancing public service and ethics research. Generously supported by the Irby Family Foundation, the Maguire Center awards summer fellowships to empower SMU students pursuing public service or ethics research. Over the past two […]