Ruhi Deshmukh ’21, a first-year pre-business major, connects the “morality gauges” she studied in a business ethics class with the vestiges of inhumanity she visited during the Holocaust Poland human rights pilgrimage over winter break. “Embracing and understanding this history in the rawest form is what can help us challenge our own morality and keep ourselves from committing such a crime against humanity ever again,” she says.
From Ruhi Dshmukh, a first-year pre-business major
How ethical are we actually?
This past semester I took a business ethics class where the last topic we discussed had to do with overconfidence of human morality. We like to think of ourselves as beings, that when placed in a difficult situation, would always take the high road.
However this is not necessarily the case. In this unit we discussed two types of morality gauges. The first theory explored how we are as ethical as our inner moral compass. Even if you don’t take action on something, as long as you believe it is wrong or feel the wrongness of the situation you are considered an ethical person. The other theory said that we are only as moral as our actions. Although we may have a moral compass, we are as ethical as the actions we take to keep unethical situations from happening.
On this trip I often think about what I learned in that class and how it applies to the Holocaust. I often wonder how did so many people just passively allowed this to happen.
Read more at SMU Adventures.
No Resting Place: Holocaust Poland, a new book from SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program, features more than 200 contemporary photographs of Nazi-occupied Poland’s deadliest killing sites, historical vignettes and poignant personal observations shared by those who have experienced the nation’s most comprehensive, longest-running educational pilgrimage of its kind: SMU’s Holocaust Poland trip. Read more.