This upper-level honors seminar combines the fields of bioethics and health policy with queer studies to examine the myriad challenges persons who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA) may face in the medical system. Some of the pressing ethical issues include access to health care and culturally competent mental health resources, treatments for intersex children, access to assisted reproductive technologies and adoption, drug development and clinical trials, and so-called “psychotherapies'' designed to change sexual orientation. This course will be particularly attentive to the ways in which factors such as race, class, ability, and age intersect with sexuality to produce unique outcomes and experiences.

The Human Event is a year-long discussion-based seminar that forms the foundation of the honors experience at Barrett, the Honors College. In The Human Event, students are invited to think critically, creatively and constructively with their peers about some of the most enduring questions in the history of human culture and thought. Because the class focuses on helping them learn to read closely, analyze evidence, and write persuasively, it prepares students well for all their other university classes and their futures as professionals and citizens.

Science and medicine are incredibly powerful forces that have the power to heal, destroy, create, disrupt, and organize our lives. This seminar interrogates the ways in which health, medicine, technology, and scientific practices are created, organized by and situated within complex social and structural dynamics. We draw on science and technology studies, bioethics, and theories from the feminist, race and disability communities to think about the ways in which social justice is both promoted and hindered by science and medicine. We also look at specific instances of scientific dissent and interrogate the power of lay citizens to change the direction and speed of scientific progress.

Should AI algorithms be used to make major medical decisions for patients? Are zoos ethically permissible? Should there be mandatory age restrictions for employment? Is it ever ethically wrong to provide humanitarian aid? These are just a few of the questions that Ethics Bowl participants have been asked to address. What is Ethics Bowl? It’s a team competition where we discuss and debate current ethical dilemmas. The goal is to work collaboratively (debate, but with hugs!) to develop effective, ethical solutions to current, in the news ethical dilemmas.

The Regents’ Cup is a debate and storytelling competition that celebrates free speech and civil discourse at Arizona’s public universities. ASU’s team aims to reclaim the cup on Mar 23, 2024.

In partnership with the honors colleges at Macauley College, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Central Arkansas, the Justice and Equity Honors Network (JEHN) brings students from across the country together to examine issues of justice and equity in depth and in context, and to empower students to be participants in the transformational change of imagining a more just and joyous future.