Introduction
by Thorsten Wagner, Principal Scholar
For many years, and perhaps since its inception, FASPE has been arguing that we are living in an era that—more than ever—calls for a historically informed, self-critical reflection on professional ethics. Emphasizing a sense of urgency has been an integral part of our tenets and our organizational communication. And nevertheless, this year things seem different. Feel different. The global landscape, international relations, and the fabric of American democracy and civil society have been changing at an unusually rapid speed. In this novel era of multiple crises and massive uncertainties, with the rule of law and the functioning of the civil service increasingly undermined, it seems that the roles of professionals and other leaders have become both more complicated and more significant. What happens to professionals and professional ethics in backsliding democracies, in societies with authoritarian tendencies?
One might even argue that FASPE was built for this moment and ought to embrace the challenge of the current situation, lean into the global fight against authoritarianism—obviously avoiding simplistic and glib equations. It is particularly useful to help equip fledgling professional leaders with resilience against the powers that lead to the ethical deformation of our institutions and communities. Holding space for diversity of thought and avoiding a sense of moral rectitude, whether of a “conservative” or “progressive” provenance, seem like crucial prerequisites in this endeavor.
The reflections on, and conversations about, this year’s fellowships were of course also informed by these developments. As Ed Ford puts it in his text, the current “rise of nativism, religious nationalism, and lingering racism” provided the context for the Fellows’ experience, and their contributions to this journal speak of this dedication to grappling both with the complexity of our moment in history and with the contemporary implications of the history of Nazi mass crimes for the day-to-day ethical decisions of professionals. Not so surprisingly, several of the Fellows articulate the disturbing and unsettling effects of the fellowship, and how, in some ways, they came away with more questions than answers. Frequently, this was interwoven with the emotional and cognitive impacts of having been on-site, at the actual, historical location of the crimes, in the spaces where their professional peers became complicit. Tanja Helmert and Jesse Bunch reflect, e.g., on the visit to the former villa of camp commandant Rudolf Höss, searching for “authentic” traces, discussing contesting narratives of meaning in relation to the site. And in several essays, you will find powerful descriptions of the disturbing, visceral experience of walking on the gravel paths of Auschwitz, Brandenburg, or Schöneweide. The essays are a testament to the importance of site-specific learning, of the sensory experience of a memorial site or an urban setting and its landscape of memory with its multiple layers of historical meanings.
Some Fellows chose to share their processing of the trip through art and poetry. Don’t miss the contributions by Ben Sevart, Maggie Wang, and Aditya Samant in this volume: their literary and aesthetic struggles with the experience of horror and their desire to bear witness glimpse a very different and powerful dimension of the FASPE Fellowship. Emma van Zandt takes things a step further and curates an (imaginary) exhibition of disturbing pieces of art for us as readers. As she narrates a walkthrough of the exhibit, she makes a very important point about the potential of art:
One of my greatest takeaways from the FASPE experience was the recognition that, as humans, we have a psychological tendency to distance ourselves from those involved in atrocities to avoid confronting the difficult truth of our own potential—even our propensity—to become both victims and perpetrators […] We unconsciously draw a line of demarcation between us and them […] In doing so, we stop a line of inquiry before it begins: that perhaps we, too, might act wrongly if placed in their circumstances. That perhaps we are much closer to standing in their shoes than we would like to believe […] Since our trip, I have been reflecting on the role of art as a disruptive force. Art has a unique ability to interrogate the structures we’ve built—both in society at large, and within our own psyche—that allow us to maintain our sense of separation from wrong, our sense of our own moral superiority and relative safety.
This desire for distancing and the crucial importance of overcoming it clearly form leitmotifs for the contributions in this volume. Along those lines, Israel Oladejo also has come to a similarly uncomfortable conclusion: “[a]m I any different from those who chose silence then, or am I capable of the same fading today? Short answer? I am not made of better clay.” With this realization, Israel presents a set of “practical tests” that might prevent us from rationalizing and normalizing unethical behavior as professionals:
- The Fresh-Eyes Test. If someone with no stake in the outcome read my email or watched my decision, would it make moral sense to them without my backstory? If my explanation needs a fog machine, I’m rationalizing.
- The Flip Test. If the roles were reversed, if my group was on the receiving end, would I still call this “reasonable”? If the answer wobbles, that’s rationalization.
- The Name-It Test. Can I describe what’s happening without euphemisms? Bandura warns that pretty words can launder ugly acts. If I need laundry, I need honesty first.
- The Principle-Before-Person Test. Can I write down the principle first and the decision second? If I pick the outcome and then backfill a principle, I’m arguing like a defense attorney, not a conscience.
- The Time-Travel Test. In five years, when the heat has cooled, will I be proud I did this, or will I explain it away as “context”? If future-me winces, present-me should pause.
- The Audience-of One-Test. Could I explain this choice to a younger version of me who still believed the honor code I signed in my second year of college: “I will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate those who do”? If that kid looks confused, I need to realign.
Very much compatible with this approach, Wisdom Obinna reflects on the takeaways for professionals in the world of design and technology, with ramifications far beyond his field:
The most unsettling lesson of visiting sites of atrocity is not that evil once existed; it is that it was professionally effected. Auschwitz’s geometry, the sizing of blocks, the routing of transport, and the calibrated separation of functions were not improvised savagery but implemented design. The precision of records, timetables, and construction drawings did not merely document murder; they enabled it. Confronting this history as a designer and technologist collapses the comfortable distance between past and present. The shock is not novelty but recognition: we know these diagrams, these process charts, these optimization problems. They are familiar because they are kin to our own habits of mind.
In what is one of the contributions that impressed me the most, Obinna then elaborates on the habits of abstract modeling, of diffusion of work processes, and of forgetting past failures: “FASPE’s counter-pedagogy is to embed historical literacy into professional identity, know the lineage of your tools, the politics of your standards, the uses to which your predecessors’ inventions were put, not to indict yourself by association, but to sharpen your imagination for failure modes that recur when memory is thin.” Don’t miss his six very hands-on recommendations for professionals wanting to be ethical in their practice.
Before I close, let me share an observation. Two essays, the ones written by Josh Lerner (Law) and William Choi (Medical) are thematically connected in ways that might be worth giving some thought, especially as they are written by Fellows from two different disciplines. They both address a crucial question: why and under what circumstances will younger professionals in particular remain silent in the face of ethically problematic practices in their professional lives? Lerner highlights the importance of overcoming impostor syndrome (“insecurity has always been fertile ground for unethical choices”) and making use of the existing room for maneuver: “the ethical tragedy [in Nazi Germany] was not the absence of choice but how often people surrendered it […] It’s one thing to say a lawyer has room to speak up. It’s another for that lawyer to actually see that room and believe they have the authority to use it.” Choi, on the other hand, centers his reflections on the feelings of powerlessness as often experienced by medical students and early-career professionals. But there is a significant overlap—the issue of belonging: Frequently, it might be the self-perception of impotence and inadequacy, in conjunction with the overpowering striving to belong, to be accepted into the august circle of esteemed professionals, that act as a kind of “self-fulfilling prophecy [that] paralyze […] our moral agency, and medical students are often all too happy to cooperate with whatever the system demands of us in order to be accepted into the exclusive cohort of doctors.” (William Choi)
In conclusion, I want to highlight one last essay, Chris from Design & Technology’s deeply disturbing analysis of how CEOs at times—and especially in the tech and start-up world—claim to be “at war.” He describes how this combative language and mindset have the potential to corrode standards of professional ethics. Framing business competition as “war” has consequences: decision-making is consolidated, dissent is crushed, and the “mission” is all that matters. He concludes that “my FASPE fellowship has opened my eyes to the extent that an ‘at all costs’ environment that relies on hierarchy and rhetoric can result in moral calamity.”
This lingo and its real-world consequences reminded me of parallels in broader society along with their legal and political ramifications. In historical terms, there seems to be an echo here of Carl Schmitt and his discussion of the state of exception: “The way to destroy all rules, he explained, was to focus on the idea of the exception, (…) that the present moment is exceptional and then transforming that state of exception into a permanent emergency.”1 In a recent article in the Boston Globe, Timothy Snyder brings this analysis up to our present, particularly in light of the violence in Minneapolis:
In a constitutional regime like the United States, the law applies everywhere and at all times. In a republic like America, it applies to everyone. For that logic of law to be undone, the aspiring tyrant looks for cracks in the system that can be pried open. One of these cracks is the border, where the country ends. Because the law ends there, too, an obvious move for the tyrant is to turn the whole country into a border, where no rules apply.2
Notes
1. Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, Tim Duggan, New York 2016, p. 100.
2. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/27/opinion/trump-ice-lawlessness/.