Future Doctors, Philosophers, and Policymakers Explore the Biggest Ethical Questions at Yale

Rick Harrison
Jadesola Crownson presents a poster of her research to a gaggle of people

Jadescola Crownson attended the Yale summer program in bioethics to address questions she had encountered in her science and medical training.

When Jadesola Crownson graduated with a degree in biochemistry and plans for medical school, she already knew how to think like a scientist. But she wanted to grapple with questions science alone could not answer.

“I think bioethics is kind of that missing niche in my education,” said Crownson, who earned her B.S. from the University of San Francisco. “I have all these issues, and I don’t really know where to talk about them. Who to talk about them with.”

This summer, Crownson found those conversations. She joined 49 other students who came to Yale from around the country and the world to explore ethical questions surrounding health care, technology, public policy, and scientific innovation.

Now in its 18th year, the Yale Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center’s Sherwin B. Nuland Summer Institute in Bioethics convenes students and professionals from fields including medicine, law, philosophy, public health, and religious studies to confront questions regarding end-of-life care, clinical decision-making, artificial intelligence, genomics, climate change, animals, social justice, and more.

The center, supported by the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, encourages scholars to engage with real-world dilemmas through seminars, lectures, research projects, site visits, and conversation with experts from a wide range of fields.

“The Bioethics Center and this summer program represent one of the great jewels of interdisciplinary education at Yale,” said Alan Gerber, ISPS director and Sterling Professor of Political Science. “The goal is not simply to learn ethical theories, but to apply them to contemporary problems in medicine, technology, law, policy, and public life.”

Over the course of the program, each student develops a research question, conducts a literature review, prepares an annotated bibliography, and creates an academic poster that is presented to faculty and peers at Yale School of Medicine. The project gives students practical experience in bioethics research while encouraging them to contribute their own perspectives to ongoing debates.

Casu Canca gestures to a trolley problem slide projected on a screen in a classroom

Cansu Canca discusses what values are being encoded into systems and who bears responsibility when those systems shape human decisions.

“Many of my returning faculty had to change their curriculum this year because they were receiving so many informed and insightful questions from students,” said Lori Bruce, the center’s director. “They tell me, ‘I can’t give standard lectures here anymore — the students need more active discussions, and many are requesting additional readings on top of the rigorous courseload.”

In a session led by AI ethicist Casu Canca, students explored how emerging technologies are forcing society to revisit longstanding ethical questions. Through discussions of self-driving cars, criminal justice algorithms, and generative AI systems, participants examined competing definitions of fairness, the responsibilities of technology developers, and the ways artificial intelligence can shape human decision-making. 

Students debated whether algorithms can ever be fair, whether AI systems should report signs of self-harm, how predictive policing tools might reinforce existing social inequities, and whether personalized AI systems influence human autonomy. Throughout the conversation, Canca repeatedly pushed students to move beyond intuition and identify the underlying ethical principles at stake.

Canca encouraged students to ask not only whether AI systems work, but whether they should be deployed in the first place and what values are embedded in their design.

“Applied ethics has already the foundational concepts that come from moral philosophy and have been trying to implement it into real life scenarios for a very, very long time,” Canca said. “But what AI ethics does is basically bring a new domain where new questions come and make it again with new complications.”

Steven Ross, a rising sophomore studying philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, sees bioethics as an increasingly important field.

“I think as technology keeps progressing, you need thinkers who are up and coming,” Ross said. “You need thinkers — who are living through the changes right now — to get involved.”

Students also traveled to The Hastings Center for Bioethics in New York’s Hudson Valley, where they encountered the kind of open-ended ethical debates that define the field. 

In one session, scholars explored controversial questions surrounding genetics and educational attainment, weighing the promises of scientific discovery against concerns about discrimination, misuse, and social harm. The discussion underscored how bioethics is often less about finding definitive answers than about learning how to navigate competing values in an increasingly complex world.

Two people talk near a poster

Bryce Bennett, right, values opportunities to hear diverse perspectives and learn to approach ethical problems collaboratively.

Bryce Bennett, a rising senior studying philosophy at Colgate University, hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy and work as a clinical ethicist in a hospital to help patients, families, and clinicians navigate difficult ethical issues. She applied to the summer program at Yale because she could not find anyone in her department who specialized in medical ethics, and she wanted to approach ethical problems collaboratively.

“Bioethics is not done in isolation,” Bennett said. “Now I think I’m more prepared to have really thoughtful and intentional discussions when bioethics dilemmas come up.”

She appreciated how Bruce talked often about considering all stakeholders when approaching an issue.

“We need to remember that we’re here to support their issues and not rewrite a story that fits our own narratives or what we want to solve,” Bennet said.

Crownson echoed those sentiments.

“Bioethics has taught me it means a lot to pause and ask the questions to learn what is your family like?” she said. “Where are you coming from culturally? What is actually making you feel scared? I feel like this program and learning about bioethics has given me so many frameworks to use and so many conversations to have.”