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Kenan Institute for Ethics

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Kenan Institute for Ethics

Good pursuits are passionate arguments about what it means to be human—about who we are, what we are doing, and what we ought to do.

The Kenan Institute for Ethics is a home for faculty, students, and staff dedicated to understanding the moral challenges of our time through the energetic and capacious pursuit of good. Good judgment, good character, good citizens, good government, the greatest good, the common good … We speak often of good, but in the absence of agreement about what we mean when we deploy the word.

09/09/2026

When was the last time you slowed down to look at a work of art? Or a flower?

The Purpose Project at Duke is excited to invite Duke faculty and staff to “May I have your attention please? An Invitation to Pause, Reflect, and Connect,” a contemplative engagement with art at the Nasher Museum of Art or with nature at Duke Gardens.

Amidst the frenzy to efficiently do, respond, solve, and achieve, this series invites you into a different mode of being: one that cultivates deep attention, wonder, and curiosity; allows for slow thought and leisurely learning; and ultimately nurtures meaning, joy, and hope in our lives.

Programs will be held at the Nasher Museum or Sarah P. Duke Gardens. During our time together, we will engage with one work of art or plant life, in conversation with each other and guided by a museum or Gardens educator.

Sessions begin at the Nasher this Friday, September 11. Participants may register for one session at each location.

Register via the link in our bio!

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09/04/2026

April showers bring May flowers…and August thunderstorms bring complications for outdoor events.

Every year, Kenan holds a Welcome Back Picnic during the first week of classes, bringing together hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and community members on the West Duke Building lawn.

Unfortunately, thunder shook the sky an hour before the picnic was scheduled to start, ruining our plans for our big back-to-campus event.

Fortunately, Kenan staff were able to quickly move the festivities inside the West Duke Building, allowing folks to come together over a meal and mocktails as a band played in the background, a sketch artist offered quick portraits, and a new Kenan t-shirt made its debut.

One of the best parts of this annual event is welcoming back students from our programs — FOCUS, Constellations, DukeEngage, the Kenan LLC, and more — giving them the chance to reconnect with faculty, staff, and each other.

It was great to see all of you again. Here’s to the start of another great semester!

08/20/2026

“It’s challenged me in ways I didn’t think I could challenge myself before. I’ve experienced things that I never would have thought I would experience in my four years at college.”

Connor Melehan is talking about Capacious Minds Fellows, an experimental year-long fellowship that asks students to expand their minds — and even their notion of what a mind is — through activities centered on embodiment, play, and wonder.

If it all sounds a bit mysterious — that’s the point. The fellows never knew exactly what they would be doing week by week.

One session focusing on movement exercises put them well outside their comfort zones.

“There were a couple shared glances between everybody in the group, like, ‘are we really doing this?’” Melehan jokes.

But he soon found that he gained a lot of “comfort with discomfort” as he said yes to new experiences, week after week.

Capacious Minds Fellows also helps students practice attunement — to others, to the world around them, and to themselves.

During his second semester in the program, Melehan realized he was rethinking his path at Duke.

“I spent the first three semesters at Duke trying to make myself look as good as possible for law school applications, when I had zero desire to be a lawyer,” he says. “You end up so busy that you don’t give yourself the time to actually think about why you’re pursuing something or if you even want to pursue it.”

One day, while studying for the LSAT in his dorm, Melehan suddenly thought, “Wait, why am I doing this?”

He closed the book, looked at the wall, and thought for an hour before he realized, “This isn’t what I want to do. I need to keep digging.”

While Capacious Minds Fellows didn’t give Melehan the answer to that question, it did give him the confidence to sit with uncertainty until he could figure it out on his own.

“Capacious Minds has qualitatively changed me,” he says. “It’s made me more comfortable with the unknown, and more excited to pursue areas that can propel my growth.”

Applications for Capacious Minds Fellows are now open! Apply by August 30 (link in bio).

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07/07/2026

DukeEngage group programs are underway! Through DukeEngage, a program of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke undergraduate students spend eight weeks working with community partners in the United States or around the world.

This summer, we have launched a social media ambassador program, so you can follow along with our students as they experience DukeEngage!

Follow DukeEngage to receive dispatches from DukeEngage Brazil, Bolivia, Uganda, Panama, South Korea, Washington, D.C., Boston, France, and the Duke Marine Lab.

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06/04/2026

Podcast Episode · Scene on Radio · S8 E1 · 40m

05/20/2026

Welcome to Season 8: The News. Just about everyone is mad at the media, and Americans seem helpless to solve our problems, in large part because we have no shared narrative and few shared facts. Producer...

04/24/2026

Cultures of consumption and disposability are normalized on campus and beyond. Students advocate for a more sustainable, community-oriented alternative.

04/22/2026

Thrilled to share that our upcoming Scene on Radio season, The News, is an Official Selection at the Tribeca Festival this June! The series, launching in late May, is the newest collaboration between myself (John Biewen) and the great Chenjerai Kumanyika (of Empire City, Unruly Subjects, Uncivil, SoR's Seeing White, etc), along with story editor Diane Hodson and assistant producer Arlene Arevalo.

We'll explore the overlapping crises facing America's news and information system, and the relationship between the state of our media and the other deep crises we keep on failing to solve. Can't wait to get this series out to y'all.

Kenan Institute for Ethics PRX

01/09/2026

What if gun violence were a problem we could actually solve?

Join the Kenan Institute for Ethics and host Adriane Lentz-Smith for a conversation with professor and Crime Lab director Jens Ludwig on the causes of gun violence — and the policy changes that can help us prevent it.

Jens Ludwig uses behavioral economics and data science to understand why people commit crimes. In his most recent book, “Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence,” Ludwig writes that gun violence isn’t just a burden our society must bear — it’s a problem that we can actually solve.

With insights informed by decades of research and fieldwork in the South Side of Chicago, Ludwig discovers that most shootings happen in the heat of the moment, driven more by circumstances than by calculation. He argues that finding ways to intervene in the “unforgiving places” that spur gun violence could effectively stop crimes before they happen, giving both potential victims and potential perpetrators another chance at life.

Jens Ludwig is a behavioral economist and Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. His current work focuses on how behavioral science and data science can help solve social problems, particularly in the areas of urban poverty, crime, and education. He helped found the Crime Lab and the Education Lab at the University of Chicago to work closely with government agencies to turn these insights into social change out in the real world.

Ludwig received his BA in economics from Rutgers College and his MA and PhD in economics from . He continues to collaborate with his advisor and friend from Duke, Emeritus Professor of Public Policy Phil Cook.

This event takes place at 7pm on Friday, January 23 at the Durham County Main Library. A reception and book signing will follow the event. Copies of “Unforgiving Places” will be available for purchase, courtesy of the Regulator Bookshop.

01/08/2026

Happy return to Duke! We hope the start of the spring semester is going well.

Unfortunately, we will not be seeing any students in the West Duke Building any time soon. The entire building is closed for the foreseeable future due to damages from a burst water coil on December 15, 2025, when temperatures were extremely low.

Flooding mainly affected the northern side of the building, including KIE offices in West Duke 103 suite. Other KIE office suites, including the Fortin Family Foundation Director’s Suite, did not appear to sustain any damages.

While West Duke is expected to open again during the spring semester, the entire building will remain closed while damages are being evaluated and restoration plans assessed.

All classes in the West Duke Building, including Ethics courses, have been reassigned to other spaces on East Campus. KIE staff will work remotely or in the East Duke Building, where the Kenan Institute for Ethics holds additional office space.

We look forward to seeing you in the West Duke Building when it’s shipshape again!

Address

102 West Duke Building
Durham, NC
27708

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm

Telephone

+19196603033

Website

http://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/

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