Reimagining Ethics Education for Peace Engineering

Recent disasters, including the Flint water crisis, the Volkswagen emissions scandal, and the post-hurricane scandal in Puerto Rico, reflect a moral failure to respond to the social dimensions of engineering. We employ three jumping-off points: ideological foundations in the culture of engineering education, dominant imaginaries of "community-engaged" research and practice, and the instruction of engineering ethics. We share the belief that these deficiencies are interconnected and mutually reinforcing, and more importantly that they render engineers vulnerable to causing or perpetuating injustice inside and outside the walls of the profession, and blind to recognizing such injustice when it occurs. In response, we propose how a focus on peace engineering can put engineers in dialogue with the publics they serve.