Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

📣 Internship announcement: 2026-27 Health Care Ethics Internship! ⚕️The Ethics Center invites applications from @SantaClaraUniversity students who will be juniors or seniors in the fall quarter of 2026 and are interested in healthcare professions, biotechnology, bioengineering, health policy, health care law, and/or health care administration. ⚕️Applications are due by 5 p.m. Pacific on Monday, April 6, 2026. ⚕️The Health Care Ethics Internship is a year-long program. It consists of community-based experiences with local hospitals and other health care facilities or with ethics departments in pharmaceutical, biotech, and technology companies, as well as weekly class meetings to reflect on and discuss classic and emerging ethical issues in healthcare and biotechnology. 🔗 To access the application, the health care ethics internship informational webinar, or other information, use the link in the first comment.

✝️While Pope Leo XIV and the Vatican repeatedly highlight the dangers of AI and the risks it poses to humanity, Irina Raicu, director of internet ethics, offers a more hopeful perspective. Raicu spoke recently at The Way Forward conference at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, a gathering of bishops, theologians, and journalists. Raicu continuously emphasized at the conference that AI is ultimately a human-created technology that is shaped by human choices, meaning we still have the opportunity to guide its development responsibly and ensure it strengthens society. 💡"We do have to be really thoughtful about how this technology changes us," Raicu said. But, "this is not God-given. This is technology that was shaped by other human beings who made certain choices. We can make different choices." 🔗Access the full National Catholic Reporter article highlighting Raicu’s thoughts on AI, humanity, and hope. Link in first comment. 📸 Image by: University of St. Thomas/Nick Wosika.

Join the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics for a two-session certificate workshop led by Ethics Center Staff, and gain a framework for navigating complex dilemmas and decisions.. ✅ Earn a LinkedIn Certificate 🗓 6 to 8:30 p.m. PST | April 9th & 16th 📍 SCU Campus 🎓 Open to Santa Clara University undergrad & grad students 🔗Workshop is free. Space is limited! Register now at: https://lnkd.in/gjfNKqMU

📣 Internship announcement: 2026-27 Health Care Ethics Internship! ⚕️The Ethics Center invites applications from Santa Clara University students who will be juniors or seniors in the fall quarter of 2026 and are interested in healthcare professions, biotechnology, bioengineering, health policy, health care law, and/or health care administration. ⚕️Applications are due by 5 p.m. Pacific on Monday, April 6, 2026. ⚕️The Health Care Ethics Internship is a year-long program. It consists of community-based experiences with local hospitals and other health care facilities or with ethics departments in pharmaceutical, biotech, and technology companies, as well as weekly class meetings to reflect on and discuss classic and emerging ethical issues in healthcare and biotechnology. 🔗 To access the application, the health care ethics internship informational webinar, or other information, go to scu.edu/ethics/hcei/apply/.

🤖A new AI ethics debate has emerged after the San Francisco based startup, Anthropic, refused a Pentagon proposal that would allow its AI technology to be used for fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. The decision made by Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, is earning praise for his ethical stance but has also sparked debate about how AI should be used and governed. 🎤Brian Green, directory of technology ethics, spoke to the National Catholic Register in an interview about the importance of this decision. “You can imagine an alternate universe where Dario Amodei just said, ‘Okay, we’ll sign it. It’s no big deal.’ They would be doing fine as a business, and the rest of the world would not be talking about AI ethics right now. [But] this universe that we’re living in is one that has been fundamentally changed in a lot of ways because somebody decided to take an ethical stand. I think that’s important,” Green said. 🔗Link in comments.

🩺 ⚖️ Immigration enforcement in and around hospitals threatens trust, decreases quality, disrupts health care delivery, and places clinicians in morally impossible positions. When immigration enforcement and healthcare intersect, what does the duty of “doing no harm” mean for hospitals and clinicians? 💡Michael Allen ’26 is a biology major with a minor in public health and a 2025-26 health care ethics intern at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. In his powerful recent piece "Care Under Surveillance: ICE, Hospitals, and the Ethics of Nonmaleficence", Allen argues for concrete, legal hospital policies that protect patient safety and staff integrity. “When immigration enforcement and health care collide, the harm is not only in the immediate disruption of care, but also in the downstream effects that change who feels safe asking for help. If ‘do no harm’ is taken seriously, hospitals must treat preparedness as an ethical obligation,” says Allen. 🔗Access Allen’s full article here: https://lnkd.in/gbwqzEdV #HealthcareEthics #ImmigrationEthics Santa Clara University SCU College of Arts and Sciences

Questions are being raised in San Jose about whether publicly funded staff time and official social media resources were used in ways that might blur the lines a bit. Davina Hurt, Esq., director of government ethics was quoted by The San José Spotlight saying, “If staff time was used to build or manage the account in an official capacity, the cleaner and more defensible standard would be to create an entirely separate campaign site. That includes not carrying over followers that may have been accumulated through publicly funded work.” Read more from The San Jose Spotlight at the link in the first comment.

Attend our informational webinar to learn about this health care internship opportunity for Santa Clara University rising juniors and seniors. Noon to 1:00 p.m. PST | Wednesday, March 4, 2026 | Zoom Webinar Learn more about the HCEI Program and the application requirements for the 2026-27 cohort. The session is led by Ethics Center Director of Bioethics Guadalupe Hayes-Mota, together with current Honzel Fellow Maria Sakurets, and current program interns. Learn more about this exciting SCU internship opportunity on our website (link in first comment) and bring your questions to the informational webinar.

🧑💻Anthropic’s recent decision to refuse the government access to their artificial intelligence system Claude for usage with autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance has brought up questions surrounding AI’s ability to make unsupervised ethical decisions especially in difficult and time sensitive situations. Ann Gregg Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics weighs in on her thoughts on Anthropic’s decisions, taking into account Anthropic’s claims that Claude has a built-in directive to make ethical decisions. ⚖️"I think what [they're] saying is that the models are not capable enough right now to support those uses safely, particularly the autonomous weapons. I think that's what the company is trying to say: can we just slow down and make sure we're doing the right thing here?" Skeet said. 🔗Link in the first comment.

Attend our informational webinar to learn about this health care internship opportunity for Santa Clara University rising juniors and seniors. Noon to 1:00 p.m. PST | Wednesday, March 4, 2026 | Zoom Webinar Learn more about the HCEI Program and the application requirements for the 2026-27 cohort. The session is led by Ethics Center Director of Bioethics Guadalupe Hayes-Mota, together with current Honzel Fellow Maria Sakurets, and current program interns. Learn more about this exciting SCU internship opportunity on our website (link in first comment) and bring your questions to the informational webinar.