On Teaching Ethics in International Relations: Questions and Answers
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Module
Ethics in International Relations
Institution
Ethics In International Relations
wish to proceed in this paper by answering in turn the key questions posed to
the authors at the beginning of this workshop.
1. Do teachers have a moral obligation to include ethics in their courses? The
answer is, yes. Furthermore, a failure to do so is an ethical failure. The
reason for t...
International Studies Perspectives (2012) 13, 7–9.
On Teaching Ethics in International
Relations: Questions and Answers
Mervyn Frost
King’s College
There is an ethical imperative to analyze the ethical issues built into
every aspect of the discipline of IR. Also, the ‘‘Ethics of IR’’ is not a
sub-discipline of IR, but is core to the whole discipline.
Keywords: ethics, international relations, teaching
I wish to proceed in this paper by answering in turn the key questions posed to
the authors at the beginning of this workshop.
1. Do teachers have a moral obligation to include ethics in their courses? The
answer is, yes. Furthermore, a failure to do so is an ethical failure. The
reason for this is that all interpretations of what is going on in the world
that international relations (IR) theorists study are already loaded with
ethical commitments of one kind or another. A failure to make these
apparent to the people being taught must be read as an attempt to
advance one ethical project (one set of ethical values) rather than
another, without making this apparent to the students. Why is this an
ethical failure? That it is so can only be understood from within my own
ethical framework, which sets value on individual autonomy. This
includes the autonomy of students to make reasoned judgements about
the values embedded in the practices (including international ones)
within which they find themselves. My ethical framework is not simply
one that I have chosen from a ‘‘pick and mix’’ shop of ethical orders.
Rather, it is the one that is embedded in the wider liberal society within
which I (and in which all of my readers) live. Respect for the autonomy
of the participants in this practice requires that I indicate to those I
teach the points at which they are free to make their own ethical com-
mitments. I am required to make clear to them the possible points of
friction between different values that are included in the practice.
To support this argument, I ask you to imagine a hypothetical seminar in which
I failed to do this. Suppose in this seminar, I taught international relations from
the Christian National point of view espoused by the National Party that ruled
apartheid South Africa before 1994, and suppose that I did not indicate to the
students that the views on race which colored my Christian National interpreta-
tion of the international politics of Africa (a story of backward black people, in
backward black states, attempting to catch up with modernity) were contentious
ones. Suppose that I taught students this interpretation without alerting them to
other possible accounts of international politics in Africa (for example, an inter-
pretation relying on Robert Jackson’s notion of quasi states [Jackson 1990], or,
alternatively, an interpretation based on a theory of neo imperialism [Laffey and
Barkawi 1999]) and that I failed to bring to their attention the different ethical
Frost, Mervyn. (2011) On Teaching Ethics in International Relations: Questions and Answers. International Studies
Perspectives, doi: 10.1111/j.1528-3585.2011.00450.x
2011 International Studies Association
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