How the election interference case is being discussed at Emory Center for Ethics
The indictment of former President Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants on multiple charges in Fulton County has started a conversation at the Emory University Center for Ethics. Professor Edward Queen and his students are discussing the ethical issues at stake regarding the 2020 election interference case.
“It’s exceedingly disturbing,” Queen said following the release of Trump’s mugshot. “To see the political process have become engulfed in bad behavior. Everything from attempts to pretend that the system didn’t work to seemingly a president who encouraged an insurrection.”
Queen said the positive is that the legal system seems to be willing and able to bring everyone, no matter who they are, to accountability.
But he said there is some confusion among his students.
“What does this matter? What are the consequences? What are the implications for such a situation like this, and how do we even talk about it? Those are the questions going through people’s minds right now,” Queen said.
He added that his classroom discussion falls into four categories: Truth and objective reality. Commitment to the democratic process. Social trust. The value and values of democracy.
“I think one of the biggest assaults we’ve seen in popular culture over the past decade or so, and clearly in the previous administration with the president and others, is this idea that truth and reality are whatever you want to pretend it is, whatever you claim, and this is bothersome,” said Queen.
The professor said this can lead down a dangerous path of denying history’s atrocities and dyer issues in the present.