Making Good Understood
We convene a multidisciplinary community to develop compelling responses to the most pressing ethical issues of our era.
DELTA
Born out of hundreds of conversations and focus groups with theologians, technologists, faith leaders, students, educators, and parents, DELTA brings the deep tradition of Christian virtue ethics into direct conversation with industry leaders and the global public. We provide spaces for real, honest, and sometimes messy conversations about who we are becoming in this time of technological disruption.
The Love Ethic
The Love Ethic is a way of being. Everyone is worthy of love, because every human has dignity. Love is the foundation of our moral and social lives. We are thus called to love our neighbors, strangers and even our enemies – everyone.
Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab
Promoting broad-based, far-reaching interdisciplinary research, thought, and policy leadership in artificial intelligence and other technology ethics by engaging with relevant stakeholders to examine real-world challenges and provide practical models and applied solutions for ethical technology design, development, and deployment.
Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Center for Virtue Ethics
Supporting preeminent scholars whose research advances human flourishing in both moral and spiritual contexts, facilitating the development of undergraduate courses exploring topics such as justice and the common good, and deepening the ethical formation of Notre Dame students and faculty.
This changing world will confront humankind with enormous new moral problems of unprecedented proportion and consequences … it will take a very special kind of university to direct change in such a way that humans do not destroy themselves and their world … It is this kind of institution that Notre Dame aspires to be.
—Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.
Notre Dame is one of the most trusted universities in the United States. No institution is better positioned to foster reasoned, constructive conversations rooted in the Catholic ideals of respect for human dignity and the unity of knowledge, and guided by the rational ideals of adherence to evidence and consistency in argumentation. And no institution is better positioned to develop students who approach the world with openness, with curiosity, with compassion, and with moral courage.
—Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C.
Virtue ethics tells us that the moral life is not simply about discrete actions properly performed, nor about achieving laudable results in the world, but about becoming a certain kind of person.
—Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
News
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Media Mentions
More Media Mentions-
Professor shares insights on ND and the church’s role in conversations of AI and dignity
October 28, 2026
Meghan Sullivan, a philosophy professor and director of the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, is one of three laypeople who were appointed to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Task Force on Preserving Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.
In an interview with The Observer, Sullivan explained this task force is a byproduct of Pope Leo XIV’s first papal encyclical published earlier this year titled “Magnifica humanitas.”
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Associated Press
To make AI morally good, tech companies turn to religion. Some say it's not so simple
October 25, 2026
That’s not to say these meetings have lacked diverse representation. Nor does it suggest that their engagement with religion hasn’t been thoughtful from the perspective of those in attendance, like Meghan Sullivan, a philosopher of religion who leads an initiative on ethics and AI at the University of Notre Dame.