Do Leaders Have Moral Obligations?

During the last couple of weeks the media has covered a story from Penn State regarding a coach who has been accused of sexually abusing a number of boys over many years.

We will discuss this event in class using the following resources:

• Do Leaders Have Moral Obligations?
• Penn State Scandal: Timeline of sex abuse scandal that has rocked Happy Valley
• A blog from Omelas State University that I will share in PRINT ONLY. The language is too strong to share so I had to clean it up, but it is a very well-written perspective.
  

Once we discuss this in class your job is to write a response to the following questions which have been taken from the NY Times post:

• Tell us how far you think responsibility extends for leaders like Joe Paterno.
  
• Do they generally have a moral obligation to take action in cases that do not necessarily fall under their specific authority? Or is that too high a standard?
  
• Is it enough to have major achievements and a great deal of respect?
  
• Or does leadership carry with it higher responsibilities?