Wittenberg University

David Callahan, Author Of Groundbreaking Book,
The Cheating Culture, To Speak at Wittenberg

David Callahan

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio – The Wittenberg University community has a long-standing commitment to moral and ethical standards, a commitment to which David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, can relate. Sponsored by several Wittenberg academic and student groups, Callahan will speak at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, in Bayley Auditorium at the Barbara Deer Kuss Science Center on campus. He will discuss why he believes more Americans are breaking the rules to get ahead and provide a provocative analysis of the decline of ethics in America.

In The Cheating Culture, Callahan provides examples of ethical breaches that have become commonplace in America and includes instances of classroom cheating, greed and investor betrayal on Wall Street, student-athletes who receive unlawful compensation, professional athletes who take steroids, tax evaders and plagiarists. In fact, his examples leave virtually no element of American society untouched by what he refers to as “the nation’s current moral crisis.”

Callahan has written that, “Temptations to cheat have increased as safeguards against wrongdoing have grown weaker.” He adds that watchdog groups have been asleep on the job.

Callahan compares the “Winning Class,” whom he believes “live in a moral community of their own making governed by different rules,” and the middle-class, who adopt “trickle-down corruption” when they think the system is stacked against them.

“It should come as no surprise that more people are leveling the playing field however they see fit,” he writes.

In the book, Callahan discusses several steps he believes will halt the erosion of American morality, including a “sustained assault on entrenched cheating in different institutions” and “a new commitment to teaching future generations of Americans to be more ethical.”

The author of six books, Callahan has been featured on the CBS Early Show, Fox and Friends, Lou Dobbs Tonight and C-SPAN’s Book TV. He has contributed articles to The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today, and he is a regular radio commentator for Marketplace. He received his B.A. at Hampshire College and his Ph.D. in politics at Princeton University. In 1999, he co-founded Demos, a New York-based think tank, where he currently serves as a senior fellow. Prior to co-founding Demos, Callahan was a fellow at the Century Foundation from 1994 to 1999, where he engaged in wide-ranging public policy research and analysis.

Sponsored by Student Senate, the Academic Honor Council, Concerned Black Students, Office of Student Development, Multicultural Student Programs, the Womyn’s Center, and the athletics and sociology departments, Callahan’s presentation is free and open to the public.

- Phyllis Eberts

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