Giving Compass' Take:

• The Atlantic profiles a Princeton University course taught by Australian professor of bioethics Peter Singer on "practical ethics." Students are asked to ponder questions related to animal rights, abortion and effective altruism.

• Singer's name should be familiar to many people in the nonprofit sector familiar with the effective altruism movement (and he's not without detractors), but it's also worth asking from a philanthropic perspective: Can we train the next generation to be more generous? It's certainly worth a try.

• If you want more background on Singer's beliefs, be sure to check out this article.

Imagine walking along a road past a pond, when out of the corner of your eye you see a toddler boy flailing about in the water. You quickly look around. There is no other adult in sight. If you don’t jump in to save him, no one else will. He will drown. You know what you have to do. You dive right in and drag the drowning toddler from the water.

But what if that little child were drowning — proverbially — half a world away? What would you do to save him then?

This is one of many questions Peter Singer, an Australian professor of bioethics at Princeton University, asks undergraduates during his popular semester-long course on practical ethics. The lecture course covers euthanasia, animal rights, infanticide and abortion, effective altruism, and other weighty topics.

Singer is one of the world’s most controversial philosophers. He supports a parent’s right to end the life of a severely disabled infant and argues that animal and human suffering are on an exactly equal moral level; his views have inspired both fervent admiration and fierce denunciation. Shortly after Singer first arrived at Princeton in September 1999, billionaire publisher Steve Forbes told Princeton’s trustees that he would stop giving money to the university until Singer left. The trustees refused to rescind the appointment. Still, Singer has been what the New York Times once called a “public relations nightmare” for his employer. Nevertheless, over the decade since Singer first arrived at the university, his Practical Ethics course has become famous on campus, enrolling nearly 400 students this past semester.

Read the full article about Princeton's practical ethics course by Christine Gross-Loh at The Atlantic.