October 8, 2007; Page A19
It should not be surprising that our universities generate
interesting and urgent ethical challenges. After all, higher education is a big
business. Scholarship is a demanding discipline. Teaching is a noble
undertaking fraught with weighty responsibilities. And liberal education plays
a crucial role in the formation of free citizens.
What may surprise is that, at the programs and centers devoted
to the study of ethics and the professions that have been established over the
last two decades at our leading universities, one profession whose ethical
issues the professors generally ignore is their own.
The return to campus this fall brings sharp reminders of the
confusion about their purpose that plagues our campuses, and so underscores the
need for serious study of university ethics. In the recently published and
already critically acclaimed book "Until Proven Innocent," K.C.
Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. show how the Duke University faculty and
administration collaborated with a reckless press and a lawless prosecutor in
the rush to convict in the court of public opinion -- and, but for the superb
work of their attorneys, in the criminal courts of Durham, N.C. -- three white
lacrosse players falsely accused of raping an African-American stripper.
On Sept. 28, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,
"Indoctrinate U," Evan Coyne Maloney's riveting documentary about the
war on free speech and individual rights waged by university faculty and
administrations enjoyed its Washington premiere. Also, in September, for
crystal clear political reasons, following a faculty petition circulated mostly
by women from the University of California, Davis, the UC Board of Regents
withdrew a speaking invitation to former Secretary of the Treasury and former
Harvard President Lawrence Summers.
But don't expect the leading ethics centers -- Harvard's Edmond
J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Princeton's Program on Ethics and Public
Affairs, or Yale's Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics -- to sponsor
lectures, fund graduate student and faculty fellowships, or publish writings
that examine these and numerous other ethical questions that stem from
contemporary university life. While lavishing attention on legal, political and
medical ethics, and to a lesser extent business ethics and journalism ethics --
worthy areas of inquiry all -- our leading university ethicists have shown
scant interest in exploring university ethics.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary last spring, the Harvard
University Program on Ethics and the Professions is among the nation's oldest
and most distinguished. Yet of the more than 130 public lectures by eminent
visitors sponsored over the last two decades by the Harvard ethics program,
only three deal with the university -- one defending affirmative action, one
defending the propriety of academics engaging in public debate and one
defending academic freedom. The program's Web site lists more than 875
publications by over 120 ethics fellows and senior scholars. Hundreds of the
writings deal with law and politics and ethics. Hundreds explore medicine and
ethics. Dozens discuss business ethics. But only about 10 of the 875
publications, and five of the 120 authors, address university ethics.
Take away a few defenses of affirmative action and
multiculturalism, and a few reflections on teaching ethics at the university,
and little is left. All in all, after 20 years of generously funding research
in practical or applied ethics, Harvard's program has made no discernible
contribution to illuminating the challenges of university governance, and the
variety of duties and conflicts confronted in their professional roles by
professors and administrators.
Much the same holds true of the Yale Program in Ethics,
Politics, and Economics and the Princeton University Center for Human Values.
What explains the neglect by our leading university ethics
programs of a vital topic that so plainly falls under their purview? The major
cause is probably routine thoughtlessness: Surrounded by like-minded souls and
therefore protected from questions that might rock the boat, and from research
projects that might call for scholarly retooling, it may never occur to many
ethics professors that, no less than law, medicine, business and journalism,
their profession too is worthy of systematic scrutiny.
One cannot rule out that a few ethics faculty may have convinced
themselves that professors and administrators, because of their peculiar
virtue, already confront and wisely dispose of all the moral dilemmas and
professional conflicts of interest that come before them. It would not be the
first time that intellectuals, so aggressive in finding false-consciousness and
self-interest in others, concealed or overlooked their own.
Nevertheless, if they are impelled or compelled to overcome
disciplinary inertia and intellectual orthodoxy and turn their attention to
their own profession, professional ethicists will discover a trove of
fascinating and timely questions. Here are a few:
Is it proper for university disciplinary boards, often composed
of faculty and administrators with no special knowledge of the law, to
investigate student accusations of sexual assault by fellow students, which
involve crimes for which perpetrators can go to jail for decades?
Should universities have one set of rules and punishments for
students who plagiarize or pay others to write their term papers, and another
-- and lesser -- set for professors who plagiarize or pay others to write their
articles and books, or should students and faculty be held to the same tough
standards of intellectual integrity?
How can universities respect both professors' academic freedom
and students' right to be instructed in the diversity of opinions?
What is the proper balance in hiring, promotion, and tenure
decisions between the need for transparency and accountability and the need for
confidentiality?
What institutional arrangements give university trustees
adequate independence from the administrators they review?
Is it consistent with their mission for university presses to
publish books whose facts and footnotes they do not check?
In accordance with what principles may a university bar ROTC
from campus because of the military's "don't ask, don't tell policy"
concerning homosexuals, while inviting to campus a foreign leader whose country
not only punishes private consensual homosexual sex but is the world's leading
state sponsor of terrorism, and who himself denies the Holocaust and threatens
to obliterate the sovereign state of Israel?
By exploring these and myriad other issues, our ethics programs
would do more than fulfill their mandate. They would also vindicate liberal
education by demonstrating the premium academicians place on ensuring that
their own practice conforms to the proper principles.
Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's
Hoover Institution and a professor at George Mason University School of Law.