ETHICS AND THE UNIVERSITY

Michael Davis

Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions

Illinois Institute of Technology

Chicago, IL 60616-3793
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Table of Contents

PREFACE

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1. The Ethics Boom, Philosophy, and the University
2. Academic Freedom, Academic Ethics, and Professorial Ethics

PART TWO: RESEARCH ETHICS

3. The New World of Research Ethics: A Preliminary Map
4. After Such Knowledge, What Responsibility?
5. University Research and the Wages of Commerce
6. Of Babbage and Kings: A Study of a Plagiarism Complaint

PART THREE: TEACHING ETHICS

7. Ethics Across the Curriculum
8. Case Method
9. A Moral Problem in the Teaching of Practical Ethics
10. Sex and the University

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX
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PREFACE

This book brings together two closely related topics, the

practice of ethics in the university ("academic ethics") and the
teaching of practical (or applied) ethics in the university. The
topics are related in at least three ways. First, historically:
discussion of academic ethics seems to belong to a wider "ethics
boom" in teaching professional ethics, social ethics, and
business ethics. Second, substantively: some fields of
professional (or institutional) ethics, especially the ethics of
scientific research, overlap substantially with academic ethics.
Because about half of all scientists employed in research are
employed by universities, many questions of research ethics are
questions of academic ethics as well. Third: causally: teaching
professional ethics, social ethics, or business ethics can itself
generate questions of academic ethics (or, at least, of
"professorial ethics"). For example, if teaching medical ethics
is a kind of inculcation of proper values, how can an academic
committed to freeing the mind of mere inculcation ethically teach
medical ethics? Ethics and the University works at the
intersection of these historical, substantive, and causal
relations. Its purpose is both to clarify the field and extend
discussion on certain central topics.
Part One provides a high-altitude survey of the field,
marking distinctions important throughout the book. Chapter 1,
"The Ethics Boom, Philosophy, and the University", offers an
explanation of the emergence of practical ethics as a university
subject, putting that subject into a wider social and historical
context. This chapter distinguishes several senses of ethics and
explains the sense in which the ethics boom is new, generating
new problems for the university that wishes to make room for it.
Academic ethics is a special topic within the complex of topics
now identifiable as "the ethics boom".
Chapter 2 considers the relation between academic freedom,
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academic ethics, and "professorial ethics". Academic ethics is a
form of institutional ethics (just as business ethics or research
ethics is); professorial ethics is a form of professional ethics.
Neither of these is congruent with academic freedom which is
mostly about the rights of academics (professors and students),
not about their obligations (except insofar as the rights carry
obligations).
Part Two, chapters 3-6, focuses on research ethics. Chapter
3 offers a survey of the field, both historical and topical. Why
now? Why these topics? Chapter 4 considers the possibility of
deriving special standards for researchers entirely from
consideration of the purpose, function, or status of "science" or
"scientific research". It concludes that such an attempt will
fail. What is required are conventions, whether specific to a
particular field of research or discipline or covering scientific
research generally. A code of ethics is not a discovery but an
invention. Chapter 5 considers a specific set of problems posed
by the increasingly close relationship between business and
university research. What standards should be imposed on that
relationship? Why? Chapter 6 considers in depth a case, a
plagiarism complaint, in which academic ethics seems to need both
new standards and new procedures.
Having thus defined the field of practical ethics, we are
ready for Part Three, chapters 7-10, the subject of which is
teaching practical ethics. Chapter 7 describes a program to
integrate professional (and institutional) ethics into a wide
range of courses across the university, everything from first
year-calculus to senior design or research projects. Since "the
case method" plays a large part in this program -- and, indeed,
is now the preferred method of teaching professional ethics --
Chapter 8 attempts to explain what the case method is, ending up
not with one method but several. Chapter 8 also illustrates
important differences between methods and provides considerable
advice on how to develop and use cases. Chapter 9 considers a
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problem of professorial ethics that teaching practical ethics
seems to generate. Teaching ethics changes teaching -- or at
least brings out parts of teaching we tend to forget. Chapter 9
suggests how much remains to be done to clarify the ethical
presuppositions of university teaching in particular -- and
academic ethics in general. Chapter 10 argues against one
approach to a certain range of questions now hotly contested.
Trying to think of questions of "sexual ethics" as closely
related is likely to make them harder, not easier, to resolve.
Few books owe no debts, but this one owes more than the
usual. Many are paid in individual endnotes. Three, I think,
deserve a global acknowledgement. This book began as a series of
invited talks, with my host assigning the topic, or with some
other form of external stimulus, for example, being asked to
write a grant proposal on a certain topic. But for those external
stimuli, I would, I think, have devoted my time to other topics,
missing the opportunity to explore a field both rewarding in
itself and of practical importance to my own profession. So, one
global debt I want to acknowledge is to all those people, both at
IIT's Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions and
outside, who at one time or another wanted to know what I thought
about ethics and the university.
A second debt is to the Ethics Center's staff: to the
present librarian (and information specialist), Jing Li, for
helping to check, complete, and correct my citations; and to our
secretary, Rebecca Slaughter (until recently Newton), and her
student helpers, for getting the early papers back on computer.
Technical help, though easily forgotten, made the difference
between completing this work on time -- and perhaps not
completing it at all.
The third global debt is to my family: my lawyer wife for
helping to assure the financial security that allowed me to
write, my son for tolerating a father who thinks looking at words
on a computer screen is fun, and my loyal dog for sleeping at my
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feet on cold mornings as I followed arguments where they led.
Though each of the first nine chapters has been published in
one form or another before, none has been published in the form
it has here. I have tried to update text whenever appropriate, to
improve arguments when I saw a way of doing so, and to make
explicit connections between chapters wherever that seemed
appropriate. Nevertheless, I think it appropriate to acknowledge
places of prior publication. Chapter 1 (under the title "The
Ethics Boom: What and Why") first appeared in The Centennial
Review (Spring 1990), vol. 34, pp. 163-85; chapter 2 (under the
title "Wild Professors and Sensitive Students: A Preface to
Academic Ethics"), Social Theory and Practice (Summer 1992), vol.
18, pp. 117-41; chapter 3, International Journal of Applied
Philosophy (Spring 1990), vol. 5, pp. 1-10; chapter 4,
Professional Ethics (Spring 1995), vol. 4, pp. 49-74; chapter 5,
Journal of College and University Law (Summer 1991), vol. 18, pp.
29-38; chapter 6, Accountability in Research (Spring 1993), vol.
2, pp. 273-86; chapter 7, Teaching Philosophy (September 1993),
vol. 16, pp. 205-35; chapter 8 (under the title "Developing and
Using Cases to Teach Practical Ethics"), Teaching Philosophy
(December 1997), vol. 20, pp. 353-85; and chapter 9 (under the
title "On Teaching Cloistered Virtue: The Ethics of Teaching
Students to Avoid Moral Risk"), in Teaching Philosophy (September
1991), vol. 14, pp. 259-76.