John B. Bennett
University Scholar and Provost Emeritus
Quinnipiac University
From time to time, scandals involving dishonest faculty practices
generate some public discussion about the ethics of academe. A recent
example is Joseph Ellis, the history professor disclosed to have
fabricated a personal past respecting his involvement in Vietnam,
civil-rights and peace movements (Gorn 2001). Often, as in this case,
the discussion is short-lived and things soon return to normal?though
one hopes that a greater appreciation of the centrality of integrity
was gained. Even less attention is commonly paid to the ethics of
institutional leadership. Yet, the latter is no less important and it
often sets the context for individual faculty ethics.
In questionable behaviors of faculty and institutions alike, faulty
world views are often involved. Tacit world views and unexamined
presuppositions play large roles in the things we take for granted and
the behaviors we consider natural. Without critically examining them,
we can be led astray without realizing it. For that reason,
philosophical reflection and analysis should play a central role in
leadership activities?indeed, in all of academe.
For instance, a powerful Western world view elevates individuality and
separateness at the expense of relationality and connection. Influenced
by our culture, we often think in atomistic terms?that is, we think
that things can be viewed in substantial separation from each other,
without undue expense or loss of integrity. Atomistic world views and
presuppositions view things and practices as relatively
self-contained?as being what they are independent of their relationship
to other things or to an enveloping and supportive context. Reality is
seen as fragmented, composed of discrete, independent, and relatively
self-sufficient units, related to each other only externally. Our
behaviors often reflect and extend this kind of thinking. Universities
are a case in point. It is a commonplace that universities are
fragmented, whole fields of learning that lack both integration and
connection with other fields, and faculty are often isolated from each
other and their students. This is often lamented as a cognitive
expense?the concern is that we may be missing important information
that comes only from having a broader point of view. That there is also
an ethical expense to these atomistic assumptions is less often
observed. Yet, institutions teach ethics by their behaviors as much as
by their statements of purpose and by what goes on in the classroom.
And when these behaviors are driven by atomistic assumptions, the stage
is set for unfortunate consequences.
Atomism highlights a concept of power as control. Driven by controlling
or unilateral power, individuals and institutions seek to implement
their own agenda, and to block the conflicting or opposing agendas of
others.[2]
Faculty and administrative politics are often exercises in unilateral
power. Perhaps the most prevalent use of power in colleges and
universities today, unilateral power is radically (and ironically)
truncated. It omits the most important educational dimension of
power?the opportunity and ability to be influenced by others. These
others include the ideas, the ideals, the cultures, the systems of
thought and human expression presented in the classes, the texts, and,
above all, the conversations that constitute the experience of higher
education. To be educated is to allow oneself to be influenced by this
multiplicity of others, to evaluate and adjust their internal
relationships, and to learn how and when to apply them personally and
publicly.
Michael Oakeshott presents this understanding of education in his
argument that the sole authentic activity of the college is fostering
and conducting ?conversation?, and that the key activity of higher
education teaching and learning is assisting students to engage in
conversation with what he called the various voices, idioms, or modes
of self-understanding that constitute our civilization and our
inheritance. These voices represent the achievements of our
predecessors in science, literature, art, philosophy, history, and so
forth. They constitute our culture, indeed our civilization. Our very
humanity consists in our learning how to possess, and then to dwell in,
this inheritance. It constitutes a mirror by which we can recognize and
acknowledge who we are. The importance of education as conversation is
given wonderful expression in his collection of essays in
The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education (Fuller 1989). Other relevant essays by Oakeshott are to be found in
Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Oakeshott 1991).
But atomism remains dominant?as do the ethical separations it
generates. For instance, academics often separate teaching from
research. The implication seems to be that these are unrelated
activities so far as educational integrity is involved. Thus, to
misrepresent facts in the classroom is one thing, but actually to put
them in print is another, far more serious, matter. Likewise, in the
case of colleges and universities, public statements about the
institution are often regarded as basically and properly malleable?to
be crafted to accommodate some external situation, rather than to be
reflective of the substance of the institution. How the institution
wishes to appear is separated from its reality.
Thus, some institutions ?massage? the data they report
publicly?providing popular guidebooks and ranking publications
information that is carefully tailored to present the most attractive,
rather than truthful, institutional face (Stecklow 1995). Or they
provide ?doctored? photographs in their recruitment and advertising
materials (Clegg 2000). Often these institutions also disguise their
increasing dependence upon adjunct or part-time faculty, continuing to
emphasize close faculty-student interaction?even though many of these
faculty have no offices in which to meet students, are not paid to be
on campus to do so, and are not engaged in the formulation or oversight
of the curriculum.
An unhealthy atomism is presupposed in this unbundling of faculty
functions. The construction of a course and the teaching of that course
are no longer seen as two sides of an interrelated activity. Rather,
atomism posits that at best these are loosely related activities with
no inherent connection. The traditional position that teaching requires
ongoing adjustments in the concepts and objectives of the course, and
vice versa, is abandoned?as is the position that both course
construction and teaching are enriched by relevant scholarship.
Unbundling occurs in distance delivery of education as well as in
traditional modes of instruction. In distance delivery it is often
associated with for-profit institutions, or with for-profit
subsidiaries within traditional not-for-profit institutions?as though
instruction and profit have no bearing on one another, or that there is
no inherent conflict between the two goals of profit for investors and
learning for students.
Many correctly argue that these kinds of public institutional
misrepresentations reflect poorly on the whole academy?on the minority
involved in the practices, as well as on the majority who are not. But
philosophical atomism abstracts from the relational nature of reality,
holding that each institution must look first to its own good. There is
no common good, except in some minimalist sense of an aggregation of
conflicting individual goods. There is no adequate self-regulation??No
institution is known to have suffered sanctions for falsely reporting
information to a guidebook or ranking source or for intentionally
fabricating data reported to the public? (Corts 1997, 7).
In its broadest sense, atomism creates a bizarre educational
philosophy. For surely education involves seeing, making, and
understanding connections. As conversation, education entails
interactions with others, not seriatim exchanges of unrelated
soliloquies. To argue that the institutional behaviors we have noted
are but small matters or somehow inevitable is to ignore how they
actually undercut the integrity of higher education?an integrity which
educational leadership should be pledged to support and advance. Yet
with atomistic presuppositions in place, the fragmentation and
compartmentalization of the college or university render it unable to
generate lasting reforms.
What to do? Having been actively involved in leadership development
activities for well over two decades, and having served in key faculty
and administrative leadership positions, I appreciate more than ever
the centrality of moral leadership in institutional representatives and
key leaders. Developing skills in institutional planning and finance,
conflict resolution, professional development, program review and
development, donor cultivation and board relationships, legal issues,
and so forth?these are important. But it is the uses to which these
skills are put that is central.
A number of corporations have been moving to create ethics officers who
report to the highest level of authority and play increasingly major
roles in setting and reviewing corporate policy?even though we now know
that accounting practices have often been kept to the side. Should
higher education create specific ethics offices? One might argue that
doing so sends a clear message that ethical behavior is a central
objective of the college or university and that abuses of the trust
with which society has invested educators are unacceptable. This could
only be helpful. But I fear that the opposite effect might result?that
an ethics office might be viewed as mere window-dressing or that
academics might consider the issue of ethics to have been addressed by
this office and thus no longer a central consideration for them. So I
do not think that concentrating oversight of an institution?s
commitment to truthfulness and educational integrity in one
specially-created office is the way to go (Bennett 2001a).
Rather, the better course of action is to renew our commitment to
education as conversation?to education as a conversation in which every
issue of merit is explored and all voices are heard.[3]
Such conversations are by their nature never concluded, and what was a
matter of an earlier consensus may well be reviewed and changed.
Without a fundamental commitment to open, hospitable conversations,
institutions of higher education seem little different from other
businesses. They may still be less efficient, but they will have lost
the very ground and purpose that would excuse their inefficiency. In
the final analysis, the moral professionalism of the academy depends
upon all of its members exercising self-regulation together. And
identifying the educational expenses and ethical corruption of atomism
is an essential part of this self-regulation.
Department chairpersons and deans are certainly in a good position to
promote the kind of open conversation that reviews the adequacy of
instruction; the fit among student, course, and societal need; the
welcome extended to the newcomer; the recognition of the contributions
and needs of individual faculty; the hospitality to the intellectually
new and different ideas that ought to characterize both teaching and
research, and so forth. Several recent publications have called
attention to these and other roles that chairpersons and deans play and
the challenges and opportunities before them (Bennett 1998, Hecht 1999,
Leaming 1998, Lucas 1994). Chairpersons and deans are key players in
the institution and their contributions are essential to educational
success.
But institutional executives may be in the best location to assure that
these kinds of conversations are a regular part of the institution?s
life. Presidents in particular have an obligation to set a high moral
tone for the institution. Others will rise or fall to the expectations
the chief executive sets?either by precept and code or (more likely) by
his or her own example and behavior. However, everyone has a role in
this conversation and a voice that should be heard. To be sure, the
conversations are more difficult when it is the president or other
executive officers who have the least interest in them?and who in some
cases may be the prime agent of institutional untruth. In these
situations, governing bodies and accrediting agencies may be unwilling
to weigh in, but eventually the real truth will be known.
In the meantime, it is everyone?s responsibility to become a
philosopher?to reflect on the presuppositions and implications of his
or her behavior. Atomism is a false and pernicious philosophy when
taken as more than a temporary mechanism whereby a discrete issue might
be clarified. It encourages and justifies unhelpful borders that
separate us and fragment our educational work. It generates controlling
rather than relational power. It reinforces self-promotion and
self-protection rather than commitment to the larger common good. It
undercuts the collaboration and cooperation necessary to the discovery,
validation, transmission, and extension of the truth we seek. It is
profoundly harmful. But it is not the final or even the primary state
of affairs. What is primary and ultimate is the relationality of the
world?the connectivity that undergirds our efforts to understand and to
help others do so as well. This is what leadership must emphasize.
For years academics have studied the ethical practices and shortcomings
of other professions. Scholars have analyzed the ethics of business,
health care, journalism, and law. In neglecting the integrity of our
own affairs, we have been unfaithful to our fundamental educational
purposes. Surely these purposes bear on the primary obligations we have
to society and our students to support the common good and to advance
the welfare of the learner?not the convenience of the faculty, the
luster or pay of the executive, benefits to for-profit investors, or
the comparative reputation of the institution.
REFERENCES
Bennett, John B.
Collegial Professionalism: The Academy, Individualism, and the Common Good. Phoenix, Arizona: American Council on Education and Oryx Press, 1988.
__________. ?Do Colleges and Universities Need Ethics Officers??
Academic Leadership, I/1 (Winter 2001a).
__________. ?Liberal Learning as Conversation.?
Liberal Education, 87/2 (Spring 2001b), 32-39.
Clegg, Roger. ?Photographs and Fraud over Race.?
The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 24, 2000), B 17.
Corts, Thomas E. ?Let?s stop trivializing the truth.?
Trusteeship (January/February, 1997), 6-10.
Fuller, Timothy, Ed.
The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989.
Gorn, Elliott J. ?Why Are Academics Ducking the Ellis Case??
The Chronicle of Higher
Education (July 20, 2001), B 14.
Hecht, Irene W. D., Higgerson, Mary Lou, Gmelch, Walter H., and Tucker, Allan.
The
Department Chair as Academic Leader. Phoenix, Arizona: American Council on Education and Oryx Press, 1999.
Leaming, Deryl.
Academic Leadership: A Practical Guide to Chairing the Academic
Department. Bolton, MA: Anker Press, 1998
Loomer, Bernard. ?Two Kinds of Power.?
Process Studies, 6/1 (Spring, 1976), 5-32.
Lucas, Ann F.
Strengthening Departmental Leadership: A Team-Building Guide for Chairs in Colleges and Universities. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Oakeshott, Michael.
Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991.
Stecklow, Steve. ?Cheat Sheets: Colleges Inflate SATs and Graduation Rates in Popular
Guidebooks.?
The Wall Street Journal, CCXXV/66 (April 5, 1995), A1, 8.
ENDNOTES
