[MUSIC PLAYING]
Thank you, Jim,
for coming to talk
about your new book,
University Ethics:
How Colleges Can
Build and Benefit
From a Culture of Ethics.
What led you to the
writing of this book?
I kept looking at a variety
of instances on campus--
not on BC's campus, but on
campuses across the country.
And I kept noticing
that there was
a variety of scandals going on.
There was Penn State.
There were questions of sexual
abuse that had happened.
There were cases of sexual
assault of students on campus.
There were issues of whether
athletes were fairly treated,
and were athletes actually
getting an education.
There was a question
about the adjunct faculty
and whether they were
being rightly treated,
and the answer is not well
in many, many instances.
I began to think about
how tuition is not
really sustainable, not at
the increases that we have.
I began to ask other questions
about race, about class.
Most people don't talk about
the class differentiations
on a campus.
And many, many students who are
coming from the working class,
they have a very hard time
on many American campuses.
I started thinking about hazing.
And I saw these
things, and I said,
they're all happening
in one place.
Is that an issue?
And I wanted to ask this big
question: is this incidental
or not that it's
happening at a university?
And once I bought
into the possibility
that the university
setting was constitutive
of all these instances, these
scandals that were happening,
I began to talk to
colleagues of mine and say,
I really think that
there's something going on.
I talked to Ken [? Hymes, ?] and
John Paris, David Hollenbach.
And they began to pull
out clippings for me
from newspapers and say, see,
your hunch is really right.
So I started to give
talks, lectures on this.
I spoke at the Society
of Christian Ethics.
I wrote an article in Louvain
Studies over in Belgium.
And I found people resonating
with what I was doing.
And then I started thinking
of my own experience
as a priest living in Boston
during the sex abuse scandal.
And I had been a strong
critic of the way leadership
in the church was handling the
entire sexual abuse scandal.
And my criticism then--
and I had done
some work on this.
My criticism then was that
the question of ethics,
and I'm not simply talking
about the predatory priest,
but the question of ethics,
professional ethics,
being priests being trained,
seminarians being trained.
And I kept commenting,
I don't think
there's been much training
about professional ethics
of the clergy and of
administrators in the church.
And I began to see a corollary
that my experience of scandals
in the church were
becoming very familiar
and like the scandals that I
was seeing in the university.
And they're both the teaching
institutions of ethics.
You find out morals
from the church.
You find out you
have all your ethics
courses at the University.
They are the two main
teachers of ethics.
And just as I had
wondered about the Church,
whether they did any training
of their personnel in ethics,
I began to see that,
as a matter of fact,
there was a disinterest at
the university on university
ethics.
And in fact, there's never
been a book even on the topic,
even though there are hundreds
and hundreds of books on ethics
taught at university for
lawyers, and doctors,
and for nurses, and
for people in all sorts
of different professions.
In other words, the university
is teaching all these courses
on ethics, but they
don't have any coursework
at all at any university on
what it means to be a university
professional.
And so with that premise
I started digging
in to a series of about seven
different topics to go further
and to talk about what
is wrong with this issue.
Whether it's about
athletes, whether it's
about adjunct faculty, whether
it's about race, whether it's
about sexual
assault, whether it's
about students behaving badly.
And then say, are
these connected?
And so the book was
to connect the dots.
To say, it's not about
sexual assault on campus.
It's not about the unfair
treatment of athletes,
or the unfair treatment
at the adjuncts.
It's actually about
an entire culture
that is not existing there.
There is no real culture
that promotes ethics
at a university.
There's a culture
for teaching ethics
in the other professions,
but there's nothing
of a culture for ethics.
So I wanted to do a book
that would make the case
to say that the university
has to make a commitment
to say that they're developing
a culture of ethics.
Before they try to put in
some sort of set of norms
to make it compliant
on some random cases,
the question is really about
the underlying culture,
and is there any real
interest in accountability,
transparency a sense
of building community
that's based upon right acting.
Could you say something
about the process
needed for establishing
a university ethics?
It's funny, I'm
talking next week
with this person
from Penn State.
I wrote an article for
Time Magazine on my book
and I got all sorts
of different mail
from people about the book.
And this one fellow
has just been hired.
Penn State, after the
firing of their president,
and the coach, and all the other
things surrounding Sandusky,
they ended up creating an office
for ethics and compliance.
And he wrote to me to
say that, as a matter
of fact, what he's trying to
do is develop an underlying
culture before he
figures out what
the norms should be or conduct.
Because until you have
some sort of culture
that's actually
interested in ethics,
until it needs first, more
than anything, an awareness
that there's a need for this.
And I'm trying to
make the case--
I think people have to
actually see my book,
or see something
like it, or read
an article that I've written, or
that something else has written
about it.
Until this premise that
the university doesn't
have any interest in
a culture of ethics,
until that's appreciated, there
won't be an interest in it.
Because we've been marching
on for nearly 300 years
without any real desire to
develop a culture of ethics.
So, the first thing
would be an awareness.
There has to be some
sort of consciousness
raising about the lack of
commitment, or lack of interest
in accountability
or transparency,
these ethical
standards by which we
say a community has the
possibility of flourishing
as a community.
At the end of my
book I have this--
they prompted me to
do something about,
if I were president of a
university what would I do.
And I found that
at Brown University
where the president there had
set up a committee to look
at their history of slavery.
I found that that was
really rather extraordinary.
Because I followed a lot
about that committee.
When the president put
that together at Brown,
she really made it a significant
event in Brown's university's
history.
And I think if
somebody really wants
to launch a question about
developing a culture,
it needs to have a
convocation of significance.
In which it tells
everyone on the university
that there will
be, in my case what
I suggest is a
committee being formed
that represents constituencies
across the university.
This would be from all
sorts of food service,
and dormitory service,
and police service,
to athletes, to students,
to faculty, both adjunct
and tenure, and tenure track,
as well as administrators,
and board of trustees members.
And that this
cross-section of persons
on a manageable
committee would have
to begin to look to see
what is it on their campus
that they, by having their
eyes opened to the fact
that there's lack of a
culture of ethics, what can
they name as
distinctively problematic
at their particular campus.
For instance, people say that
where there's a strong Title IX
program in sports
at a campus, there's
a tendency to see
that there's fewer
incidents of sexual
assault. In part,
because women have a place
on the campus where they can
gather together so that
there's a new way of relating
with one another and a
new way of empowerment.
I don't know how true that is,
but people could ask, well,
what is the climate on
sexuality, sexual assault,
gender differences on a campus?
And then they
could look at that.
Or, they could look at what
is the status of their adjunct
or faculty?
Whether they're under some sort
of more permanent contract,
like the professors
of the practice,
or whether they're just these
individual, momentary contracts
that endure for just a semester,
and what do they entail?
So, the first would be,
after their eyes are open,
could a committee actually
begin to look hard
at their university to see
where are the lacunae in ethics.
Where are their
demonstrable holes?
And this is not to
ferret out people
that ought to be punished
or anything like that.
This is to just find
where are the weaknesses.
But also, then to do,
where are the strengths?
I point out in my
book that I do think
that the first place of ethics
on a campus, in many instances,
has been these women
groups, especially the
take back the night movement.
Because that take back
the night movement
is really the first time that
we see a concerted effort
at universities
across the country
to address this issue on
sexual assault and harassment.
And that brought an awareness
to faculty and students,
particularly women,
but also men.
And I think that they should
be asking themselves, well,
where do we find strength?
Do we find that we're doing--
do we have some good
practices that are going on
with our adjunct faculty?
Do we have good practices
going on with athletes?
You know, there are
some universities--
some very fine
universities like our own
that has a very good
track record with athletes
and making sure that they
get a full education,
that they are
supported, and that we
take that seriously that
they are students and not
just people who are performing
for us or anything like that.
So I would like them to look
at what are the good practices
as well as what are the
lacunae that they're having.
And then they
begin to say, well,
how could they organically
develop an awareness
across the campus for this?
In the book I keep
saying that one
of the great problems
of the university
is the geography
of the university.
I call it the geography
of the university
because the university
is a medieval structure.
And the geography
at the university
is not like corporate America.
It really predates that.
And it's, what I call,
a set of fiefdoms.
But I'm not the first
to use that to describe
the campus itself.
So there's a certain way that
an academic faculty do not know
what student affairs is doing.
That's two enormous fiefdoms,
that the academic world
and the student affairs world
have domains in which there's
very little overlap.
And one has to ask, how much
of the life of the student
enters the classroom, and how
much of the student affairs
allows for the significance
of academic formation
as constitutive of the
overall student formation?
But there are other
instances that if you
were to ask a faculty member--
I always joke if you ask
a faculty member what does
Vanderslice mean, for instance.
I wonder how many would be
able to say, it's a dorm.
I think that our
world as faculty
is different from the
world of student affairs.
But I think that that
happens in administration,
and God knows there are more and
more people in administration
and that the burgeoning
staffs of the administrators
has been a concern about the
nature of the university.
Which only highlights,
again, my issue
that these are fiefdoms
that are going around
and there's no real
connection among them.
How with this committee
that I would propose
work to make more transparent
the workings, and task,
and make more familiar what
all the different fiefdoms are
doing.
How would we bring that
into the 21st century?
Because we haven't yet.
So, I talk about
that the university
structure itself impedes us
from developing this culture.
Until we acknowledge that
these separate entities
are functioning in pretty
semi-autonomous ways.
I only say semi-autonomous
because their accountability is
really structurally at the top.
The vice president or dean
of each of these units,
they meet with one another.
But anybody below them doesn't
meet with anybody outside
of their own entity.
There are attempts to build.
Like, for instance,
the difference
between one department
and another.
Whenever there's an attempt
at interdisciplinarity,
we see the hope of
greater transparency,
but until that happens
we're really not
able to get to this
step of saying, well,
how can we create that culture?
So the biggest
obstacle, I think,
is the infrastructure
of the university.
And the second and the
other, is that the nature
of the professoriate is
so highly individualistic.
I mean, it's
sensational right now
to see these core courses
going up where we see faculty
in one department
teaching with a faculty
member in another department.
This is, however, just
the very beginning.
I make a comment that
faculty, you know,
we're only required to do four,
or five hour office hours,
or six office hours a week.
But we can decide any time we
want for those office hours.
It's not based on, hey, you
know if the whole university had
office hours at the
same time, all students
would know we're there.
And we would all know
that one another is there.
I'm not saying that faculty
are not working the other 34
hours a week or
whatever, that there's
a presumption that they're
engaged in full time work.
But even the fact that we
set our own office hours,
I don't know who does that.
I also don't know of anybody,
any professional today who
does not work in a team.
Like, I'm the son of a cop,
my father had his partner.
The fire men and women, they
have their ladder company.
You cannot meet a doctor who's
a single standalone doctor.
He or she is part of a
group of fellow doctors.
Nurses work in teams.
Lawyers work in teams.
Everyone works in teams.
I have a good friend of mine.
He was the CEO of the New York
Stock Exchange, Marsh Carter.
And he taught here at CSOM
as a visiting professor
on a few occasions.
He's visited and lectured
here on occasion.
And he said, he cannot get
over at all the unique,
unique individual
workspace of the faculty.
This is a man who's
at the stock exchange.
He was also the CEO
of State Street,
in the financial market,
who taught ethics
by professors at a university
where they learned to have
to work with one another.
The formation of a faculty
member is so highly individual,
and then the subsequent
professional life
is in that same
individual framework,
that actually fits well in these
fiefdoms that I was mentioning.
So until we also look at
the professoriate as well
as the landscape of the
university, we have challenges.
Just one final note,
the professoriate,
in order to get there, you
have to do a dissertation.
I don't know of any
other profession
that is so unaccompanied.
Like, I direct lots
of dissertations.
I've directed more
than 30 dissertations.
I just had a dissertation
defense yesterday.
I really worked well
with my student, I think.
I think she thought as well.
It was a good defense,
everybody was happy you know.
But, you know, how much
time did I spend with her?
I mean, I read her work.
I sent her back to work.
I would sit down with
her on each chapter.
But that was about
an hour each chapter
that I actually sat with
her, that we were together.
And then I sent a note that
would go for, maybe, it took me
a while to read the
dissertation and to coax her
and stuff like that.
But it's not like
somebody who's working
with an advisor in so many other
fields of law, or medicine.
Where there's an actual
enduring relationship going on.
We are highly individualistic.
We teach people to be
ethical in their professions.
But I think we need to learn
from a lot of professions
how to be ethical in our own.
Students, of course,
are an essential segment
of the university.
What ethical problems
do they pose?
Well, we could solve at
this commodification.
Commodification comes with
a sense of entitlement.
I poured this.
I deserve this.
We see that students
will tend to think
that they want a grade
of a certain mark
rather than that they
earned it, or that this
is the way the grades fell out.
They seem to-- we do
see more of a sense
that students are fighting
over their grades.
And we do find instances of
their parents actually entering
into this realm as well.
What we do also see though
on US campuses in a way
that we haven't seen before,
is more racial incidents.
We see more and more
racially themed parties
that are going on.
If there are universities that
have any associations there
on campus, any groups
that are somewhat
autonomous from the
university, these clubs
have their own problems with a
lot of racially themed parties.
So we've been seeing more
and more of this really,
just out and out racist issues.
We also see on our
campus today a lot
of self-segregation going on.
But we have to
appreciate, again,
the Brown study on slavery.
How there are so many
predominantly white
universities that were
exclusively white before,
that the presence
of African-Americans
on our campuses and
not at Negro colleges
that had been established.
That their entry into the
American white university
has never been
adequately examined.
Happily, there are a
number of people who are
trying to look at that today.
There's a book called
Ebony and Ivy that
wants to look at
how many of the Ivy
schools were deeply
connected to slavery.
That's not about
African-Americans being
on our campus as students.
That was them and their
connection to slavery.
And then there is
this expectation
that suddenly our
universities were
going to no longer be racist.
Well, how do you undo
100 years of history
in which there was no intention
of having African-Americans
on your campus?
So, it's that blindness of
the American university.
My question about
ethics is similar to how
did we start having so-called
racial diversity on campus?
We just invited people
in and African-Americans
began to arrive.
But were they welcomed?
Were they given a role?
Was there any acknowledgment
that the university
had had policies that made it
impossible for them to enter?
Does the university
own up to the fact
that there are these racist
issues that went unaddressed,
but actually heeded
for all this time.
So, we have on our campuses
now a chill factor in which we
see Asians, and Asian-Americans,
Africans and African-Americans,
we can see a variety, we
can see the Hispanics.
And we see students fairly often
self-selecting segregation.
And I think that
occasionally student affairs
wants to address
that, but one wonders
whether the academic
persons are.
And what are they
doing to do this?
So I'd say that
one of the biggest
problems we have on our
campus today is about race.
And the other very big
problem is on sexual assault.
Sexual assault is deeply
connected to drinking,
and that's another whole issue.
I think we're fairly--
it's rather interesting
that we have decided--
it's like on drinking
in the United States
we've all become members
of the know-nothing party.
That nobody can have any
alcohol until they're 21.
Most people know that
students from 18 to 21
will drink at some
point or somehow,
but we don't want
to know about it.
Or if we do, we'll
give them sanctions.
We're talking about
introducing people
to a way of living,
which includes drinking.
But we do not do any
training on that.
Instead, we let we let 18
and 17-year-olds figure
out drinking on their own,
though we say, you can't do it.
But there's certainly
a way that this does
happen without any attention.
And yet, we all know about it.
In that setting is where a
lot of sexual assault happens.
Again, this is
about our innocence,
or about our blinders,
about what we want to see,
about getting out
of our framework
so that we can see what
really is going on.
I do think it's very
important to talk
about sexual assault in terms
of power dynamics and gender.
I think that that's
very important.
I think that's
primary importance.
But I do think on campuses
it's also a matter of drinking.
And until we really look
at that, not just a student
affairs, but the
entire university.
And then we begin
maybe a discussion
in this country
of whether or not
by having all these punitive
sanctions from 18 to 21,
or below 18 to 21, are
we getting anywhere?
Are we really
saving lives the way
we once thought we were doing by
putting the drinking age at 21?
Or are we actually going to have
an ethical discourse about how
young people should
learn how to drink?
And that may also
allow us to finally
say, how do we help young
people to understand what
sexual engagement is about?
There's a certain way
that that puritanism
of the university in its
original setting [INAUDIBLE]
today by our
belonging, if you will,
in a know-nothing attitude.
Not that the Puritans
were that way,
but the Puritan insistence
of liquor and certain forms
of behavior needing
to be excluded.
That maybe by that
silencing we're
really not getting anywhere.
And if faculty were
more familiar with what
is happening on campuses
the way that the police are,
we may be able to
talk to our students,
not only in their dorm room,
but in their classroom.
And we may also be able
to talk to one another
as faculty members,
whether we're adjunct,
or whether with tenure track,
or whether we're tenured,
or whether we're
professors of the practice.
We could talk with one another
about drinking on campuses.
Or about this extraordinary
problem of sexual assault.
I teach a course called
HIV/AIDS and Ethics.
It's a very popular course.
I've been teaching it for years.
But I always bring
things back to BC.
And like even
yesterday, they were
talking about how
married women in Africa
are at risk to HIV infection
because of the power
options of their husbands,
who may be migrating,
and may be truck drivers,
and may be involved in that.
I said to them, I said, you know
the issue of male domination
is not an African phenomenon.
It's a universal phenomenon.
And I think that as we start
talking about sexual assault
on campus, it will
get us to revisit
the question about gender
equity in our own ranks,
in the administration,
in boards of trustees,
in matters of governance.
I think we really
need to do something
about gender in our
own ranks if we're
going to be credible to
talk about sexual activities
among our students as well.
Having written the book and made
a case for university ethics,
what do you hope happens next?
Oh, great question.
So, I just did a proposal
for a paper at a conference,
and it's about best practices.
I'm interested in,
first, trying to proffer
where I think there's
best practices that
are being developed already.
So, I mentioned
for instance, how
Penn State has created an Office
of Ethics for the university.
I think that's a great first
step in the right direction.
Especially by looking at
the question of culture.
I think that what the
president of Brown University
did in forming the
slavery committee,
it was a model of
organization, and of trying
to develop a culture to
appreciate issues of race
on her campus.
I think that the
Obama administration
in their White paper
on sexual assault
and the treatment of
women on college campuses,
and their insistence
of making universities
accountable for reporting
on sexual assault.
And that any universities
whose status was questionable,
that that became a matter
of transparent record
was really a remarkable
step in the right direction.
I think that the New
Faculty Majority which
is run by Maria Maisto, which
is about adjunct faculty,
because she says the new faculty
majority are adjunct faculty.
I think that that
type of movement,
along with the Delta Project,
are good practices that
are taking us forward.
So I'm interested
and I'm talking
to other people who have
interests like my own
to find out what they
see as positive steps
in the right direction.
I would love more than anything
to speak to boards of trustees.
Like, I'm going to
Villanova to speak
to their board of trustees.
They're reading chapters
one on my argument
and chapter five on the
university geography
and the vocation
of the professor.
And I'll have an opportunity to
talk with them about my book.
I would love the opportunity,
probably at some point,
write an open letter
to the chairman
of the board of trustees of
universities to invite me,
or somebody like me to address
the question of university
ethics.
But that's what I'm
doing now is to make--
I've done the book.
Now it's to raise the
consciousness by using the book
and using other venues
like this in order
to say what should
be the next steps.
And I do think that there are
a lot of very good practices
that are developing.
But it's typical
at the university
that no one knows that
they are because they're
in a different
department and they
don't know what's happening
elsewhere in the university.
But the amount of
response that I
have received on the book,
the amount of interest,
the amount of excitement
that people have when they
read it saying, this is it.
This is what I've
always been wondering,
what's the matter
with the university?
Well, there's a number of
things, other things the matter
with the university.
But one is, it is not building
the community that it really
could be building.
And it's not doing
what it teaches.
Is there anything
about the book that we
haven't talked about that
you'd like to mention?
I think having
this insight helps
me to appreciate
colleagues who may not
know my argument or
my concern, but you
can tell who are the faculty,
who are the administrators, who
are the staff, who
are the students who
appreciate what I'm
basically arguing as a good.
I can tell people who
will suddenly say,
I really want to move forward.
I would say this, a couple of
months ago I, with the provost,
hosted a panel on
race here in January.
And it was a big
panel that was well
attended by about 400 or
500 people on the campus.
And I did find that a lot of
the professors of the practice
were there.
And I asked quite a
number, it may have just
been happenstance, but I asked
many of our junior faculty,
tenure track did they
know about it or go to it?
And I actually didn't
find more than a very few.
I think we need to ask, what
is the formation of our tenure
track faculty today in terms
of the so-called research
expectation and the
type of warnings
that they get that
they're to make sure
that their
publications are good.
I wonder how many--
I don't think BC is--
I mean, this is just an example.
But I do-- you know,
when you interview
people who are coming
for tenure track
they're really kind of
set on, they will teach,
they will publish.
But will they know
the university?
Will they work outside
that framework?
I think really
successful faculty do.
They start trying to learn
more and more about the rest
of the university.
They actually get engaged.
But I do think that not only
does the tenure track faculty
member, but also her or his
advisor, or mentor, or chair,
may actually further
instill in them
that they should have
their blinders on
and that they should only
look at what they need to do
and just do it.
There's something the
matter with that model.
I think that I'm
trying to make a case
that the amount of blinders
that we have at a university
are deeply problematic.
So whenever I see
blinders applying,
I'm basically suspicious
that something is not
going to develop well.
And I think the
present way-- not
that BCU is doing this
in any particular way
different from
other universities.
I think the way that we are
coaching many new faculty who
are in the tenure
track is something
that we should reflect on.
And by the same token,
I think we have a lot
to learn from the professors
of the practice who
have said that they have a
commitment to the university
in a way that they may be freer
because their relationship is
not so research oriented as it
is for the tenure and tenure
track.
But there is a
difference in terms of
whether or not we're creating
a community in which we all
benefit from it.
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