--- title: Higher Education: Need for University Ethics description: Ethics, an academic discipline that routinely arbitrates competing claims, is rarely invoked as a discipline to address university problems canonical: https://time.com/3961980/university-ethics/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-17T16:07:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:38:18.253Z article:section: Ideas og:title: American Universities Are Failing at Ethics og:description: Ethics, an academic discipline that routinely arbitrates competing claims, is rarely invoked as a discipline to address university problems og:url: https://time.com/3961980/university-ethics/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta94830cfd4285488/69885b5a524fc0fe50df39e1/empty-university-lecture-hall.jpg?branch=production&width=359&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 359 og:image:height: 202 og:image:alt: empty-university-lecture-hall og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: American Universities Are Failing at Ethics twitter:description: Ethics, an academic discipline that routinely arbitrates competing claims, is rarely invoked as a discipline to address university problems twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta94830cfd4285488/69885b5a524fc0fe50df39e1/empty-university-lecture-hall.jpg?branch=production&width=359&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # American Universities Are Failing at Ethics > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=593bac64-fa05-49ae-a4cf-aa30f080efa8&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League [Watch (HLS stream): My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o8izpqKu.m3u8) (6:50)  _Published 2014-05-14. In April, 23 Columbia and Barnard students filed a federal Title IX complaint alleging that the University mishandled sexual assault cases_ by [James Keenan SJ / The Conversation](https://time.com/author/james-keenan-sj/) ## James Keenan SJ / The Conversation Jul 17, 2015 4:07 PM UTC  Rows of desks in classroom Rows of desks in classroom Getty Images by [James Keenan SJ / The Conversation](https://time.com/author/james-keenan-sj/) ## James Keenan SJ / The Conversation Jul 17, 2015 4:07 PM UTC The narratives that help illustrate the lack of professional ethics at American universities occur with greater and greater frequency, though most often we fail to note them as such. If we put our minds to it, we can remember quite a number of unethical stories at American universities in recent years: the [sex abuse case](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paterno-fired-over-penn-st-child-abuse-scandal/) that prompted the firing of the president and football coach at Penn State; [the pepper-spraying of students](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/uc-davis-pepper-spray-settlement%5Fn%5F2450631.html) at the University of California at Davis; the [tragic hazing death](http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-02-05/news/os-famu-hazing-narrative-20120204%5F1%5Fflorida-a-m-university-marching-famu-band-hazing) of marching band member Robert Champion at Florida A and M University. These are stories that happened at universities, and their settings, I believe, are not incidental to the narratives. As an author of [University Ethics: How Colleges Can Build and Benefit from a Culture of Ethics](https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442223738/University-Ethics-How-Colleges-Can-Build-and-Benefit-from-a-Culture-of-Ethics), I believe our universities are breeding these scandals and ethical compromise. But rarely, even when the press exposes something shameful about a university, do we identify the issue as a lack of ethics. ## Scandals on campus We can find instances of university scandals on any given day. For instance, what do I find in the Chronicle of Higher Education on just one day: The University of Texas at Austin provides a [case](http://chronicle.com/article/How-AthleticsAcademics/230795/?key=QWJzKlVva3wRNy5iNTYRZjpVOyRrOEIvMXYba3ghblFdGA==) to “illustrate how the university has appeared to let academically deficient players push the limits of its policy on academic integrity.” The [closing of campuses](http://chronicle.com/article/Corinthian-Colleges-Inc-to/229685/) belonging to Corinthian College prompts questions about greater oversight. An essay about whether a sociologist [“had participated in a felony”](http://m.chronicle.com/article/Conflict-Over-Sociologists/230883) while doing research follows another on [Rachel Dolezal’s story on race and identity](http://chronicle.com/article/Rachel-Dolezal-Case-Leaves-a/230947/). Finally, there’s a [riveting story](http://chronicle.texterity.com/chronicle/20150626a?sub%5Fid=05QYyMaBDHlW#pg24) highlighting what happens when matters of sexual assault conflict with academic freedom. Here, then, in one week’s coverage of The Chronicle of Higher Education, we have a startling set of issues. This leads us to ask the question: are these issues sensational but isolated moments across the American academic landscape, or is there something more systemic here? I believe it is systemic. ## Missing ethical consciousness In other forms of professional life, we have long recognized a strong connection between the lack of professional ethics in a particular institutional setting and the lack of an ethical consciousness in that culture. I believe that the absence of professional ethics is evidence of and symptomatic of a culture disinterested in ethics. For instance, as we come out of the sexual abuse scandals that have ripped apart the churches, we see that the disinterest in professional ethical accountability of bishops and priests was [sustained](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8796030&fileId=S0360966900004734) by the [church’s](http://www.litpress.org/Products/3001/clerical-culture.aspx) [clerical culture](http://books.simonandschuster.com/A-People-Adrift/Peter-Steinfels/9780743261449) that was more attuned to advancement than it was to ethical responsibility and transparency. A similar culture is part and parcel of the contemporary American university. Simply put, the [American university](https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442223738/University-Ethics-How-Colleges-Can-Build-and-Benefit-from-a-Culture-of-Ethics) does not hold its employees to professional ethical standards because it has not created a culture of ethical consciousness and accountability at the university. This is in part because of the nature of the contemporary university and because it needs ethics. The contemporary [university](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-fall-of-the-faculty-9780199782444?cc=us&lang=en&) functions not as an integrated, transparent community but as a medieval set of fiefdoms in which transparency and accountability are singularly to “the person upstairs”: that is, to the chair, the dean or a vice president. Faculty and administrators are not accountable to any colleague, but only to a higher administrator. Moreover, this accountability is only one-directional. For all the compliance, accountability and collaborative models that university faculty teach in their ethics courses to physicians, nurses, managers and lawyers, the [university itself remains averse](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-fall-of-the-faculty-9780199782444?cc=us&lang=en&) to developing any true accountability structures. We can certainly acknowledge that at any university, anyone can take a course on business ethics, nursing ethics, legal ethics, medical ethics or journalistic ethics. Ethics courses in the different professions are easily available at almost any university. In fact, generally speaking, if one is looking for ethical training in a profession, the courses are found at a university. The one major professional institution about which you cannot find any ethics courses listed among the hundreds of courses at any university is precisely the university. ## Where are university ethics? Ethics, an academic discipline that routinely arbitrates competing claims, is rarely invoked as a discipline to address university problems. So, if you search for a course on university ethics, you will simply not find one. Professors and their deans recognize the need to teach professional ethics in all the other professions, but it seems they show no real interest in professional ethics for their own profession. Not convinced? Take the test that I did. Go to your university library and look for books on professional ethics. At my university, as I found in my research, we have over 400,000 books stacked in our library. There, each book is assigned a subject heading. Under the subject “medical ethics,” we have 1,321 books; under “business ethics,” 599 books; under “nursing ethics,” 234 books; under “legal ethics,” 129 books; under “clergy ethics,” 25 (relatively new) books; and, under “academic ethics,” five (brand new) books. Nonetheless, even these academic ethics books are only about professors’ conduct in their classes and offices. There are no books on university ethics, none at least that attempt to set ethical cultures and standards across the entire campus. This lack of books on academic and university ethics is alarming inasmuch as academics, more than business people, nurses, doctors and lawyers, develop their careers precisely by writing books! Our métier and promotional mantra is “Publish or perish.” While we publish books on professional ethics in other fields, we apparently have very little interest in the field of professional academic ethics. Concomitantly, just as we do not write books on the topic, we do not teach the courses either. But then, none of us seem to be aware of this. _This_ [_article_](https://theconversation.com/who-is-to-teach-ethics-to-the-university-44450) _originally appeared on_ [_The Conversation_](http://theconversation.com) ## Transcript [00:00] My name is Emma [ UNKNOWN ]. I am a junior at [00:04] Columbia college. I am a visual arts [00:08] major. On the first day of my sophomore year, I was [00:12] raped by a fellow classmate. I [00:18] didn't report at first because. It's a big [00:22] emotional trauma, and I didn't feel like dealing with it at [00:26] first, until I met at that time, two other [00:30] women who told me the same person who had assaulted [00:33] me, had assaulted them. The school found [00:38] a way to dismiss each of our three cases separately. [00:40] [ MUSIC ] My rapist, it still goes to my school, and [00:44] still is on campus. [ MUSIC ]. [01:02] This is not a single campus issue. This is not an individual [01:05] issue. This is a cultural problem. We have a huge issue [01:08] with rape culture on all college campuses. There was a [01:12] study that was done that shows that men on college [01:15] campuses who are perpetrators. Are more often than not [01:18] repeat offenders. The average number of people a [01:22] perpetrator will sexually assault is six, according to this [01:26] study. So this isn't a random phenomenon. This isn't this [01:30] happens in an alley, this happens when everyone's [01:32] incredibly drunk at a party. There is a certain profile for [01:36] what sexual assault looks like on a college campus. And [01:38] that is why we need administrators to be open, and [01:40] transparent, about that. Right now, their approach seems to [01:43] be to ignore the problem, to try to deny students access to [01:47] resources, to deny that that's happening at all when it fact [01:50] they really should be getting in front of the issue. Our [01:56] hearing took place seven months after I reported the [01:59] incident. The investigator in my case didn't take down [02:03] many important things such as the position I was in when [02:06] he raped me. My hearing panelists weren't even [02:10] trained, one woman kept asking me how it was physically [02:14] possible for anal rape to happen. Why [02:19] Columbia didn't find him responsible? I don't actually get to [02:23] write a statement of what happened. It's all the [02:25] investigator's statement that they read. There's an office [02:29] called the Office of Gender Based and Sexual Misconduct. [02:33] You go in there and at that time a woman was working [02:37] there so I told her what had happened. She was the one [02:40] who took erroneous notes, and missed really [02:44] important that I said. Since her statement didn't make any [02:47] sense, my case didn't make any sense. I [03:00] think another reason that the school didn't find him guilty [03:03] was that they, they really didn't want to treat it [03:08] as a serial rape case because we, all three of us reported, [03:13] and then they would say you are not allowed to mention [03:14] each others' cases, we are going to treat them separately. I [03:17] think that. If the hearing panel have had known that this [03:21] was a serial offender, they might have believed us more [03:25] maybe? They also said that there was not [03:30] enough evidence to determine that it was more likely than [03:34] not. That the respondent engaged in behavior that [03:38] met the de, definition of sexual assault. So the [03:42] charge was dismissed. [ MUSIC ] There [03:48] are many reasons why a student would choose to not go to [03:51] the police, and go to, you know, a campus adjudication [03:54] process. Many people don't want the outcome to be the [03:57] person that attacked them to go to jail. If you're a person of [04:00] color. Or if you're ****, the process of going to the police [04:03] can also be one that is not necessarily competent or great [04:06] to deal with. Some people seek out resources from their [04:09] school in order to make sure they're not living in the same [04:12] dorm as a person who assaulted them, which is very [04:14] different from making sure that someone goes to jail. And [04:18] I also think that improving processes on campus across the [04:21] board. Including you know, therapy for survivors, adequate [04:25] rape crisis centers, and adequate academic interim [04:28] measures, are things that are important for everyone to [04:31] have the police absolutely cannot give you when you're a [04:36] student. Everyday I'm afraid of leaving my room. Even [04:40] seeing people who remotely look like my rapist is a scary [04:43] thing for me. Last semester, I was working [04:47] in the dark room in the photography department. Which is a [04:50] small dark room. He asked permission from his teacher to [04:54] come and work in the darkroom during my class. I started [04:58] crying and hyperventilating and. As long as [05:02] he's on campus with me he can continue to harass me. [05:10] They're setting up for graduation for all of the seniors and [05:13] all of the bleachers are coming up on campus. And, I was [05:16] just thinking about the fact that. Because of [05:21] what the administration did, I'm going to have to be sitting [05:25] on those bleachers with my rapist and a serial rapist at that. [05:29] Knowing that he's going to get the same education as me [05:33] and I'll be feeling horrible on my graduation day. A [05:40] lot of students think that when they go to a campus, if they [05:43] see that there are zero sexual assaults reported that that's [05:46] a really positive thing, that, that must mean that campus is [05:48] incredibly safe, it's going to be a great place. But actually [05:51] when you consider the fact that the overall rates of sexual [05:55] assaults on campus are as high as one in four, if you see a [05:58] campus reporting zero sexual assaults that should actually [06:01] be a red flag. [ MUSIC ] I [06:06] feel like it's taken over my entire, entire college experience. [06:09] This happened on the first day of my sophomore year. And [06:11] here I am. I just finished my last day of school for my junior [06:16] year. And I'm still talking about it and still thinking about it. [06:20] And I know that I'm going to look back on my entire [06:23] Columbia experience and see that's how the [06:27] administration has failed me. and. It's, it's [06:33] like a cloud that will always hang over me. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3961980/university-ethics/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3961980/university-ethics/"},"headline":"American Universities Are Failing at Ethics","datePublished":"2015-07-17T16:07:17.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:38:18.253Z","description":"Ethics, an academic discipline that routinely arbitrates competing claims, is rarely invoked as a discipline to address university problems","url":"https://time.com/3961980/university-ethics/","keywords":["Education","College","Higher Education","University","Ethics"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta94830cfd4285488/69885b5a524fc0fe50df39e1/empty-university-lecture-hall.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"James Keenan SJ / The Conversation"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta94830cfd4285488/69885b5a524fc0fe50df39e1/empty-university-lecture-hall.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"empty-university-lecture-hall","caption":"empty-university-lecture-hall","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/education/","name":"Education"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3961980/university-ethics/","name":"American Universities Are Failing at Ethics"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League","description":"In April, 23 Columbia and Barnard students filed a federal Title IX complaint alleging that the University mishandled sexual assault cases","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/o8izpqKu/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-05-14T14:51:05.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o8izpqKu.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3961980/university-ethics/","duration":"PT6M50S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3961980/university-ethics/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```