FORUM
The following Forum submission is in response to the article entitled "The Practice of Integrity Within the University" published in the Journal of Educational Thought, Vol. 34, #3, pp. 265-284.
Practicing Integrity: Some Suggestions
John B. Bennett
Quinnipiac University
Abstract
In their recent article in this
journal, Raymond Calabrese and Angela Barton (2000) draw our attention to the
importance of the concept and practice of integrity in the university. They
provide a definition of integrity and consider its relationship to faculty,
academic programs, and the connections of the university with its broader
community. I wish to recast a portion of what they provide in order to offer a
somewhat broader concept of academic ethics. Specifically, I propose hospitality
as the fundamental ethical virtue for the academy, for it is the practice of
hospitality that underlies the achievement of integrity. I also suggest that the
concept of covenant works better than does Calabrese and Barton's use of social
contract to highlight the ethical dimension of some university activities,
especially teaching.
Raymond Calabrese and Angela Barton have rightly emphasized
the importance of practicing integrity within the university (Calabrese &
Barton, 2000). What they call the social contract of the university with the
community implies that the university and its faculty and staff have their
reason for being in meeting the educational expectations and needs of the
broader community that supports them. Honoring this contract requires that they
more self-consciously practice integrity. I agree with this important thesis,
but suggest that it could be expanded to include recognizing that the practice
of hospitality is foundational to academic ethics and integrity. In what
follows, I first review the main points of Calabrese and Barton. Then in the
second section I suggest how hospitality is foundational to our common life. I
also propose covenant as a better term than social contract for describing what
teaching involves.
I
Central to Calabrese and Barton's definition and analysis of
integrity is the distinction between espoused values and theories in use (Argyris
& Schon, 1974). This is the distinction between what we tell others (and
ourselves) about who we are, on the one hand, and what in fact we are, on the
other hand, as disclosed by what we do. The relationship between what we espouse
and how we behave tells much about our integrity. Our ethics involves the moral
principles, codes, and practices to which we subscribe. They are part of what we
espouse. However, our practices disclose what moral or ethical concepts (our
theories-in-use) we actually value.
A gap or misalignment between the espoused and the actual suggests a lack of
integrity and trustworthiness. Calabrese and Barton observe that universities
need to attend more carefully to their various levels of integrity. There are
misalignments between what universities espouse and how they behave. Without the
practice of integrity at the personal, programmatic, and institutional level,
ethical standards in universities cannot be achieved. "Integrity makes
ethics authentic by establishing a climate of trust. Integrity becomes the
public expression of what constitutes the private character of an individual or
organization" (Calabrese & Barton, 2000, p. 268).
The relationship of a university with its broader community is contained in what
the authors call its social contract -- the at-least tacit social purposes and
common good that the university exists to serve through the academic programs
its faculty provide. Accordingly, the authors speak of three perspectives of
integrity. These are the perspectives presented by the faculty in relationship
with students; the perspective of the university in its relationships with
faculty, students, and external bodies; and the perspective reflecting the
correspondence of the academic programs to community needs. Problems of
integrity arise when university personnel policies and practices for faculty
ignore the needs of students, when universities pursue their own objectives at
the expense of their responsibilities to the communities they serve, and when
the programs offered lack appropriate standards or qualified faculty.
Calabrese and Barton call for creating and attending to an environment of
integrity throughout the university. "The mission of public institutions
and their members should be to promote policies and practices that encourage,
mandate, and monitor integrity" (2000, p. 279). To this end, they rightly
identify the importance of conversations within and throughout the university
that focus on issues of espoused theory and linkages with theories-in-use. In
order for these conversations to take root, I suggest, a prior climate of
openness must be created, modeled, and reinforced by those who enjoy significant
influence at the university. For connected with integrity as the authors define
the term is what I am calling the virtue of hospitality.
II
I suggest that the practice of hospitality is a
presupposition for integrity. By hospitality I have in mind the absolute
centrality of openness to the other in both sharing and receiving knowledge and
insights. It is connected with integrity because hospitality requires
trustworthiness, sincerity, and honesty. But without a prior openness to the
other -- that is, without practicing hospitality -- integrity will be missing
and neither the individual institution nor its faculty and staff are likely to
escape the ingrained self-preoccupation that seems to be the mark of our times.
Hospitality reminds us of the importance of others. They are almost always
necessary in helping to bring us to see the gap between what we want ourselves
to be and be known as, and what we actually are. For our espoused theories often
blind us to our actual behaviors. But it is conversations and other interactions
with colleagues, friends, and even strangers that -- with sufficient openness on
our part -- can bring us to greater self-awareness. There is little
self-understanding that comes without understanding others. This seems true at
the three levels of integrity of which Calabrese and Barton write. Thus
integrity in the relationships of the university with its supporting community
require the trust and wholeness that community leaders may need to demand of the
university. Wrapped up in competition with each other, universities can become
forgetful of their neighborhoods and indifferent to community needs and
expectations. Likewise, when practicing insufficient openness with their own
faculty and staff, university leaders can start to take them for granted and
dwell in secretiveness instead. Integrity suffers.
But it is in their own attitudes toward teaching and learning that universities
and faculties can most grievously lack integrity. For without openness toward
colleagues and students, faculty (often encouraged by their universities) lose
their grip on the conditions for extending truth and facilitating the search for
it. Openness toward the other is essential for validating one's own truth
claims. Without hospitality being conspicuously practiced, we can have no
confidence that the search for truth is being advanced. For the other is always
one who may function as teacher, not just student. Current scholars of pedagogy
recommend a paradigm of learning rather than one of instruction (Barr & Tagg,
1995). But under both paradigms, teaching without the practice of hospitality is
reduced to credentialing and learning approaches the receipt of information
without any internal impact. Education becomes a kind of mechanical interaction
-- an exchange of information for tuition.
Few governmental, accrediting, professional, or disciplinary agencies seem to
give academic ethics the attention it deserves. Even the otherwise commendable
efforts of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching fall short of
attending to the rooting of academic ethics, especially to the centrality of
hospitality as a cardinal virtue. Its recent publication, Scholarship Assessed:
Evaluation of the Professorate, does conclude by looking at the qualities and
character of the scholar and argues that scholarship has throughout "a
moral character" and that the university is to be guided "by an
ethical imperative" (Glassick, Maeroff, & Huber, 1997, p. 61). However
important the virtues may be that the publication discusses and upholds -- the
main ones are perseverance and courage, as well as integrity -- they seem
secondary rather than truly foundational and primary. Each is implicated and
rooted in the more fundamental and comprehensive virtue of hospitality.
Integrity, as I have argued, is not in this sense primary. One can display
integrity in one's own individual work and yet be indifferent to the work of
others -- a reluctant participant in broader educational discussions, even
closed to their wider perspectives. Certainly much criticism of the academy
today is aimed at just such intellectual narrowness and fragmentation. And
however important individual perseverance is, one's tenacious and hospitable
support of the learning of others is essential. For increase in knowledge is
ultimately a collective effort. Likewise, courage is essential, for one must
accept one's own vulnerability as scholar and teacher. But courage must be
evident in the hospitable support and defense of others who may be pursuing
unpopular or controversial subjects. Learning is a profoundly social enterprise
and requires the practice of hospitality.
My point is that integrity, and other academic virtues like
perseverance and courage, can be used in individualistic ways. Each of these
virtues can be practiced instrumentally, to advance the well-being of the
individual or of his or her community at the expense of the other individual or
the other community. The important points that Calabrese and Barton make need to
be extended to avoid this individualism. Recognizing the foundational importance
of hospitality -- and practicing it -- is the best way to transcend the tacit
instrumentalism of the virtuous character (Bennett, 1998).
Practicing hospitality in the educational environment also directs one toward
the notion of the covenant rather than the social contract. A social contract
highlights the responsibilities one has toward others, but it also thereby
suggests limits to these responsibilities. The covenant, by contrast, emphasizes
the notion of a pledge or vow to seek the welfare of the other, even in
situations where the rules of the contract might not apply or which they might
not address. The concept of the covenant seems much more appropriate to the work
of teaching with integrity.
III
Unfortunately, much of North American higher education seems
indifferent to matters of hospitality and integrity. Indeed, some argue that
much of Western higher education is enmeshed in consumerist ideology with
corporate universities as the result (Readings, 1996). Even so, some academics
are paying more attention to the ethical dimensions of different social areas
that they study. Thus, we read about business ethics, health care ethics,
journalism and political ethics. But most academics seem reluctant to attend to
issues of their own academic ethics or to the nature of the university or of
education itself as a moral enterprise. What we need are more statements like
that of Calabrese and Barton to remind us of the importance of practicing
integrity at all levels of the university. And, I suggest, what is needed is
more attention to actually practicing integrity and the hospitality that makes
it possible.
Added material
John B. Bennett studied at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and
received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1969. He is University Scholar and
Provost Emeritus at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He has
published five books and recent articles in such periodicals as The Department
Chair, Cross Currents, Academic Leadership, and the Journal of College and
Character. His current research interests include academic ethics, philosophy of
education, and metaphysics. He has taught in both philosophy and religious
studies.
REFERENCES
Argyris, C. & Schon, D. (1974). Theory in practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Barr, R. & Tagg, J. (1995). From teaching to learning -- A new paradigm for undergraduate education. Change, (November/December), 13-25.
Bennett, J. (1998). Collegial professionalism: The academy,
individualism, and the common good. Phoenix: ACE/Oryx.
Calabrese, R. & Barton, A. (2000). The practice of
integrity within the university. Journal of Educational Thought, 34(3), 265-284.
Glassick, C., Maeroff, G. &
Huber, M. (1997). Scholarship assessed: Evaluation of the professorate. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Readings, B. (1996). The university
in ruins. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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