Academic Duty

Examining teaching, graduate training, research, and their ethical context in the research university, Donald Kennedy, former President of Stanford University and currently a faculty member, suggests that meaningful reform cannot take place until more rigorous standards of academic responsibility are embraced by both faculty and the administration.

The university today is under attack from all sides. Parents and students resent the escalating costs of education and wonder where the money is being spent. Aspiring scholars feel betrayed by an institution that prepares them for nonexistent jobs. Critics on the right condemn the teachers who neglect “the canon” while critics on the left condemn the creeping corporatism on campus. Politicians seek greater control over the conduct of research and add new conditions to the use of government funds. Worst of all, the academics are increasingly uneasy in an environment that fosters competition, dis