University Gazette, April 24, 2002

Kidder: Evidence abounds that ethics matter

In the last eight months, author and ethics expert Rushworth M. Kidder has found increasing evidence that ethics and integrity matter as they have never mattered before.

He shared some of that evidence during an April 16 lecture as part of the Dean's Speaker Series at Kenan-Flager Business School as the school celebrated one of its core values -- integrity.

There has been the collapse of Enron, once the seventh-largest corporation in the world, after its board set aside its own code of ethics in order to approve some of the corporation's off-shore deals.

There has been the collapse of Arthur Anderson -- "for leading us to believe that Enron was ever number seven in the first place." It never was number seven, Kidder said, it only was made to look that way.

There has been the collapse of confidence in the American Catholic Church. "Not over sexual abuse, but over the management -- or the lack of management -- of the scandal around sexual abuse."

It is the model for how organizations always get into trouble, a model that led to Richard Nixon's demise following Watergate.

There has been a collapse of hope in the Middle East in the wake of deception and corruption and brutality.

And, of course, "we've seen the collapse, literally, of the World Trade Center, and all that has flowed out of Sept. 11."

American culture, Kidder said, is pragmatic, interested more in results than reason. "We're in some ways more comfortable with a wrench in our hands than we are with an idea in our heads. We roll up our sleeves, get things done and move on. We're not given to great flights of introspection."

Or at least we weren't before Sept. 11, he said.

"As a result of that, ordinary Americans are walking around the streets asking some of the most profound and moral and metaphysical questions: `Who am I?' `What is it all about?' `Why am I here?' `Where is it all going?' `What's the relationship with ethics and the rest of the world?'"

In October, Kidder spoke to students at the London Business School who were trying to translate the events of the previous months in the context of their profession. "They were asking questions like, `Is there a moral basis to capitalism?' `How far beyond self does my purpose extend?' `Can I become truly successful without becoming a hypocrite?' `Do I want to change the world, or just extract its wealth?' `And, if my goal is to get rich quickly so I can do good with my wealth, will I have then lost the ability to care by the time I become rich?'"

Kidder said he didn't think previous generations of business students had to ask these kinds of questions in quite the same way. They are more central and immediate now, not something that can be pushed off into a corner and forgotten while the really important skills such as marketing and finance are being learned.

In a February interview in Business Week, Jeffrey Immelt, the new chief executive officer at General Electric, was asked what keeps him up at night. "It's always an integrity issue of some kind," he said. "With 300,000 people you always worry that somebody doesn't get it. We can survive bad markets, but you can't live through anybody who takes from the company or who does something wrong in the community."

The Kiplinger Report predicted recently that the Enron mess woult lead to a surge in formal ethics policies within corporate culture, but also noted that the erosion of ethics extends beyond business. The challenge for all of society, the report suggested, lies in de-emphasizing winning at all costs and elevating fair play, honesty and compassion for others.

Kidder went on to explain what ethics is, why it matters and what relevance it will have to the business students as they pursue their careers.

Kidder said one of the first things people should know about ethics is that it does not come in different shades and flavors for different professions. There is no such thing as business ethics, or legal ethics, or medical ethics or journalism ethics. "You as students have no reason to become ethical just so your businesses can prosper," Kidder said. "You are ethical because you are part of this great enterprise called humanity."

Kidder said the people he has found who are most comfortable in their business careers "are the ones who don't have to check their values at the door every time they come to work."

Universal values
Kidder touched on the finding in his 1994 book, Shared Values for a Troubled World: Conversations with Men and Women of Conscience. As part of his research, Kidder interviewed 24 opinion-makers from 16 countries to identify this global code of ethics.

Everywhere in the world, when people were asked what values were most important to them, the same ones popped up, he said. They may be expressed in different ways, emphasized in a different order, but there was always the same list. Honesty. Fairness. Responsibility. Respect. And compassion.

"This core of values really constitutes a shared, universal sense of what ethics is all about."

Kidder said ethics is not merely knowing the difference between right and wrong but having the ability to make tough decisions between "right and right" when two values such as honesty and respect come into conflict with each other.

When he was a boy, Kidder said, people didn't throw litter out of the window simply because you didn't do those things. Now, people don't do it because they do not want to pay the $1,000 fine for so doing. What happened?

"As the ethics drained out of the culture, the law rushed in to fill the void and it will be ever thus. To the extent that we can regulate ourselves, and that is what ethics is all about, self-regulation, we're in less need of the imposed regulation of law," he said.

"And to the extent that we fail to regulate ourselves, that's when the red tape increases. That's when the regulatory process builds and that's when we find ourselves, as we do in this country, as a nation with more lawyers per square inch than any other country in the world."

'A matter of survival'
Ethics will matter in this century more than it has in past ones for no other reason than technology and the destructive power that can be unleashed by technology when there is a breakdown in ethics.

Sept. 11 was one example of that, but Kidder cited an experience he had in 1989 when he found himself as a reporter standing about half a mile away from the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl three years after the meltdown and explosion.

Leading Kidder to the site were engineers who had been part of the emergency response team that had responded the night of the disaster.

He learned from them that it was the largest industrial accident in history. It spread fallout into every country in the world capable of recording it. It killed 32 people immediately and since then has either killed or damaged the health of between 4,500 and 150,000 people, depending on whose figures are cited.

It put out of commission for at least a century hundreds of square miles of prime Ukrainian farmland.

"It's worth asking what happened that night, and what happened that night was no mechanical failure," Kidder said. "And it was not an innocent human error. It was a profound moral collapse."

A couple of operators in the control room that night wanted to conduct an unauthorized experiment to see how long the turbine would go on producing electricity after they shut down Reactor #4. It could have been a useful technical experiment but not one that should have been performed late in the life of a notoriously unsafe reactor that had no containment dome.

To pursue their experiment, those in charge had to manually override six separate computer-driven alarm systems.

They had to padlock valves in the open position so they would not automatically shut down.

And there were tales told by the few survivors -- maybe true, maybe not -- of pistols held to people's heads to compel them to do what those in charge would have them do that night.

"It was, in other words, deliberate and, by every definition of the word, unconscionable," Kidder said. "Before there was a meltdown at the core of Reactor # 4, there had already been a moral meltdown."

The example suggests where the world is headed in the 21st century, a world in which "our technology has the capacity to leverage our ethics in ways we have never seen in the past."

The great question, Kidder said, is whether the world can survive the 21st century with the ethics of the 20th century. He doesn't think so.

"We are going to be faced, not far from now, with ethical issues of a scale and of an enormity that humanity has never faced in the past. You don't get to say that very often in history. Usually, the truth is closer to, `There's no new thing under the sun.' I think things are different."

In 1990, Kidder founded the Institute for Global Ethics and now serves as executive editor of Ethics Newsline, the world's first weekly, Internet-based ethics information service, for which he writes a weekly column.

Earlier in his career, Kidder was a journalist who once served as a senior columnist for The Christian Science Monitor.

Jimmy Carter praised Kidder's recent book, How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living, as "a thought-provoking guide to enlightened and progressive personal behavior."

An old master returns to Memorial

As most everyone knows, there is no air-conditioning in Memorial Hall, and that shortcoming was much in evidence the afternoon of April 19 during a final assembly held to note its temporary closing for renovation.

As they entered the hall, people were handed Carolina fans made of cardboard and oversized Popsicle sticks to help fend off the heat.

Many of those arrived already as fans of the rounded figure featured at center stage, Provost Emeritus Richard "Dick" Richardson.

Richardson, who retired in summer of 2000, spent more than 30 years as a fixture on this campus, most of those years as a political science professor and the last five as provost. In both capacities, Richardson was often called on to serve as the campus's master storyteller -- and it was in this enduring capacity that Richardson brought his irrepressible and irresistible wit back to the campus stage.

In a program titled "A Memorial for Memorial," Richardson recounted many of the personal stories that the development office has compiled during its $5 million campaign drive to raise funds for the hall's renovation.

And, of course, he shared a couple of his own.

"We are here to celebrate this wonderful building and all that it has meant to the University community," Richardson said.

Within these walls, people have experienced much joy and laughter, great ideas, spirited and controversial exchanges, Richardson said. But Richardson's most memorable story had to do with a box of pizza and a black dog.

It happened on Oct. 11, 1993, the eve of the bicentennial celebration for University Day. Tension was high as a staff of 18 young people Richardson worked with went over the checklist of the next day's activities.

Tens of thousands of people were going to be on campus the next day, with the culminating event to take place that night with the arrival of President Bill Clinton in Kenan Stadium.

Richardson started the morning of Oct. 11 by meeting with the staff members for an event at Carolina Inn. He found himself, at

11 p.m., on the stage of Memorial Hall, meeting with Secret Service agents to go over the security plan for the president.

It was hot, and the meeting dragged on past midnight, well past his bedtime. And he was hungry.

"And pizza was being passed around, tons and tons of pizza, and I don't even like pizza. It didn't matter. I was eating pizza even though I couldn't tell whether I was eating pizza or the box.

"I had slipped out of my chair and was down on the floor leaning up against the desk, Buddha-like -- I can sit Buddha-like very well -- and eating pizza.

"I was very nostalgic about the evening, although exhausted."

But there was one thing in the room Richardson did not like and was nervous about. A big black dog that belonged to the campus events director at that time.

It was getting on past midnight when Richardson, still sitting on the floor, reached for another piece of pizza as another box was making the rounds.

"I take the pizza and start to eat it and drop it. And it drops between my legs."

In three magnificent leaps, the black dog landed in his lap and snatched that piece of fallen pizza and wolfed it down. It may not have been a brush with death, but for a brief, terror-stricken moment, Richardson wasn't so sure.

"If you want to be awakened at midnight, that's a powerful way to be awakened," Richardson said.

Before the meeting with the Secret Service, Richardson made two points related to the incident. "First of all," he told them, "be grateful that some dogs are vegetarians."

And second, "just as a precaution, I think we should shoot all black dogs" before the president gets here.

Richardson also talked of how he had once taught classes in Memorial Hall, often under the same sticky, hot conditions that audience members endured as they listened to him April 19.

Do whatever you need to do to make yourselves comfortable, he encouraged them. He could take it. "I can promise you that anything you can do today has already been done to me by 18-year-olds. Sleeping. Eating. Reading of newspapers. Mating. ... I even had a student remove pantyhose in here once. The only unusual thing about that was that it was a male."

Renovations to Memorial Hall are scheduled to begin next month and finish in December 2003. Improvements will include a sound shell and other acoustical devices, a bigger stage, larger restrooms and new seating.

And yes, air-conditioning.

Revised general education curriculum proposed

The Curriculum Review Steering Committee has produced an initial draft proposal for the new undergraduate general education curriculum.

The steering committee urges all members of the University community, and especially members of the Faculty Council, to consider the proposal carefully and to share their views on it, said the committee's chair, Laurie E. McNeil.

McNeil, a professor of physics and astronomy and of applied and materials sciences, said the plan must be approved by the administrative boards of the General College and the College of Arts and Sciences before it is presented to Faculty Council through the council's Educational Policy Committee.

The first public discussion of the proposal took place April 22 at a College of Arts and Sciences faculty meeting called for that purpose. Additional opportunities for public discussion will be scheduled early in the fall semester.

"We hope that all members of the University community will give this proposal their careful and thoughtful consideration," McNeil said. "Undergraduate education, and especially general education, is at the heart of this institution. We want the best curriculum we can possibly have, and for that to occur we need the help of the entire community."

The steering committee developed the draft proposal based on the reports of 16 satellite committees made up of 126 faculty, 21 students and seven staff members from 31 departments and curricula, nine professional schools and six University services.

McNeil said the committee's initial formulation of the goals of the curriculum was guided in part by campus forums held in the fall of 2000.

"Those goals were modified based on feedback received after they were posted on the curriculum review web site," she said. "We also were guided by the findings of the survey we conducted of students and faculty in general education courses."

Shortly after Chancellor James Moeser appointed McNeil to chair the committee last year, McNeil talked about how the students graduating today face a different world, filled with different challenges, than students did 20 years ago. She elaborated more about those challenges after the draft proposal's completion.

"Our students enter rapidly changing, richly diverse and increasingly interconnected local, national and global communities," McNeil said. "They also enter an increasingly technological and data-filled world, dependent on an understanding of basic quantitative and scientific reasoning. As citizens, they will be called upon to address moral questions in their private and public lives."

At the same time, some things must not be allowed to change, such as the enduring qualities inherent to the University's heritage. The proposal, McNeil said, seeks to adapt to this changing world while remaining faithful to the University's mission in undergraduate education.

Students should not leave the University without the fundamental skills needed for future learning. They should have a thorough grounding in one subject, yet be exposed to the most widely employed approaches to knowledge within other disciplines as well.

"By structuring the general education curriculum so that it is compatible with a thorough study in even the most demanding of fields, while still giving students opportunities to pursue other subjects that also interest them -- through elective courses -- we have reinforced this mission," McNeil said.

"We continue to emphasize the foundational skills and the approaches to knowledge in a way that retains the best features of the current curriculum.

"We also emphasize the connections among them, by introducing requirements we have called `applying foundations across the curriculum' and by introducing an interdisciplinary option for arts and sciences A.B. majors to fulfill their upper-level general education requirements."

The proposal calls for complementary requirements in U.S. Diversity and in Global Issues that committee members believe would clarify the meaning of the current curriculum's Cultural Diversity requirement.

The committee also wants to introduce an Experiential Education requirement that would give students the chance to connect their classroom preparation with the world at large, through service learning, fieldwork, internships, study abroad or arts practice.

Committee members hope the presentation to the Faculty Council can be made before the end of the fall semester.

If the council approves the proposal later this year, implementation could begin as early as 2003, McNeil said. The process would entail the appointment of a Curriculum Implementation Committee and the submission and review of course proposals, both existing and new.

The earliest that the curriculum could take effect would be for freshmen who enter the University in fall of 2004. McNeil said it would be more realistic to expect the curriculum to take effect in fall of 2005.

Review, comment on the report online

To see the draft proposal for the new undergraduate general education curriculum, see the curriculum review web site at www.unc.edu/curriculumrevisionwww.unc.edu/curriculumrevision

People can also provide feedback through the curriculum review web site, either through the electronic discussion board or by sending e-mail to Curriculum Review Steering Committee members, whose e-mail addresses are listed on the site.

University to investigate PETA's allegations about treatment of laboratory mice

The University plans to look into an animal-rights group's allegations that some laboratory mice and rats here have been mistreated.

The allegations come from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which placed an undercover worker in a Carolina laboratory to record conditions for rodents used in research. Based on the worker's time here, PETA alleges that some rodents were handled in improper ways, such as being euthanized with inappropriate techniques.

Tony Waldrop, vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, said the University takes the allegations seriously and will investigate them. The University has asked PETA to share copies of the videotapes filmed by the worker and any other pertinent information.

Other steps already taken include an unannounced walk-through of Thurston Bowles Building facilities -- those identified by PETA -- by Waldop and Jeff Houpt, dean of the medical school, conducted the same day PETA made its allegations. The inspection found conditions to be clean and in good order. The University also allowed the media to tour the Bowles facilities.

In addition the University has reported the allegations to the appropriate national authorities and convened its Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which -- along with other Carolina staff and administrators -- will examine each allegation. Appropriate action will be taken if it's found that mice and rats have been mishandled, Waldrop said.

Waldrop said both he personally and Carolina are committed to the ethical and humane treatment of laboratory animals.

"We're committed to the highest quality of care for animals used for research," he said.

Waldrop noted that Carolina for more than 20 years has been accredited by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care, an international organization that accredits universities for the manner in which they care for animals used in research.

Waldrop also pointed to Carolina's amount of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as evidence that the University's record on animal care is strong. The NIH -- which awarded Carolina $236.8 million last year -- considers animal conditions when deciding whether to award grant money to a researcher.

Furthermore, Waldrop said, the University has measures in place to make sure research involves animals only if the work can't be done without them. Investigators must document the need for animals to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

When animals are needed, it's for critical research on treatments for diseases such as epilepsy, cancer and hemophilia, Waldrop said.

Carolina wins grant for Slavic and East European Language Resource Center

Carolina, as a subcontractor to Duke University, has been awarded the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Language Resource Center grant for the University's Slavic and East European Language Resource Center for the next four-year cycle, which runs from 2002 to 2006.

The Slavic and East European Language Resource Center (SEELRC), directed by Laura Janda, is the first and only national Language Resource Center for Slavic and East European languages so designated and funded by the Department of Education as a consortial venture between Carolina and Duke. SEELRC has existed since 1999, and the recently received grant from the Department of Education is worth about $1.44 million.

The main purpose of SEELRC is to improve the national capacity to teach and learn Slavic and East European languages by supporting teacher training; research; material and technology development; and establishing a sophisticated, easily accessible information and dissemination network.

SEELRC is guided by a national policy committee composed of the most outstanding scholars in the field of Slavic linguistics in the United States who oversee various projects -- among them the creation of technologically enhanced pedagogical materials for Slavic and East European languages, a 10-day annual summer institute for instructors and a peer-reviewed multilingual electronic journal, Glossos, dedicated to linguistic research and language pedagogy.

SEELRC scholars also sponsor national and international conferences in the field. Samples of some of these projects and other information about SEELRC can be found at www.seelrc.org
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