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Fire Shelby Thames -> Fire Shelby Thames -> Fire Shelby Thames -> Bok quotes --- should read...
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texaseagle

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Bok quotes --- should read...
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I saw a discussion early this week on Derek Bok's book, and saw it mentioned again last night in Webster's glossary entries.  I picked it up this morning.  This book is a must read for USM friends/supporters.  Here's an excerpt...


"Research universities are rarely, if ever, any better than their faculties.  If they are to make their greatest contribution, therefore, it is imperative that they guard the integrity of their procedures for appointing and promoting professors.  Those who are entrusted with such decisions should make them solely on the basis of the quality of the candidate's teaching, research, or other contributions to the academic purposes of the institution.  They should not appoint professors because they can bring a lot of corporate funding or because they are working on a project that holds little scientific interest but promises to yield large commercial rewards.  If universities do not honor this principle, the quality of their academic work will surely suffer and they will find it harder to recruit scientists and scholars of genuine distinction.  Even the appearance of hiring professors for commercial reasons will lower the morale of the faculty and diminish the reputation of the university in the eyes of other scholars by suggesting that it is not committed to research and education of the highest quality."   page 106


"Another educational cost that commercialization can incur has to do with the moral example such behavior gives to students and others in the academic community.  Helping to develop virtue and build character have been central aims of education since the time of Plato and Aristotle.  After years of neglect, universities everywhere have rediscovered the need to prepare their students to grapple with the moral dilemmas they will face in their personal and professional lives.  In colleges and professional schools alike, courses on practical ethics are now a common feature of the curriculum.  Although classes of this kind can serve a valuable purpose, students will surely be less inclined to take them seriously if they perceive that the institution offering the courses compromises its own moral principles in order to win at football, sign a lucrative research contract, or earn a profit from an Internet course.  In deciding how to lead their lives, undergraduates often learn more from the example of those in positions of authority than they do from lectures in a classroom.  The most compelling moral examples any institution can give are ones that demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice immediate self-interest, if need be, for the sake of some higher principle.  Conversely, the worst possible examples are those in which the institution, despite its highminded pronouncements, does the reverse."  page 109


 



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present professor

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quote:
Originally posted by: texaseagle
"

Bok is fabulous -- so is his wife, who is a philosopher whose major area of inquiry is ethics. She wrote a neat book which I think is called "Lying." Or maybe someone will correct me on that . . . I went to it a lot when a number of us were raising concerns about intelligence and academic cultures.


 



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texaseagle

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More Bok on page 110


"The constant struggle for more resources can also obscure the larger message of a true liberal arts education --- that there is more to life than making money.  Competition for students has already caused many colleges to emphasize vocational programs at the expense of traditional majors while aggressively proclaiming to prospective students what their degrees will be worth in the marketplace.  The importance of material values can only increase in the minds of students if universities repeatedly demonstrate by their own behavior that they are willing to ignore basic academic principles when they get in the way of the search for more resources."



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Greedy

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texaseagle? uh huh.

I'll see you next week PP

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Cleansweep

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How about a fundraising idea?  If someone were to front the purchase of bulk quantities of the Bok book and Exit 13, Drs. Glamser and Stringer could sign them and they could be sold at a table set up outside the hearings next week?  Actually, same thing holds for the t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc.  Wouldn't they be worth more with an autograph? 

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Googler

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quote:
Originally posted by: present professor
"
Bok is fabulous -- so is his wife, who is a philosopher whose major area of inquiry is ethics. She wrote a neat book which I think is called "Lying." Or maybe someone will correct me on that . . . I went to it a lot when a number of us were raising concerns about intelligence and academic cultures.
 "


You are correct. Sissela Bok authored "Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life." It is a neat book.

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present professor

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quote:
Originally posted by: Googler
" You are correct. Sissela Bok authored "Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life." It is a neat book."

Thanks Googler . . . I was having a semi-senior moment and couldn't remember her first name or quite the name of the book. I remember liking it very much . . . interesting enough I also found her book helpful when I was at another university when there was an ateempt to make Public Relations into a Major -- my argument against that was premised on the university institution dedicated t the pursuit of "truth" (however provisional) while the notion of PR cannot be detached from the objecting of "shaping" the perception of truth.


Bok falls into the lineage of great academic presidents like Clarke Kerr and James Conant, among others. I know USM isn't Harvard or Berekley, but it would be nice if our upper administrators were as conversant with the broader issues of higher education as they seem to be with the business aspects. I don't object to paying attention to the bottom line: after all that is the responsbile thing to do, especially in a public university. But there is very little for the mind or the soul in anything I hear coming out of the Dome. It is hard to rev yourself up for the mission of  . . ..  retention or recruiting . . .  or creating more wealth unless these things are seen as means and not ends.



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