The Academic Creed
in Theory and Practice
"Education is not just another business; it is a calling"
Howard Gardner
The Suppression of Truth in Higher Education
In Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Jonathan Rauch presents a trenchant and lucid explanation of how Western Civilization makes knowledge and generally resolves questions of intellectual authority. This system, which Rauch calls "liberal science" (the term embraces all disciplines and many intellectual endeavors), creates knowledge and expertise by subjecting every truth-claim to vigorous independent checking by people motivated to detect error. Fact-checkers, fault-finders, and whistle-blowers play an crucial role in our knowledge-making system, and should be honored for their contributions to establishing the truth.
But because of the climate that now prevails on most campuses, they seldom are. In fact, these people are more likely to be shunned, sued, or slandered than applauded, one more sign of the breakdown of the academic creed.
Professor Stoll, for example, is unpopular in the academy (Wilson "A Challenge" A16). Early on he was warned not to pursue his investigation because to do so "would violate the right of a native person to tell her story in her own way." He has been accused of conducting a "Kenneth Starr style" investigation motivated, predictably, by "racism" (Wilson "A Challenge" A15).
Ted Weiss, who chaired the House Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee, conducted hearings into scientific misconduct and found that "retaliation against the whistle blower involved to be a rather commonplace occurrence."
Walter W. Steward and Ned Feder, the "fraud busters" at the National Institutes of Health, were denounced as "zealots," "vigilantes," and "self-appointed policemen" (Dolnick 56), and eventually sent "into scientific limbo" and forbidden from investigating misconduct during working hours (Doinick 58; Grossman). When Robert Sprague charged, correctly, that Stephen Breuning falsified research findings, he lost his funding (Taubes 50).
An associate professor at Montefiore Medical Center accused her division chief of plagiarism when he photocopied a published book chapter and replaced her name with his own. The medical center fired the complainant and then charged her with scientific misconduct for not giving adequate credit to her division chief when she published her work (Weiss). Five hundred thousand dollars later she had the expensive pleasure of having a court substantiate her charges. Two former officials at Texas State Technical College at Marillo sued when they were fired for blowing the whistle on a criminal money-making operation on their campus; they were awarded over thirty-five million dollars.
Not all court cases turn out so well for the whistle-blower, or the profession. When Mark Feldman, an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Mathematics, proved that a new hire had fabricated some claims on her CV, he was fired (and the new hire given tenure). He sued and won. But the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit overturned the decision on the grounds that whenever a faculty member at a state university is fired for raising a question about possible deception in another faculty member's credentials, the courts must take it as a fact that the university believed that the fired faculty member made an unsupported charge. That fact, the Court also held, cannot be altered by evidence or the findings of a jury (Feldman).
Two former university administrators at the University of North Alabama were fired after revealing violations of NCAA rules (Ambrose); an independent investigation of the allegations confirmed their claims. Brian J. McMahon was fired from El Camino College when he blew the whistle on the college's practice of enrolling phantom students in classes to attract more state and federal funds to keep classes open despite low enrollment (Reynolds). And two tenured (white) professors were literally hounded out of "historically black" Cheyney University of Pennsylvania when they opposed the appointment of an Asian-American applicant who was unqualified. In this case, the two whistle-blowers were suddenly, and deceitfully, accused of making racist remarks, missing classes, failing to show up for lab sessions, and even of stalking and attempting to rape the woman who had originally pressured them to vote for the Asian-American applicant. Even students were enlisted in this campaign of harassment and vilification. Eventually, the two were awarded $2.2 million, although the two who had led the attack against them remained on the faculty and were not charged with wrongdoing (Schneider, September 1998).
When Fordham professor Jere Crook accused a student of plagiarism, and she complained to administrators, his contract was not renewed (Campus Report 13.3 [March 1998]: 2). Andras J.E. Bodrogligeti, who has taught languages at U.C.L.A. for 28 years, said administrators refused to discipline 30 students caught cheating and then punished him for turning them in by canceling his 13-year-old summer program and investigating him for misconduct (Wilson "Professor" A9; Schneider "Why" A9).
To explain why they don't officially charge more students caught cheating, professors often cite the fact that administrators do not support them and often undercut their efforts:
"Scholars claim they're getting shafted by the system. Guilty verdicts are being overturned. Administrators, fearful of lawsuits or bad publicity, back down when challenged by litigious students. Professors who push to penalize cheaters somehow find themselves tied to the whipping post" (Schneider "Why" A9).