The Whys and Hows of Ethics in Universities1.
The Ethics Program at the University of Oslo2.
Rolv Mikkel Blakar3.
Introduction
Everywhere that people are involved in social relationships, there will be a need for moral
rules as well as for ethical insight and reflection. Research and educational institutions in
general, and universities in particular, are basically constituted through human interaction and
social relationships.
As researchers and educators, we interact closely with:
 associates and colleagues
 students
 subjects in studies
 etc.
Irregardless of morals being something coming from inside of us as human beings, or
something forced upon us from outside by society and social institutions, a university is
necessarily an institution in which ethical relationships come into focus in many different
ways. Regardless of ethics being understood as virtues, duties, utility or in other ways, a
university is such a complex organization that there will necessarily be multiple challenges
and dilemmas demanding ethical insight and normative reflection. At the outset, we may
assume that a university encounters most, if not all, of the ethical challenges which the
individual meets in modern society. In addition, there are a host of ethical challenges which
are relatively specific to complex research and educational institutions. It is these latter on
which I shall focus.
Against this background, it is not surprising that serious universities and the international
research community, through a number of different organs, have put ethics on the agenda.
Even though most universities have various formal organs with the responsibility for ethical
questions in connection with research, teaching and professional education, there is always a
certain danger that ethics and normative reflection get moved to a lower priority. In a
constantly more competitive research community characterized by knifelike publish or perish
competition, the danger increases that ethical assessments, normative reflection and critical
discussions of values get shoved to the background. Consequently, for universities it is
necessary from time to time to make an extra effort to ensure ethics a central place. It is just
such an effort at my own university, UO, which is an important part of the background for this
paper. In accordance with predominant research policy today, UO also operates with
long-term plans in which, among other things, extra resources are allocated to a few (usually
only two or three) chosen themes. What is interesting, is that in the present plan for the
five-year period 2002-2006, UO has chosen ethics as one of its three focus areas!
1
Paper presented at The International Conference on Teaching Applied and Professional Ethics in Higher
Education, Roehampton, London, 2-4 September 2003.
2
The following abbreviations are used: EP: Ethics Program. UO: University of Oslo. UOEP: University of
Oslo’s Ethics Program. NRC: The Norwegian Research Council
3
Thanks to Svein Aage Christoffersen, Kristin Dobinson, Tom Eide, Andreas Føllesdal and Hilde Eileen
Nafstad for suggestions and comments.
1
Briefly on ethics at UO
Before describing more closely the reasons for this choice, and what has been done, and will
be done in UOEP, I shall mention something briefly about the traditional position of ethics
there. This account is only the main points, a sketch not intended to be complete:
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Concerning research, national ethical research committees have been established.4
Everyone doing research in Norway – and thus at UO – who wishes to use subjects or
animals in their research must apply in advance for approval for the project to the
relevant ethical research committee. Formally, these procedures assure that all
research involving subjects (here defined broadly as informants) or experimental
animals have been assessed on ethical criteria in advance. Such procedures are of
course in accordance with international practices.
Concerning teaching, it varies strongly from subject to subject how much (read: how
little) these include ethics. At UO, however, absolutely all students are assured a
minimum introduction to ethics in that their first semester includes an introduction to
philosophy, philosophy of science and ethics. And all who complete a research
education (PhD-level) have a course on research ethics.
In addition, there are courses in profession-specific ethics in association with
professional education, such as law, psychology, medicine. And a center of medical
ethics has been established.
Concerning teacher-student interaction in general, the Board at UO in fact has passed
a set of explicit ethical rules to prevent abuse of students. This applies to professional
abuse (e.g., supervisors must not publish students’ research material as their own) as
well as personal abuse (e.g., professors/supervisors must not have sexual relations to
students).
Concerning ethics research (basic), UO has traditionally had two research milieus
involved; philosophy and theology.
Reasons for choosing ethics.
Against this background, there may be reason to ask why UO chose ethics as one of its three
focus areas. For there are naturally many candidates and strong competition to become one of
the three chosen areas given resource priority. The following reasons may be identified:5
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First, the other two focus areas – biotechnology and functional materials – are
high-technology natural science and medical research areas posing special ethical
challenges. It was therefore not unnatural of UO to balance and counteract focus on
these areas by choosing ethics as the third one.6
It would be going too far to maintain that ethical and normative reflection is neglected
in many (most) disciplines. But to too little a degree, ethical reflection functions as a
naturally integrated element in most disciplines. One important reason for choosing
ethics was therefore the aim of stimulating the development of ethics (area ethics) in
most (ideally, all) of the fields of study at UO.
In spite of certain worthy exceptions, most disciplines at UO lack researchers who are
qualified in ethics in their subject (i.e., area ethics).
4
Based on research themes, there are three such national ethical research committees: One for natural science
and technology, one for the social sciences and humaniora, and one for medicine and health.
5
I was prorector of UO at that time and could therefore follow the arguments and planning process closely.
6
Such more situation-specific arguments should not be underestimated. Note that people interested in ethics for
many years had been arguing for the establishment of an interdisciplinary ethics center at UO without success.
2
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In my personal view, perhaps the most important reason to make ethics and normative
reflection a focus area is that there are many subjects, including my own, psychology,
which have in later years shown little openness and/or ability to discuss critically the
subject’s a priori taken-for-granted assumptions, points of departure and basic values.
I shall return to this line of argument in describing how such a focus at a university
might be formulated more concretely. At this stage I will only underline that the
university’s critical function in general, and the demand to be explicit and reflective in
relation to the values which are underpinning production of knowledge in the various
subjects, was an important premise for choosing ethics.
The organization of EP
The world of universities is full of good plans which are never realized, often due to lack of
resources. Therefore, it’s a pleasure to note that in the two years which have passed since
ethics was approved a focus area, UO has followed up its planning resolution with a
reasonable budget. This budget year – the EP’s second year – UO has allocated about nine
million NOK, and the NRC contributes with about one million NOK, so that EP’s budget is of
about ten million NOK (about 1.4 million USD). For a research field not involving technical
equipment, this is indeed a big commitment for UO. But we who are responsible for EP hope
to be able to argue a reasonable budget growth throughout the period.7
A closer look at the different reasons for choosing ethics, show that they all, more or less
directly, may be traced back to the fact that, in general, there are all too few researchers who
are qualified in ethics. Assuring increased recruitment in ethics, especially outside of the
traditional ethics fields of philosophy and theology, was therefore the first concrete task to
address. Recruitment to such genuinely interdisciplinary fields as ethics presents two types of
challenges in particular. First, assuring that potential recruits who are good at their primary
subject (be it biology, physics, sociology, psychology or whatever) receive such thorough
training in ethics that they can design a good an feasible PhD-project which includes raising
ethical issues in their subject. A certain degree of double qualification is needed. Second, to
ensure that those who have completed their degree may have the opportunity to work further
in research to qualify for permanent positions.
In relation to both these challenges, UOEP in its first active year has offered various
measures. First, qualifying stipends were announced. That is, potential recruits who had
completed their subject course of study were granted stipend for six months to qualify in
ethics and develop a project with an ethically relevant research question within their field.
They could then apply for a regular three-year PhD-level stipend. And we developed a course
offering which gave an introduction to ethics and supervision in preparing an acceptable
project application. This special measure was initiated because in many subjects it would
otherwise be difficult to find relevant supervision for students interested in considering
ethically relevant questions. In the first round, fifteen students from a broad range of different
subjects were granted such qualifying stipends.
That this measure has been successful, may be documented as follows: When seven ordinary
PhD-stipends in UOEP were announced, we received as many as forty applications from a
broad range of subjects. Six of the seven granted a stipend were among the fifteen who
completed the first six-month qualifying program. It would, however, be unethical of me to
give the impression that UOEP should be given the honor for this model. We were lucky
7
Our ambitions go even further: Our hope is that the current program may be made permanent in one form or
other.
3
enough to be able to build on a national recruitment program (1991-2001) in ethics funded by
NRC, and take over the most fruitful ideas they had developed, only adjusting them to UO’s
specific challenges and resource levels.8 (In parentheses it may be mentioned that UOEP even
took over the person who had been coordinator of the national program.)
The second challenge was one which EP would normally not have faced for another four
years, after having graduated a number of PhD-candidates. By a chance coincidence in
timing, however, NRC completed its comprehensive national program at the same time as UO
started its institutional program. In this national program, more than twenty candidates had
earned their PhD in ethics. One of the first things UOEP did, therefore, was to hire four post
doc candidates. In this way we contribute significantly to ensure UO’s future recruitment to
tenured positions in ethics. But equally as important, we could establish a good professional
milieu in ethics quickly for the qualifying candidates and the ordinary PhD-students through
these four positions. Because one problem of which we quickly became aware when initiating
such a comprehensive recruitment program, was the lack of competence and/or capacity to
supervise in ethics in the various disciplines.
At the moment, the situation concerning recruitment is that in UOEP we have four post doc
candidates, ten ordinary PhD-students and eight qualifying stipend candidates. This is a
powerful effort. But even though EP now have PhD-students at seven of the eight UO
faculties, it is so far only from a very few of the many disciplines at UO that we have
recruitment in ethics.
Parallel to UO launching its EP, the NRC made funds available for a national program of
courses in ethics for PhD-students at Norwegian universities and colleges.9 In order to get the
best possible synergy nationally, the coordinator for UOEP is also coordinator for this
national program. There is also a large degree of overlap in the steering committees of the
national program and UOEP.10
One decisive strategic choice was whether this focus on ethics was to be organized as a center
or as a decentralized program. By establishing a center, we would be able to create a
comprehensive and integrated research milieu quickly. But we would risk removing ethics
from the university in general and collecting ethics research in an “ethics ghetto.” We have
chosen a mixed model: We have established a central milieu consisting of the coordinator, the
four post doc candidates and an administrative secretary. All of the ordinary PhD-students and
qualifying candidates still work in their respective professional surroundings. The same is the
case for researchers who have received funding from UOEP. EP has been organized in this
way both to ensure that the recruits will not lose contact with their basic subject, and in a hope
that EP thereby will have spreading consequences. Supervision of the individual PhD-student
represents a special challenge in such a decentralized model. PhD-students within EP will be
allocated a supervisor in their own subject area as well as one in ethics. The PhD-students will
also be offered a more extensive supervision, including comments by external resource
persons and international experts.11 To ensure an interdisciplinary recruitment in ethics, we
have established a network of seminars, colloquia and supervision groups meeting regularly.
8
A comprehensive evaluation report of this national program is available in English at:
http://www.uio.no/etikkprogrammet/NEP/NEPevaluering.htm
9
Most courses in the national program as well as in UOEP are in English. Participants from abroad are welcome.
Courses will be announced on: Http://etikk.uio.no
10
For example, I myself am the chairman of both programs’ steering committees..
11
Professor Thomas Pogge has been especially engaged by UOEP for this purpose.
4
It was clear at an early stage that UOEP would heavily exploit the small established ethics
research milieus. In order to strengthen the basic research milieus and increase the supervision
capacity, UOEP has decided to support the ethics milieus in philosophy and theology with one
adjunct professorship each.
Thus, the first task of EP has been to establish what may be termed an organized ethics
research school. Even though assuring recruitment of researchers who are also qualified in
ethics is a major task, the ambitions of UOEP are much higher. But when it comes to the other
challenges, we have not come as far. This first period has been used to establish the “research
school.” The following is thus more concerned with plans, than with what has been done. The
plans include measures to:
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stimulate ethics research at an internationally high level at UO.
initiate competence in ethics in subjects where this is lacking.
develop good teaching programs in ethics.
There are obvious tensions built into the aims of UOEP. Ethics research at an international
level should be the aim of ethics researchers at UO. At the same time, UOEP should have
room for “narrower” Norwegian topics, without international publication necessarily being
the natural goal. Such tensions will be reflected in the allocation strategy of EP.
There is also a certain tension concerning understanding of the concept of ethics and what is
meant by normative reflection. The basis for the steering committee’s strategy is an
understanding of ethics as a separate research subject with its own theories, methods and
traditions. The strategy, moreover, is based on a division between basic ethics and area ethics.
Basic ethics means systematic thinking about normative questions which contributes to
establishing basic knowledge, competence and resources within the ethics field as a whole.
Area ethics means questioning into the values, perspectives and norms tied to a specific field
of activity. The concept of normative reflection refers especially to this part of area ethics,
with critical analyses of scientific research and the role of science in professions and
institutions. Critical studies of the ethics, policies and communication of research should be
included.
As this is written, the deadline passes for researchers at UO to apply for stimulation funds for
ethics research.12 The steering committee waits eagerly to see the quantity and breadth of
applications. A round of announcement in the very first starting phase of EP resulted in few
applications. Thus, the four post docs and the two adjunct professorships represent EP’s major
strengthening of ethics research.
With the same deadline, we have invited departments and faculties to offer suggestions for
teaching measures in ethics they want to try out with funding from EP.
The strategic plan includes the development of an academy of ethics including:
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theme workshops with top international researchers in ethics.
an interdisciplinary lecture series where UO’s researchers present their ethics research.
popular science debates on “hot” ethical topics13.
12
Applications in area ethics from disciplines not traditionally involved in ethics research are encouraged in
particular.
13
The first popular lecture on a ”hot” ethical topic will be a lecture on ”Global Justice”, by professor Thomas
Pogge, to be given on September 11th.
5
Perhaps the most influential tool which EP has developed to put ethics on the agenda,
primarily at UO, but also in the national network, is a well-functioning homepage.14 After
only a few months, this is visited frequently and well-used. Because Norwegian is a minority
language, a next goal is an English edition.
To signalize that EP is for the whole university, it is not associated with any one faculty. EP is
organized directly under the university Board with its own steering committee. The members
are highly qualified researchers from different subjects (biology, philosophy, pedagogy,
psychology, odontology, theology, and philosophy of science) with an interest in ethics,
without most of them being defined as ethicists. The steering committee approves strategic
plans and allocates resources, while EP is led on a daily basis by the coordinator in contact
with the chairman of the steering committee.
Normative reflection and area ethics: A rationale and exemplification.
Introductorily I presented various reasons for universities to engage in ethics. All of these are
important. But it varies from subject to subject and from one time period to another as to what
is most important. Why have I – who is not an ethicist, but a social psychologist – chosen to
use my time to serve as chairman for an intense ethics program? When giving the rationale for
this in closing, it is not because my person is interesting. But my observations might be of
some interest.
 It is not because (basic) ethics research is not good enough.
 It is not because the students do not have any ethics courses.
 Neither is it because relevant professional ethics is not being taught.
 Nor is it because traditional research ethics is deficient.
Universities are the most important producers of knowledge. But knowledge is not created in
vacuo. Knowledge is not neutral. Knowledge is created within specific structures of meaning,
within specific ideological frameworks. When we formulate research questions, i.e., those
questions which guide research, we formulate on the basis of certain a priori taken for granted
assumptions. In all research, there is something which a priori is taken as given. Something
which is not questioned. Such a priori assumptions – they are often unexpressed and implicit
– have strong guiding influences. It is on the background of what has been assumed that we
formulate concrete research questions, and moreover, fail to formulate or ignore other
questions. Consequently, the establishment of knowledge is guided by a priori taken for
granted assumptions. Because assumptions involve values, it is important continually to
discuss such basic assumptions from the perspective of ethics. Embedded in the essence of
knowledge as non-neutral and value-laden is therefore the principally strongest demand to
every university to engage in normative reflection.
Let me briefly exemplify how a priori assumptions shape research and theory development,
as well as practice: Science may lay down various perspectives as the basis for studying the
individual. The predominant perspective on humans in contemporary psychology, is that the
individual is egoistic, primarily only concerned with own interests and doing what is best for
oneself. A potentially alternative view which to little degree has had any influence – in reality,
this position has been rejected – is that the individual is also genuinely altruistic acting on the
basis of what is best for others and for the community. On the basis of two such
fundamentally different views, one will formulate different research questions, explain
14
Http://www.etikk.no
6
observations differently and develop different theories of the individual, of relationships – and
of ethics.
Another basic question is, whether the individual as a social being is plastic and flexible and
can function under all kinds of conditions, or whether the individual is given a core nature
setting limits for what kind of social and ecological conditions under which humans may live
without being psychologically hurt. Even though somewhat differential assumptions may be
observed, the predominant view in psychology is that the individual is strongly adaptive. The
individual may adjust to dramatic changes and live through difficult, even traumatic
situations, and still function further without great problems or human costs. One alternative
view would be that the individual’s nature is vulnerable and therefore dependent on certain
ecological and social conditions to function as a human being.
Common to these basic questions is that it is not simple to settle them empirically. These are
questions in which the subject and the individual researcher, in more or less reflected ways, a
priori assume certain positions and ignore or even reject others. In these examples, it is easy
to see the mutual interaction between the predominant ideology of society and the a priori
view in psychology. Science provides premises for, and is itself formed by the predominant
ideology. In the West today, that is a market ideology. The self-interested individual is the
very basis of market liberalism, and the idea of the flexible, easily adaptive person is a
precondition for the globalization ideology.15
Human relations – including ethical ones – are so complex that if we are to have the slightest
hope of understanding them, we cannot afford to neglect or exclude even one single
perspective. On this point, science must be loyal to William James (1909:19), one of the
founders of modern psychology, who maintained: “We have so many different businesses
with nature .…. The philosophic attempt to define nature so that no one’s business is left out,
so that no one lies outside the door saying “Where do I come in?” is sure in advance to fail.
The most a philosophy can hope for is not to lock out any interest forever.” In order to prevent
a potentially essential perspective from lying outside the door, universities have a special
obligation to pursue continual critical, normative and ethical reflection and to teach future
generations of scientists to do so.
References.
James, W. (1909/1979). A pluralistic Universe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nafstad, H. E. (2003). Area Ethics: Psychology. Paper presented on First International
Conference on Teaching Applied and Professional Ethics in Higher Education,
Roehampton, London, September 2-4 2003. (p. xx-xx in the present volume.)
15
In her paper on area ethics in psychology, Hilde Eileen Nafstad undertakes an analysis along these lines.
7