It may seem like an oxymoron, but faculty administrators at
even research universities can be hopelessly narrow-minded regarding knowledge
and how it is to be conveyed. For example, how often are faculty members encouraged
to give a lecture or two re-teaching material largely missed on exams (followed
by another, shorter examination on that material)? Do faculty administrators
work with faculty members in professional schools to see to it that the applied
courses are not severed from their basic (i.e., more theoretical substratum)
discipline? One of the secrets in the “sauce” at Yale’s professional schools
(e.g., Law, Divinity, etc.) is this salience of the respective basic
disciplines (e.g., political theory and theology, respectively). Synergy comes
gushing through once the false dichotomy is recognized. Before I went to Yale,
I was a masters and doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh, where the
dichotomy was alive and well in the university’s social reality; I had to “walk
back” the dichotomy myself as I discovered philosophy (and religious studies)
while I was still studying business.
The full essay is at “Ethical
Theory in Business Ethics”
