Universities, Cultural Diversity and Global Ethics 85rejected as a violation of the ethical principles of integrity and
responsibility. How can it make sense to claim the right to be wrong?
The third reason for asserting that universities worthy of the name
are by their nature ethical relates to the beneficence cluster of values in
the table above. Universities are inherently social. They are places
which cannot function without cooperation and inter-personal reliability.
Staff members who prefer to let their self-interest outweigh their duty to
act supportively towards their colleagues when that is needed harm this
essential requirement. Universities are not places for the selfish any
more than for the dishonest. The duty to increase knowledge is of course
non-negotiable, but nobody ever does this entirely alone, without
recourse to laboratories, libraries, learned journals, administrative
departments and those who staff them. It will be clear that in drawing on
these resources and those who work there, staff members who do so
respectfully and considerately will help maintain the spirit of helpfulness
that is essential for success, just as rude or inconsiderate behaviour
damages that spirit.
Having set out these three reasons for defining the university as by
its nature ethical, it is now possible to identify the most important
challenges facing universities in connection with the further
development of a global ethic. They are the inter-disciplinary and multi-
cultural development of a maximally inclusive, multicultural value
system as a contribution to the global ethics movement; the development
of a values-driven pedagogy which will incorporate the values of the
developing global ethic; and thirdly to develop leaders in any field
imbued with those values, so fitting them for a moral impact in a
globalizing, richly multi-cultural world.
The operations and structures of an ethically excellent, multi-cultural
university will embody and practice agreed, basic ethical values such as
those listed in the table above and avoid the opposites of those ethical