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The faculty in its finery. Photograph by Christopher S. Johnson

In universities much is said about academic freedom, little about duty. In Academic Duty (Harvard University Press, $29.95), Donald Kennedy '52, Ph.D. '56, Bing professor of environmental science and president emeritus of Stanford, asks faculty members and administrators to adopt tougher standards of responsibility--to students, to universities, and to the public. A lot of what goes on in universities is mysterious to outsiders. "The missing information," writes Kennedy, "amounts to a lesion in accountability, which I think has much to do with the rising chorus of national discontent with higher education."

The disparity between the faculty's role as governors of the institution and their role as salaried employees delivering services invites a question: who is making up the rules of engagement for faculty? The answer is not nearly as clear as most people would suppose. Indeed, the level of control faculty members have over their own conditions of employment once led a university trustee, used to more hierarchical settings, to exclaim, "The inmates are running the asylum!"

In that unflattering metaphor there is a grain of uncomfortable truth. Faculty commitments are governed by tradition and understanding rather than by firm rules; there are no time clocks, and nobody checks up. The difficulty is that whereas understanding was once widely shared and conformity nearly universal, the press of outside activities and the increasing heterogeneity and complexity of the university have tended to dissolve both. Writing of the presence of faculty members at Harvard during reading and examination periods, Henry Rosovsky claimed in his 1991 report to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences: "In the past [that need] was a well understood aspect of our social contract. Judging by the empty corridors and the difficulties I used to have in reaching my colleagues in January and May, we can safely assert that this aspect of the social contract is no longer honored."

Later in the same report, Rosovsky described the crux of the matter. The faculty, he claimed, "has become a society largely without rules, or to put it slightly differently, the tenured members of the faculty--frequently as individuals-- make their own rules. Of course, there are a great many rules in any bureaucratic organization, but these largely concern less essential matters. When it concerns our more important obligations--faculty citizenship--neither rule nor custom is any longer compelling...as a social organism, we operate without a written constitution and with very little common law. That is a poor combination, especially when there is no strong consensus concerning duties or standards of behavior."

Critics of the modern university have, not surprisingly, leapt on this lack of administrative or external control as evidence that the academy is indeed an asylum in the hands of the inmates. Yet there are powerful reasons for the degree of freedom that faculty members enjoy. Creativity does not prosper, nor does entrepreneurial initiative flourish, under firm bureaucratic control. Scholars need a loose rein if they are to be at their best. Furthermore, our colleges and universities are full of conscientious, dedicated people who manage, without visible rules, to fulfill and exceed their obligations, both to their students and to their own intellectual interests. Nevertheless, given the present level of external criticism, it is likely that more efforts at specifying obligations and enforcing compliance will be forthcoming. The alternative to internal reform, with active faculty participation, is apt to be an intensified drive for external accountability. Most members of the academic community will surely prefer a social contract revived from within.

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