By FASPE Chair David Goldman
We are inundated with attacks on universities, access to books and the arts; attacks on immigrants, the availability of habeas corpus and fundamental rights to due process; attacks on funding international programs, including everything from USAID to Voice of America; attacks on science, scientific research, and on science-based medicine, itself; attacks on law firms, judges and the entire proposition of three coequal branches of government; attacks on non-profit organizations and philanthropy; attacks on the European Union, Canada and Ukraine. The zone is flooded.
Is flooding the zone a tactic, diverting our attention from any one particular attack? Or is it a strategy, expressing a hope that, for example, the Supreme Court will not rule against all the attacks such that even a low success rate will produce lasting change?
What we know is that all these attacks are causing stress—stress on the judicial system, stress on the legislative branch, stress on all of us and on our ability to take it all in.
And, it is causing stress on the ethical underpinnings of our professions. What do I as a doctor or pastor do when immigration officials enter sanctified places of prayer or medical treatment? What do I as a doctor do when science-based medical treatments are challenged? What do I as an educator or librarian do when I am told that certain books are offensive and must be metaphorically burned because they teach a particular history—not because that history is inaccurate but because it is uncomfortable to particular readers? What do I as a business executive (or any employer) do when I am told that hiring policies that I believe are fair and desirable will jeopardize my company’s government contracts? What do I as a journalist do when I fear that there will be retribution for covering certain stories or angles? What do I as a civil servant do when I am told that my carrying out my duties is partisan and threatens the loss of my job?
Part of the problem with this stress on the professions and the professionals is that there is no playbook; there are not necessarily responses to be found in some hypothetical section 3.48(b) of some “rules of professional ethics.”
I offer three thoughts:
- Now is the time for individual ethical leadership based on individual north stars. Those with the capacity to have impact, including our professionals, must harken to their ethical grounding and act accordingly, even at hypothetical risk.
- There is power in collective ethical behavior. We have seen the result when law firms decided to go it alone or when universities felt they had no choice but to go forward without assistance. There is power if wielded collectively through professional organizations, by the leaders of institutions, by professionals speaking with one voice and not seeking to gain some kind of favor by cutting the best available deal.
- We all learn through joint conversation—through identifying best practices, by brainstorming effective responses, by testing work-arounds, by establishing priorities. And even through commiseration and storytelling.
None of the above is a discussion of politics or partisanship. Instead, I talk about responses to threats to our professions and to the right to practice ethically within them. Ethical leadership is required by acknowledging the ethical stress, yet acting through individual ethical commitments and relying on the comfort and effectiveness of collective action.
"Considering Professional Ethics" is a monthly essay shared in the FASPE e-newsletter.
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