Exploring the role a modern research university should play as an ethical force and steward of the people
By: David Campbell
A new book by former Princeton University President Harold T. Shapiro explores the role the modern research university should play today as an ethical force and steward of society.
"A Larger Sense of Purpose: Higher Education and Society," published by Princeton University Press, is based on a series of lectures Professor Shapiro delivered in 2003 at the University of California in honor its former president, Clark Kerr.
In it, Professor Shapiro, who is professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton, draws from his 25 years’ experience leading major research universities to take on key topics of debate in higher education. He was president of Princeton from 1988 to 2001, and served as president of the University of Michigan from 1979 to 1988.
In a recent interview, Professor Shapiro said that today’s research university has two overriding and perhaps contradictory commitments: It has to support society at the same time as both servant and critic.
An institution like Princeton has a responsibility to provide education, research and other important contributions to society, but it also exists to challenge the very society that it upholds and nurtures. He expressed admiration and not a little surprise that society actually supports institutions that have as part of their mission to be critical of the status quo.
"We think it’s natural, but it’s very unnatural, and it’s an amazing thing from an historical point of view," he said.
Professor Shapiro said another topic that is of overriding interest to him and which he explores in his book is the question of what, if any, responsibility universities have for moral education.
"That seems to be something that doesn’t take up enough space in discourse on higher education," he continued.
In addition to what is taught in the classrooms, people also watch what universities do, so that the institutions’ actions themselves for example, their policies and practices for admissions, hiring of professors, promotions and tenure carry moral implications, and have to be thought through.
"Whose interests are served by those policies?" Professor Shapiro said. "Those questions are not asked often enough."
He said the western university concept originated around the 12th century, and has steadily evolved over time, never being the same thing for each subsequent generation.
Today, America’s research universities provide not only education, but are also a principal component of the nation’s scientific and scholarly enterprise, he said.
Professor Shapiro is chairman of the New Jersey Stem Cell Ethics Advisory Panel. He served as chairman of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission from July 1996 to October 2001, and from 1990 to 1992 was a member and vice chairman of President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

