Spring 2001

(Originally published in the Spring 2001 edition of GONZAGA, the alumni publication.)

In my last President's Perspective, I introduced the four pillars of Jesuit education: 1) Jesuit and Catholic mission, 2) academic and professional excellence, 3) the humanities, and 4) a campus atmosphere promoting growth of the whole person. I began my discussion of these pillars with three of our five mission areas (faith, service, and justice). In this issue, I will examine the fourth and fifth mission areas: ethics and leadership.
With respect to the fourth mission area, Jesuit education has been from its inception devoted to
ethics. Two major principles characterize this concern: The silver rule and the golden rule. The silver rule ("do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you") can be briefly restated as "avoid unnecessary harms, and when harms are unavoidable, minimize them." The silver rule is generally
regarded as ethical minimalism. If someone should say, "I'm not altogether convinced that I should avoid unnecessary harms," my advice would be, "Run Bambi Run!" This principle is essential for the cultivation of basic civility (not to mention trust) within culture. When it is ignored or rejected, life becomes what Thomas Hobbs called, "brutish, ugly, and short."
The silver rule does not stop with the avoidance of unnecessary harms, and the minimization of unavoidable harms. It also takes seriously the necessity for keeping promises and avoiding unfairness.
Keeping promises is generally not complicated. It means being conscious of what one is promising, and
knowing a first step or a path toward keeping what is promised.
Fairness is more complicated as it requires balancing diverse stakeholder needs and wants. Needs are more important than "wants beyond needs" in the pursuit of fairness. Inasmuch as resources are
limited, one stakeholder's "wants beyond needs" may deprive other stakeholders of their needs. To complicate the matter further, one stakeholder may deserve more than another (because of time worked, quality of work, etc.). How can one sort out this confusion among needs, "wants beyond
needs," and just deserts. My shorthand method is to ask, "what does the other person mean by 'unfair'?" This helps me to understand the other's perspective of the line between needs and "wants
beyond needs" and the line between just deserts and "wants beyond just deserts." If these two lines can
be spotted, diverse stakeholders can be treated fairly and the common good actualized optimally.
Ethics in the Jesuit tradition embrace not only the silver rule, but the golden rule. As you know, the
golden rule states, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It is therefore far more
positive and encompassing than the silver rule. It goes beyond mere "avoidance of harm" to "doing good that one would want for oneself." It is therefore a fundamentally contributory principle which encourages altruism and benevolence as "rewards in themselves." The golden rule is the source of the
common good beyond mere justice. Justice is necessary to maintain civility, peace, and trust. The
golden rule animating the common good, is necessary for forgiveness, healing, care, and unity and
community among the world's people.
Gonzaga University cultivates these ideas not only in undergraduate ethics courses (in the philosophy and theology departments), but also in professional and graduate courses. Also, we have also started
an Institute of Ethics which has four objectives:
1. Ethics across the curriculum which is dedicated to helping professionals put five-minute illustrations
into their courses at the most strategic times (e.g., addressing the ethics of disclosure when teaching about assessment of liabilities in accounting class).
2. College students helping high school students to learn ethics.
3. Ethical outreach to the professional community, particularly to business management and engineers, (including interactive website, consulting, and continuing education).
4. Specially designed graduate and law courses in ethics.
Through these initiatives, we intend to become one of the foremost centers of principal-based ethics in the
United States.
The fifth and final mission area is leadership. It is really a result of the other four mission areas, academic and
professional competence, personal and interpersonal development, and skills and experience. When one initially
looks at this vast area of theoretical and practical competencies involving the mind and the heart, one might gasp, "so who can teach or mentor such a subject?!" Gonzaga's whole purpose and design is oriented toward teaching and mentoring this subject. For the last 114 years, Gonzaga has integrated professional with academic competence,
classroom experience with residence halls and extracurricular experience, humanities with mathematics and
science, mind with heart, ideas with ideals, and interior life with exterior life. Our current purpose is to optimize
this integration through a comprehensive leadership program that will bring together 23 other leadership programs
in the areas of academics, student life, extracurricular activities, internships, and the Gonzaga Alumni Mentoring
Program. Our two new co-directors of this program have designed a three-phased curriculum and are now
preparing to connect it with other leadership programs. They will begin operations in spring of 2002.
As you can see, Gonzaga remains true to its goal of becoming the No. 1 mission-oriented university (in its five
mission areas) in the United States. In the next issue of GONZAGA, I will take up the second pillar of Jesuit education: academic and professional excellence.