Why we need ethical leadership in international HE

GLOBAL

Is Ethical Leadership in Crisis in International Higher Education or Not? The increasing reporting of leadership inadequacies in higher education institutions in glocal (local and global) geographic areas suggests that this may be due to leadership teams failing to adhere to the code of ethics.

COVID-19 is not the cause of the current malaise in science that is decades old. But new cases of financial mismanagement, sexual harassment, and unethical leadership are emerging during the pandemic. If anything, institutional leadership should be more vigilant and compassionate at this point.

Given that the focus is often on higher education institutions in developing country communities in terms of their inadequacies at various levels, this article reflects the dilemmas of ethical leadership in higher education institutions in Western democracies.

Science should mobilize and win back its voice as an advocate for truth, justice, and good faith. Stakeholder communities around the world should be encouraged to tackle cases of moral decline in the academic world and establish ombudsmen at the provincial, state and federal levels to monitor the commitment of leaders and their boards to high standards of integrity.

Unethical behavior

Some of the most recent cases of unethical behavior go back decades and have only recently caught media attention.

In North America, the spotlight last year drew attention to allegations of sexual harassment against Martin Philbert, former provost of the University of Michigan, and against Wayne John Hankey, former professor at the University of King’s College in Canada.

Martin Philbert’s sexual harassment behavior began during his time as an assistant professor and continued through his tenure as provost, which spanned two decades. The University of Michigan reached a $ 9 million settlement last November with eight women he sexually assaulted.

Wayne John Hankey was charged with sexual assault in a 1988 incident in February 2021, but is now facing multiple charges related to other previous incidents and is due to be tried next year.

In Australia, the case of former University of Adelaide Vice Chancellor Peter Rathjen shocked the college community when he was found guilty of serious misconduct, including sexual harassment.

After working at three Australian universities (Adelaide, Melbourne and Tasmania), it was nearly three decades before his sexual predatory behavior during the South Australian Independent Commissioner against Corruption investigation during his tenure as Vice Chancellor at the University of Adelaide made him the ” outrageous conduct ”.

Rathjen was found guilty of “sexually molesting and inappropriately touching two female colleagues after serving at the University of Adelaide in 2019”; “Serious sexual misconduct against [a woman] while he was Dean of Science between 2006 and 2008 “at the University of Melbourne and he was the subject of an independent investigation by the University of Tasmania, which apologized for failure to protect people during his tenure.

The former vice chancellor was also the subject of reports of his $ 277,000 travel bill.

Some University of Adelaide students want his signature scratched off their diplomas.

Financial mismanagement

Other cases include recent violations, including that of University of Manitoba’s law professor Jonathan Black-Branch, who was investigated while accepting a position at the University of Southampton as the new head of its law school.

A week after his appointment, a university spokesman said Black-Branch would no longer have the job amid concerns about financial mismanagement in Manitoba.

Add to this the financial crisis at Laurentian University in Canada, in which the university’s bankruptcy proceedings led to downsizing and program cuts that brought the university to a standstill. The Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario reported that the Laurentian situation was “due to administrative mismanagement and a lack of adequate funding from the provincial government.”

The university expert Alex Usher claims to question the lack of transparency about the financial situation of the university; and that “the mistake is in the management, period. Management’s job is to keep the ship afloat, and together they failed. The board also … “It is also the” task of the state government “to intervene actively and save the university.

Ethical education, accountability required

Given the growing list of ethical transgressions in the management of some international universities, critical questions arise: What made such transgressions possible? How should stakeholders demand accountability from presidents, vice chancellors, provosts, treasurers, and boards of directors? And how can the sense of impunity that protects executives’ transgressions be eliminated, making their organizational operations more transparent about finances and forms of harassment?

International university research agendas may also question whether there is a link between ongoing program cuts in the humanities as a first line of attack and the lack of morality and ethical behavior among stakeholders.

It could also examine how and when future generations of leaders will maintain and demonstrate ethical behavior, if not through their engagement with the critical discourses in the humanities.

It is encouraging to see that stakeholders are fighting back. One of the boldest protests against the lack of transparency in the selection process for college presidential candidates came from the Faculty Association of Memorial University in Canada.

The chairman of the faculty association asked how the president of a university could be selected for his suitability for office without careful examination and examination of his character in a public forum.

At Medicine Hat College in Alberta, Canada, the faculty association filed seven complaints related to contract negotiations, which found that “the university engaged in inappropriate conversations with its members, forcing them, and instructing them not to use the association on employment matters to get involved ”.

One final example: a professor in New Brunswick accused of “negligent misrepresentation” and that the president had “failed to keep promises to recruit him”. The case was cleared by the Court of Queen’s Bench Justice. It could set a precedent in terms of recruiting efforts to appoint academics, staff and students in various roles.

Greater transparency and scrutiny of leadership responsibility and accountability are essential to the initial selection and ongoing review of the suitability of university councils, rectors, rectors and vice-chancellors, especially given the range of violations that have occurred over the past year.

Ethical leadership is the least that international higher education stakeholders should expect. If not at universities, where ethics is still being studied – as the foreground for future academic, learning and professional activity – then where?

Dr. Fay Patel has over 30 years of academic, researcher and international academic advisor experience in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA, South Africa, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Patel contributed to the UNESCO forums (invited by UNESCO Bangkok) in Bangkok, Thailand and Chengdu, China on online learning, distance learning and MOOC design; as an external peer reviewer and workshop moderator in the World Bank program (at the invitation of the coordinator in Malaysia) for the education and development program for quality assurance in higher education in Bangladesh; and as Senior Case Manager at the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency in Australia.

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