I’m not doing the “Ethics Briefing” that the UC machine keeps reminding me to do. “Ethics Briefing” is the name of an online course put in place by UC authorities after 2005, following a number of scandals at the top of the hierarchy, at a time of financial and fiduciary difficulties (polite language). The idea supposedly germinated in 2003, convenient date, a sort of back-dating that I would like to see confirmation of, such as documents, transcripts. In any case, all two hundred thousand plus employees of the university are required to complete this course whose sole objective is to familiarize them with a UC statement of ethics—a very short and simplistic statement at that—and raise their awareness of ethical issues re UC (or some such thing, I’m paraphrasing). Why do I refuse to do it?

One reason I don’t do it is the narrowness of the brief and the statement, which makes a joke of ethics, which I construe to be a dynamic valuation that criss-crosses all of my activities (including writing this).

Another reason is the negative eroding effect the existence of such demonstrations of ethics “compliance” has on the mission of universities. Granted part of the goal of the university is about narrowly-constructed research and economic development of a society, but this is not its whole mission, or rather it cannot be pigeon-holed, with accompanying bottom-floor ethics behavior of a narrow type (assuming the ethics statement and course are meant to affect behavior, or eliminate a certain set of behaviors). What of moral and political leadership? The little ethics brief belittles it by framing it as narrow, when ethics can’t be easily framed at all if not broadly. Secondly, there is the business of compliance, i.e. folding before, be pliant. I realize the university is neither the societas Jesu, where one was to obey without questions, nor a fascistic operation. But why compliance, as for motor vehicle rules, when in fact, there is nothing to obey, nothing to even admire and emulate, just a gesture taken to symbolize our awareness of the existence of a basic set of ethical issues and help. A gesture, i.e. the scanning of rules or principles and situations (adapted to each campus “culture,” another victim of this strategy of co-opting everything, including modern, fuzzy language, to further an agenda of compliance), followed by the clicking of a button.

The narrowness has much more irksome dimensions: does ethics compliance extend to larger issues, for instance salary equity, pension fund policies or investment policies and decisions, in which calculations are made which have deleterious impact on the situation of many employees?

As important as the what and why, there is also the way in which this is done. Why is this service contracted out to a private company specialized in personnel management? How much does the university pay for this service? what kind of bidding occurred? Can the university guarantee a minimal ethical behavior by this company and its shareholders? By the “university,” I mean what, the authorities? or the authority vested by the state in the Regents? but weren’t they the first to fail the real ethics test and replaced the much broader, unwritten moral test by a bogus, narrowly constructed “teaching” bit of machinery?

Another reason for my reaction to this piece of mind manipulation is the realization that “teaching” and “courses” of this kind become paradigmatic of the kind of education I just can’t understand. It’s one thing to have the DMV set up this kind of tools for convenience, it’s another to see a major university automate a minimalist ethical awareness as by magic.