Who Teaches Ethics? an Inquiry

This paper explores the role of ethics in higher education by examining the academic training and departmental home of professors who teach courses in ethics. In particular, it examines the extent to which individuals teaching courses related to ethics have formal disciplinary education either in philosophy or in religion, the two academic disciplines that historically have been most closely associated with the formal study of ethics. Thus, our aim is empirical rather than prescriptive. Academic disciplines provide an intellectual community for those engaged in similar research and sharing teaching interests. Disciplines serve a number of functions related to the support of the academics who participate in teaching within the discipline. The intellectual community typically sponsor leads to conferences and journals that further the knowledge base in the discipline, provide channels for the dissemination of knowledge among the practitioners in the discipline, and an opportunity for professionals to network with and learn from each other. While many professors in the U.S. teach ethics, it is not at all clear whether those teachers are members of a common academic community. Our research explores the degree to which those teaching ethics are identified with a discipline such as philosophy or religion, or whether their primary professional identity lies in another discipline. Our hypothesis is that a significant number of those teaching ethics are primarily affiliated with an academic domain other than ethics, and simply teach a course or two in applied ethics problems within that primary academic domain. By gathering data on the professors in American colleges and universities that contain the word “ethic” or “moral” in the title and collecting the terminal degrees of those professors and their current