The Congressional Education and Workforce Committee recently issued a report highlighting the rise of radical antisemitism in American higher education. It noted the persistent failure of our country’s foremost universities to recognize and take shared responsibility for the rise in Jew-hate that has spiraled out of control across many of our nation’s college campuses. 

The reach of academia extends far beyond the campus, defining and shaping future cultural norms. Ethical lapses in institutions of higher learning can contribute to and, even more dangerously, themselves become harbingers of societal decay. A notable example of this was brought to public attention by a meeting in February 1976 at the Smithsonian Belmont Conference Center in Maryland to address ethical failures in human medical research. It was convened to respond to outrage over three instances of scientific atrocities and unethical human subject research practices: that committed by Nazi scientists against Jews; the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where researchers withheld treatment from incarcerated black men infected with syphilis; and a Sloan-Kettering study in which Jewish residents of the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn were injected with live liver cancer cells.¹Nagai H, Nakazawa E, Akabayashi A; The creation of the Belmont Report and its effects on ethical principles: a historical study. Monash Bioeth Rev. 2022; Nov 10;40(2):157-170. doi: 10.1007/s40592-022-00165-5; Tobin MJ; Fiftieth anniversary of uncovering the Tuskegee syphilis study: the story and timeless lessons. Am J Respire Crit Care Med. 2022; May 15;205(10):1145-1158. doi: 10.1164/rccm.202201-0136SO; Vernon LF; Tuskegee syphilis study not America’s only medical scandal: Chester M. Southam, MD, Henrietta Lacks, and the Sloan-Kettering research scandal. J Health Ethics. 2020; 16(2). doi.org/10.18785/ojhe.1602.03.  

The meeting resulted in the adoption of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research National Research Act (1974), followed by the Belmont Report (1979). Taken together, these  formally codified three fundamental ethical principles that would henceforth guide human research: Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice.²Nakazawa E, Akabayashi A; The creation of the Belmont Report and its effects on ethical principles: a historical study. Creation of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) and a system of mandatory-imposed checks and balances  to ensure that institutions engaging in human subject research adhere to ethical and safe practices and are in compliance with federal, state and institutional regulations followed in 1981.³McNair L; Ethical and regulatory oversight of clinical research: the role of the institutional review board. Exp Bill Med (Maywood). 2022 April;247(7):561-566. doi.org/10.1177/15353702221078216.

As affirmed in the area of medical research practice, ethical decision-making as a core and fundamental principle provides a firm foundation for pedagogy, scientific research, and curriculum and department development. Misdefined, misused, or misapplied, this principle can be worn away, can be dismissed, and can be discarded in favor of less rigorous review principles that use measures to benefit other independent factors, including social and political indoctrination. Polarized fields of academic study are particularly vulnerable.

The same is surely applicable to antisemitism at colleges and universities. Today, there is no national framework of ethical principles to guide our institutions of higher learning. University presidents and their governing boards have ignored and avoided their moral obligation to adhere to benchmarks of academic integrity and academic and behavioral excellence. In addition to escalating antisemitism, many of our universities have overseen a decline in admission and curricular standards, and a disappearance of meaningful disciplinary processes. Instead, many campuses have become arenas for championing the causes of one group over another, replacing how to think with what to think.  

As currently constituted, oversight in higher education is designed to serve and protect the institution rather than preserve academic integrity or protect students. Colleges and universities focus on mitigating institutional legal and financial risk, ignoring such broader ethical issues as academic dishonesty, plagiarism, falsification of data, and ideologically-driven activist teaching. Moral governance of U.S. colleges and universities is restricted to financial conflicts of interest. Such narrow focus on procedural compliance and neglect of broad ethical standards creates fertile ground for advancing domestic and foreign geopolitical agendas and sowing division and disruption. 

Though misconduct in teaching and research has been documented for over a half-century, academic and cultural acceptance of declining rigor and eroded academic norms and ethical standards is a relatively new phenomenon.⁴Zuckerman H. Deviant behavior and social control in science. Sugaring E (ed.)    Deviance and Social Change. Beverly Hills: SAGE Publications. 1977; 87-138; Zuckerman H; Norms and deviant behavior in science. Sci, Tech, & Hum Val. 1984; 9(1):7-13. The shift away from liberal plurality toward support for propaganda-driven education and instruction, with an aim to graduate students as agents of social change, is intentional and calculated. Many of our revered institutions have replaced traditional course curricula with others that prioritize and champion cultural transformation.⁵Macfarlane B; The ideology of crisis in higher education. High Educ Quart. 2024 Feb;78(4). doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12500; Magness PW, Waugh D; The hyper politicization of higher ed: trends in faculty political ideology, 1969-present. The Indep Rev. 2022;27(3). This is especially true in Middle Eastern Studies Departments. 

Perhaps the problem can be addressed by applying a set of core ethical principles similar to those that went into the creation of the Belmont Report 45 years ago. 

A commission made up of academic thought-leaders and ethicists should be similarly convened to construct, draft, and provide to institutions of higher learning a framework of mandatory code of conduct processes and procedures, as well as a system of guardrails to guide administrative decision-making, teaching, research, curriculum development, and admissions. 

Such a set of guiding principles could address and reign-in biases that have, over decades, become embedded into academic and research-focused leadership and administration, and currently guide department and curriculum creation, faculty hiring and tenure practices, and application and execution of teaching intended to promote ideology-driven content rather than fact and data-driven content. Creation and implementation of a system of checks and balances paralleling that which is compulsory for institutions engaged in human subject research, including mandated use of the widely accepted Institutional Review Board model, will serve to foster a culture of integrity, and maintain – as core requirements for higher education and federal funding – merit-based scholastic pedagogy and academic investigative research rooted in fundamental scientific principles.

It’s time for institutions of higher learning to clean house. Following Belmont Report Principles of Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice, a similar Mandate of Guiding Principles should guide all of academia, overseen directly by individual educational institutions that benefit from federal funding. Such a system would codify, ensure, and enforce Maximal Educational Benefit at Minimal Risk, Performance-Based Equal Opportunity, and Bias Neutrality. 

Adoption of this well-established and well-honored internal model of ethical oversight into our institutions of higher learning will raise all boats.