Professor John Kennedy
Chair, Committee on Professional Ethics
American Sociological Association
Dear Professor Kennedy:
Thanks so much for the giving me the opportunity to provide input
to COPE on the draft of the proposed revision of the ASA Ethics Code.
Due to time constraints my comments must be relatively brief.
COPE members should feel free to email me at case@csulb.edu for
clarification or comment on any aspect of my input. As I previously
indicated to you, I would be available to appear before the committee, the
committee's schedule permitting, in Washington, D.C on October 12.
I have excerpted sections of the proposed code; my comments follow
the excerpted sections.
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ETHICAL STANDARDS
7. Non-exploitation
(a) Sociologists do not seek or coerce personal, economic, or
professional advantages from persons over whom they have
supervisory, evaluative, or other authority such as students,
supervisees, employees, or human subjects.
My comment on section 7(a) is relatively minor. I would argue that this
section is too limited. Yes sociologists do not seek or use various
coercive tactics over persons that they have authority over, but I would
also argue that they have the same ethical obligations re those who
they do not have authority over; in other words, the ethical obligation
here should not discriminate between symmetrical versus asymmetrical
relationships. It is wrong to exploit a colleague, a fellow professor
with whom one may have a symmetrical relationship as compared to a
colleague one has an asymmetrical relationship with. I also find it
interesting that in the examples that you give in this section "...such as
students...", etc., you exclude professors. Why? Sociologists
have asymmetrical as well as symmetrical relationships with professors
that can be quite exploitative.
(b) Sociologists do not engage in sexual relationships with
persons over whom they have supervisory, evaluative, or other
authority such as students, supervisees, employees, or human
subjects.
I am most concerned about section 7(b). Section 7 deals with non-
exploitation. Clearly the document communicates that sociologists
should not engage in sexual relationships with those they have
authority over because they are defined as exploitative. No other
reasons are cited for such a position. Is this really what COPE wishes
to communicate? That asymmetric relationships are by definition
exploitative? That professor-student sexual relationships are
by definition exploitative? If so, such thinking represents gross
stereotyping and reflects the kind of social control mechanisms
that have been traditionally used to stigmatize those who cross
sexual boundaries, particularly boundaries dealing with asymmetrical
relationships.
Clearly those who have been offended by interracial, interclass,
and same sex relationships have attempted to stigmatize such
relationships by defining them in categorical terms as exploitative.
Black men have been a priori defined as exploiting white women;
white men exploiting black women; lower class women exploiting
upper class men and vice-versa and so on and so on ad nauseum. It is
such stereotypical thinking that we supposedly try to help our students
transcend. In my teaching, I refer to Buber's framework- going from
I-it to I-thou relationships. The framework that COPE employs is
pure I-It thinking, e.g., you have a student-prof relationship or any
organizationally based asymmetrical relationship and
therefore one knows for sure that if there is a personal sexual component
it must be exploitative. Please! We need to be upfront
and honest here. What we appear to have here are people who are
offended by student-prof relationships and other similar type asymmetric
relationships and instead of saying that such relationships are unethical
because they find them offensive they construct the relationships as being
intrinsically exploitative..
Such a dynamic has been most blatantly the case re attempts at social
control of homosexual relationships. Maybe COPE
members remember Anita Bryant and her Save Our Children campaign?
Ban homosexuals as teachers to stop them from exploiting children;
save homosexuals so they should stop exploiting themselves. We know that
such rhetoric was a guise for degrading homosexuals because
the "good ethical Christians" were offended by them just as today many who
are offended by same-sex marriage put it in a framework of defense of
heterosexual marriage.
I hope the COPE members see the kind of thinking they are embracing.
COPE members must be aware if they have been around academia for
any significant period of time that many academics have met their
spouses in the context of teaching; that many academic sociologists
engaged in intimacies with their spouse in an asymmetric context.
Does COPE really want to communicate to said professors and their
wives or husbands and their children that they had engaged in exploitative
relationships? I would expect that even some members of
COPE may have married an ex-student; engaged in a romantic relationship
prior to the ending of teacher-student relationship; continued in a
romantic relationship after being promoted to a higher professorial rank
while their significant other was now at a lower rank, etc.
If COPE members have been previously aware of the existence of
such relationships and/or been involved in such relationships and
felt that said relationships were ethical, do these Cope
members now feel comfortable putting on such a breastplate of
righteousness and framing such relationships as exploitative?
I do not deny that such situations may be quite difficult to deal with
ethically. However, I would hold applying categorical judgments is not
ethical but rather an ethical cop out. Ethically engaged persons struggle
with such issues by applying a framework as the one that exists in the
next subsection (7c) dealing with sexual harassment or by dealing with
them in the context of conflicts of interests as is dealt with in section
9.
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Section 9 follows.
9. Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of interest arise when sociologists' personal or financial
interests prevent them from performing their professional work in
an unbiased manner. In research, teaching, practice, and service,
sociologists are alert to situations that might cause a conflict
of interest and take appropriate action to avoid the situation or
disclose it to appropriate parties.
Section 9 is excellent. It puts the sociologist in the role to
taking personal responsibility in the avoidance of such conflicts.
It does not focus on sexual relationships as some how representing
a wholly different kind of personal relationship. In other words,
COPE did not cite any other specific forms of relationships that might
be exploitative as needing special attention. Why not include
financial relationships specifically in section 7, friendships,
close personal relationships? There is no need to have a special
section dealing with sexual exploitation. Exploitation should be
dealt with, whether it is sexual or non-sexual; asymmetric or
non-asymmetric.
In addition, section 7b reflects the same problem as reflected in section
7a. b appears to logically follow from a since a does not deal with
symmetric sexual relationships that are exploitative. Why not?
Because symmetric exploitative relationships are not offensive?
And why in b are professors not mentioned as being subject to sexual
exploitation? Because professor sexual relationships even if they
be asymmetric are less likely to offend?
Of course, an unstated assumption that may have led to section 7b
may be that sociologists ethical standards should be the same
as medical doctors, as the medical profession, in which there are
categorical bans on patient-doctor relationships. If the COPE
intention was to apply the medical ethics framework, COPE failed
since medical ethics do not sanction, do not view medical doctor-
medical student relationships as inherently exploitative and unethical.
According to my knowledge, it is only doctor-patient relationships
that are banned and such relationships reflect only a small
proportion of the asymmetric relationships medical doctors are
a part of every day. The COPE proposed revision is Draconian
in this area as compared to other professions. Does the ASA
really want to go to the forefront of moral sexual entrepreneurship?
I certainly hope not.
Finally, in the last paragraph of the Introduction of the revised code,
the following is stated: "Personal activities having no connection
to or effect on sociologists' performance of their professional
roles are not subject to the Code of Ethics." Well stated, but not
applied in section 7. Sociologists-professors who integrate their
sexual activities into their work are in extreme ethical-moral risk.
Couples who segregate their private life from their work life should
be left alone. Police who invade the privacy of the bedroom in seeking out
sexual dissidents are in violation of basic human ethics irrespective
of the Hardwick decision which legally permits them to do so. The ASA
should do nothing which would function to devalue personal privacy and
affirm a Big Brother mentality.
Sincerely
Barry M. Dank, Ph.D., Professor
Department of Sociology
California State University
Long Beach, CA. 90840
310-985-4236
case@csulb.edu
and
Coordinator, Conference of Academics for Sexual Equity
Founder and Moderator, Academic Sexual Correctness-l (ASC-L)
Member, Executive Committee, National Conference on Applied Ethics