Bok Established Program in Ethics; Princeton Scholar Takes the Helm

An academic program designed to promote professional ethics will move off the drawing board and into the classroom next year under the direction of a Princeton political scholar, the University announced yesterday.

Dennis Thompson, a former chairman of Princeton's politics department, has accepted a joint tenure position in the Department of Government and at the Kennedy School of Government.

Thompson will head an inter-faculty program conceived by President Derek C. Bok to prepare scholars to teach ethics.

The creation of the Program in Professional Ethics answers Bok's long-time concern that students in professional schools are not being properly taught how to behave ethically in their fields. In past annual reports on the teaching of law and medicine in America, Bok criticized the way ethics courses are taught at such professional schools.

In the annual report of 1983 on the United States legal system, Bok questioned whether law schools have adequately prepared students "with the larger problems that have aroused so much concern within society."

"At present, I know of no program in a leading university that prepares people adequately to teach such courses," Bok said in a prepared statement released yesterday.

Scholars either lack philosophical skills or training in the field in which they are teaching ethics, Bok said. He added that Harvard's program will teach scholars the skills they are missing.

"By meeting these needs, Harvard has the opportunity to offer serious preparation in an important area of instruction and research where no such preparation currently exists," Bok said.

The ethics program will likely teach recent Ph.D.'s or graduates of professional schools "applied ethics," said Government Department Chairman Robert D. Putnam. He said he expects that the program will begin next spring.

Putnam called Thompson the first professor of applied ethics at Harvard.

In the fall, Thompson will teach a course in ethics to undergraduates and offer a junior seminar, Putnam said.

Thompson's scholarship addresses questions of concern to public officials, suchas whether one should carry out a mistaken policyof a president one serves, Putnam said.

"He is an important political theorist," Putnamsaid, adding that it was a "coup" to lure Thompsonaway from Princeton, which tried very hard to keephim.

Thompson graduated summa cum laude from Williamand Mary. He was a graduate student at Harvard anda member of the Government Department's juniorfaculty until 1968, when he accepted a Princetontenure post. He also served as a consultant to theU.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics and othergovernment agencies.

Thompson could not be reached for comment lastnight