Word: cost-benefit
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...university's "four essential freedoms" is stirring and convincing, if not refreshing. The second level focuses on the methods the university should employ to both safeguard those values and exert positive influence on society. This dominates most of the book and can summed up by the words "cost-benefit analysis." The interplay between the two levels proves far from satisfying and raises several disturbing questions...
...then, did Harvard rush to engage in such a morally ambiguous venture? A cost-benefit analysis: "After consulting with our colleagues and with Iranians of differing political persuasions, we concluded that the possibilities for achieving useful results outweighed the risks involved. Though reasonable people may disagree with this assessment, the factors involved seem sufficiently imponderable that few would consider us morally derelict for proceeding." This case offers an interesting interpretation of neutrality...
...that institutions should have neither friends nor enemies, only interests. This notion lies behind his plea for neutrality in the nonacademic realm: a university must protect its vested interests for the sake of academic freedom. Thus he focuses on method instead of effect; thus he strives to make detached cost-benefit analyses; thus his motives and his morals are in the end utilitarian. But there is no organic, causal connection between interests and ideals--unless one is rationalized...
...there. The Harvard Corporation, though, has many investment choices. As Bok points out, drawing the line in such cases is difficult. For example, how can a university decide what comprises "tainted" money or business practices? Sometimes, though, considerations of morality might outweigh considerations of consistency, to use a cost-benefit analysis. And because the Corporation has engaged itself (affirmatively) in certain companies, it might examine its "duties...
...easing of "primary" air-quality standards, which would directly affect the health of Americans. And in spite of business's claims that the tab for cleaner ah-has been reduced productivity, the new bill does not go along with a demand that additional antipollution measures be subjected to cost-benefit analyses. Such tests would try to determine whether the extra benefits to society derived from, say, putting smokestack "scrubbers" on coal-burning plants are really worth then-cost...