All the cobbler's children I ever knew had shoes-shoes made by someone else. But, once upon a time, cobblers must have been too busy making enough money to feed their children to make shoes for them. Hence, the old saying.

Academics do not have the same excuse for ignoring their own ethics. They do, however, have others. As I prepared this issue, for example, I worried that non-academics would find the subject too parochial. A number of my colleagues said something like: "Academics already have a reputation for spending too much time looking at their navel." The only reason I perservered was that, when I mentioned the topic to non-academics, what I heard was something like a rousing, "It's about time!" So, the subject of this issue is academic ethics, what professors (and other college teachers) should do, how they fail to do it, and what can be done about it.

We begin with a university president, Diether H. Haenicke, chiding academics for devoting so little study to their own ethics when they spend so much time studying everyone else's. No doubt he would have little sympathy for what that old saying about the cobbler's children implies. If the children need shoes, they should have them. And, he argues, they certainly need shoes.

Prof. Haenicke's piece is not likely to have a calming influence on any academic who reads it. I, for example, cannot help responding that Perspectives has not ignored questions of academic ethics. All the research scandals mentioned in our last issue involved university researchers, academics by any definition.

My guess is that Prof. Haenicke would not be very impressed with my response. Of course, academics have discussed particular academic scandals over the years. The Chronicle of Higher Education (the ivy tower's equivalent of Wall Street's journal) has regularly reported this case of plagiarism or that case of research fraud. But we academics have not thought of these individual "scandals" as part of a more general problem. Instead, we have talked about "a few rotten apples."

Or, at least, that's what we did until very recently. 'I'hat seems to be changing. For example, a Chronicle article of February 1, 1989 carried the title "Rash of Ethical Lapses Spurs Colleges to Study Their Moral Responsibilities." The article reported a pattern of wrongdoing among academics-or, at least, a pattern of wide-ranging criticism of academics as a group. The article also reported that academic ethics is "becoming a hot topic for books, reports, and conferences." The litany of problems is sobering: drug use, conflict between athletic programs and education, racism ,loss of intellectual independence because of participation in economic development or industry research, sexual harassment, discrimination try hiring, research fraud, friendship between professor and students, underwork, neglect of students.

The Chronicle was nonetheless hopeful. Two books on the subject of academic ethics are now in press fan well as three, ProfScam, Personal Fouls, and Saints and Scamps, that have, recently appeared).The Graduate School of the City University of New York is offering a new course entitled "Academic Ethics." There have already been several national conferences on academic ethics. A new field of applied ethics, academic: ethics, seems to he taking shape. Whether it will be a field of professional ethics remains to be seen. But our other two pieces seem to lead in that direction.

In one, Michael Sing, a professor of law, asks how much responsibility academics should have for the misconduct of other academics (whether colleagues or students). Should a professor have a professional duly to report the wrongdoing of other academics? While he never actually answers tire question, he dues lay out the chief considerations on both sides. fie also draws an analogy with the professional duty he has as a lawyer. Why, he wonders, should he not have the same duty as a professor?

Seng's piece, like Haenicke's, is concerned with substantive rules that do or at least .should, govern the conduct of every academic. Our third piece-Icy Robert Ladenson, a CSEP associate-lakes up a question of procedure. Academics have traditionally insisted drat academic freedom requires that faculty sit in judgment of their own colleagues on all important matters, that is to say, on everything from decisions to hire, notion, or promote to decisions to punish for wrongdoing. Ladenson nonetheless argues that fairness seems to require that many of these individual personnel decisions be delegated to .soma impartial person outside the institution. His model is labor arbitration, though ho might have cited instead the centralized disciplinary agencies of some professions.

We have rounded out this issue with our letters to the editor, our first ad, and the usual range of announcements (including some squeezed out of the last issue). We would like to have suggestions from our readers for topics for future Perspectives.