Several weeks ago, I wrote about a basketball coach dismissed for using graphic language with his students. In response, a parent from another school posed the following question:

This is no idle question. High-school athletics increasingly are in the ethical crosshairs, as parents and educators face tough questions about the relationship of sports to learning, leadership, and character. So I put this question to Bill Curry, whose career in football has spanned 52 consecutive seasons and who once faced a defining incident of such “physical persuasion.”

Curry played pro ball with various National Football League teams, including the Green Bay Packers under the legendary Vince Lombardi. A former member of the American Football Coaches Association Ethics Committee, he now serves as a football analyst for ESPN and as head of Leadership Baylor at Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. But he’s best known for his award-winning role as head coach at the University of Alabama, where this incident occurred.

During the 1990 Sugar Bowl against the University of Miami, a flamboyant Alabama player named Prince Wimbley celebrated a terrific catch with a wild dance for the fans. The Miami team was well known for exhibitionism, but Curry had set a dignified, no-showboating standard at Alabama, so he lectured Wimbley on the sidelines. When Wimbley suddenly turned away to watch a play on the field, Curry reached out to his helmet and brought him back into eye contact.

Or at least that’s what Curry recalls. The television commentators, however, reported that Curry had yanked Wimbley’s face mask and swung him violently around — a serious offense if done by players to one another on the field due to the risk of injury. To this day, the story has stuck that Curry used excessive violence against Wimbley.

Not long ago, Curry told me, a blogger once again railed at him over this decade-old incident. Curry found a videotape of the 1990 broadcast before emailing the blogger — and was astonished to learn that “he was right.” What Curry remembered as an innocuous action was wholly unacceptable — and right there on the tape.

The point, says Curry, is that football is “a violent world” where even the best-intentioned coaches can get carried away. Lombardi, he recalls, never shied away from manhandling his players. And while he remembers his college coach at Georgia Tech as “a perfect gentleman” who “never would have touched any of us,” his high-school coach used plenty of profanity and would “smash him up against the wall” to make a point.

Are standards changing? In 2007, what should high-school coaches and administrators do? What should parents and school boards be demanding? Should the standard be, Don’t ever touch the players?

For Curry, it’s not that simple. “We’re dealing with some really complex questions,” he says. “We teach these oversized children to go out and smash each other,” he notes. So it’s not surprising that coaches, too, get physical. And that, Curry says, may not be all wrong. On one occasion as a coach, he recalls, he had to throw himself physically between two players who “were going to kill each other.” Curry himself came away with a bloody nose, but he managed to sit on top of the more violent of the two — though, he recalls, the player “could have thrown me over a building” — until things calmed down.

What he didn’t know was that another player was watching this bloody-nose incident. That young man was often “so full of anger” that Curry had to pull him off the pile to keep him from kicking others. “You got my attention,” the young man told Curry years later, “when you dove between [those two players] and got your face bloodied.” After that, he said, he had great respect for the coach. The young man, Curry says, went on to become a team captain, a successful businessman, and “an outstanding citizen.”

And that’s the point. How, as a nation, do we build outstanding citizens — well-educated individuals of good character? When they come to school already bright and virtuous, the task is not difficult. But when they come from backgrounds where violence reigns and athletes rule, how can we reach them?

Surely not through unthinking, habitual profanity and physical roughness. But go back to that opening question: Is a high-school coach ever allowed to use touch? Are there moments when it’s okay for a coach to get physical, or must we rule out any such behavior?

What do you think the coaching standard should be? Click here to send me your thoughts, and I’ll share them with Bill Curry and report back to you.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“I know it’s not performance-related. I know it’s not misconduct. What does that leave? Politics.”

WASHINGTON
An ethics scandal swirling around the treatment of military men and women at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has claimed the careers of the secretary of the Army and the head of the hospital.

Army secretary Francis Harvey was relieved of duty last week, the Washington Post reports, amid withering criticism by secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who was angry over reports that Harvey had not reacted aggressively to reports that the hospital had provided substandard care to military wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Harvey’s resignation, which the Post says was demanded by Gates, followed the dismissal of the hospital’s commander, two-star general George Weightman.

The Army then provoked additional criticism by appointing Gen. Kevin Kiley to serve as the interim head of Walter Reed. Kiley is accused of long ignoring complaints about deteriorating conditions at Walter Reed when he headed the facility from 2002 until 2004. The appointment of Kiley, who now serves as the Army’s surgeon general, was aborted a day later with the appointment of Maj. Gen. Eric Schoomaker as the new commander of Walter Reed, notes the Washington Post.

The firings follow a series of reports in the Post documenting substandard conditions at the hospital. What particularly outraged many, reports the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, were reports that war wounded were housed in a building with black mold on the walls and evidence of rodent infestation.

In addition, the series depicted recuperating soldiers and marines facing an unresponsive bureaucracy in their efforts to receive follow-up care.

According to a report from CNN, which featured a video tour of the facility as part of its Web-based coverage, workers last week were busy patching holes, fixing plumbing, and painting walls in Building 18, a former residential facility that had been used to house wounded and was the focus of the Post series.

Further controversy arose last week after soldiers at Walter Reed were told to prepare for morning inspections, something that is “unusual for soldiers … after Basic Training,” reports the Army Times. “Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one soldier, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the paper.

Soldiers at Walter Reed were also told “that they must not speak to the media,” according to the Army Times, with the Pentagon clamping down on media coverage and “suspending planned projects by CNN and the Discovery Channel.”

An analysis from Bloomberg says that the revelations about care at Walter Reed have prompted a series of investigations, including a promised task force by President Bush, and provided new ammunition for Democrats to attack the Bush administration. The Bloomberg report notes that the “political resonance” of the issue was reflected in the fact that President Bush used his weekly radio address to focus on the Walter Reed situation, as did Democrats in their response.

WASHINGTON
Ethics issues dominated news from Capitol Hill last week, with these stories topping the news:

• A proposal for an independent watchdog agency to oversee Congress appears to be foundering, according to a report from the Boston Herald. Massachusetts Rep. Michael Capuono, tapped by House speaker Nancy Pelosi to chair a task force investigating a proposal for establishing an independent panel, told the Herald, “There’s a lot of hesitancy in bringing in an outside agency that might truly be interested in headlines and really doesn’t understand what we do and don’t do.” Ethics reform was the centerpiece of the Democrats’ successful campaign to regain control of both houses of Congress, but the institution historically has been reluctant to surrender oversight of any of its operations to outsiders.
• House Republicans are leaning toward allowing Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) to sit on the Homeland Security Committee, according to a report from the Hill, a publication covering Congress. Jefferson was removed from his seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee last year after he was implicated, but not charged, in an FBI bribery probe. According to the Hill, House Republicans appeared to drop their initial opposition to Jefferson’s seat on Homeland Security as a tactical measure, making him “an ongoing and embarrassing target for the GOP.”
• Former congressman Bob Ney (R-Ohio) reported to a federal prison last week to being a two-and-a-half-year sentence on corruption charges related to gifts arranged by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who also is imprisoned now, the Associated Press reports. Ney pleaded guilty in October to trading influence for trips, donations, and other gifts.

LAGOS, Nigeria
Nigeria’s struggle with endemic corruption, including its legacy and a revived movement to cure it, was the focus of several stories in the word press this week. Among them:

• Newspapers in Nigeria have begun reprinting sections of a book, called “the most boring bestseller ever” by its author, that lays out in excruciating detail the financial toll corruption has taken on the nation, reports UPI. Former Nigerian Finance minster Ngozi Okonja-Iweala lists profits made by oil companies, where they were distributed within the nation, and where they allegedly disappeared. UPI reports: “As the truth comes out about the extent of corrupt practices both by the government and wealthy oil companies, Nigeria is getting on track for financial reform, albeit slowly.”
• Vigorous anticorruption enforcement has become symbolized by the unlikely persona of the boyish, bespectacled prosecutor Nuhu Ribadu, who, as head of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, has drawn praise even from political opponents, reports the Christian Science Monitor. While some have accused Ribadu, an ally of the current administration, of selectively uncovering corruption, most concede that his efforts have marked a turning point. The Monitor notes, for example, that before Ribadu took office, not one fraud case had been successfully prosecuted in 20 years, but to date Ribadu has engineered 130 graft convictions, including those of several state governors. Staff writer David Clark Scott concludes that even though Nigeria still is perceived as one of the most corrupt nations in the world, “what’s different now is the determination, backed by tougher laws and young judges and prosecutors, to make a change.”
• Associated Press writer Edward Harris, reporting from Lagos, writes that an observer can confirm that corruption is far from eradicated by sniffing the air, which is thick with smoke from diesel generators in businesses and walled residential compounds, running day and night because graft and mismanagement have left the power grid hopelessly erratic. The government acknowledges the problem and says it is working to increase generating capacity, but says nonpayment of bills and illegal taps into power and oil pipelines contribute to the electricity shortage. In 1979, Nigeria had 79 power generating stations, Harris reports, but “twenty years later, after a series of ruinous military governments, only 15 were working, producing 1,500 megawatts of power.”
• The political candidate who appears most likely to assume the Nigerian presidency is campaigning on a vigorous anticorruption platform, according to a report from the BBC’s Nigerian bureau. Umaru Yar’Adua, candidate of the governing People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which is backed by outgoing president Olusegun Obasanjo, is running on a seven-point platform that includes restoring the power grid and continuing antigraft efforts. “I think the level and proportion that corruption has taken in Nigeria, to the extent that it was threatening to become a national culture, needs to be fought vigorously and on all fronts,” Yar’Adua told the BBC.
• An international human rights agency has urged all candidates in the upcoming April presidential election to articulate their anticorruption agendas. The Lagos Day reports that Human Rights Watch is urging candidates to address corruption because it remains the root cause of persistent violence and poverty.
• Oil — by far Nigeria’s most abundant resource — ironically has become the symbol of the nation’s corruption-driven violence and destitution, according to a report by National Geographic writer Tom O’Neill. Touring desolate oil-plant shantytowns dotting the Niger Delta, O’Neill reports: “Nigeria has been subverted by the very thing that gave it promise — oil, which accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings and 80 percent of its revenue. In 1960, agricultural products such as palm oil and cacao beans made up nearly all Nigeria’s exports; today, they barely register as trade items, and Africa’s most populous country, with 130 million people, has gone from being self-sufficient in food to importing more than it produces. Because its refineries are constantly breaking down, oil-rich Nigeria must also import the bulk of its fuel. But even then, gas stations are often closed for want of supply.” He notes that the sense of “relentless crisis” in Nigeria has deepened now that armed rebels have stepped up attacks on oil facilities.

VIENNA
A United Nations report says that fake prescription medicines are widespread in developing nations, and the consequences are often deadly.

The BBC reports that the International Narcotics Control Board of the U.N. says up to half of medicines in developing nations are fake.

In such countries, many prescription drugs are sold in street markets and stalls, rather than in pharmacies, South Africa’s Independent reports.

Adding to the problem, according to the Pakistan Times, is the lack of laws governing sales of drugs — legal, genuine, or otherwise — on the Internet.

According to a summary of the report from Radio Netherlands, the fact that prescription drugs in developing nations are commonly bought from sources other than a pharmacy means that the buyer has no way of checking whether the drugs are genuine or if they have gone out-of-date and lost potency.

The Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation reports that counterfeit drugs and incorrectly labeled medicines have proven lethal in some cases, and notes that the U.N. report calls on developed nations to provide assistance to poor countries in order to fight the problem.

BEIJING, NEW DELHI, and SEOUL
Research fraud, emerging as a persistent problem in academia and business everywhere but persistently visible in Asia, was the focus of three stories last week:

• In China, the leading national science authority outlined plans to deal with what the official government news agency describes as “the rising number of scientific misconduct cases.” The Chinese Academy of Sciences, which oversees more than 100 research institutes, has established an ethics committee and has published a series of guidelines calling for greater transparency in scientific research, according to a report from the Xinhua news service. Two deans at top Chinese universities were fired recently for falsifying their résumés and fabricating research.
• Citing two recent cases involving allegations of data fabrication and plagiarism, a prominent Indian scientific society has called for the establishment of an independent ethics oversight body, according to a report of the Science and Development Network, which publishes a news site for developing nations. India’s Center for Scientific Values cites a major scientific report in which data were allegedly fabricated, and a plagiarism case in which the government allegedly plagiarized sections of a similar report from the United Kingdom.
• The president of Korea University resigned last week after only 56 days on the job. The Seoul-based paper Chosun Ilbo reports that Lee Pil-sang quit amid allegations that he plagiarized six research papers and published identical papers under different titles in two scholarly journals.

NEW YORK
U.S. federal investigators have charged 13 people, including current and former executives of Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Bear Stearns, with securities fraud in what authorities claim is a massive insider-trading ring.

The Financial Times reports that the executives charged in the case allegedly passed along news of impending mergers and acquisitions, as well as provided advance warning of stock upgrades and downgrades to traders for several hedge funds.

Investigators tell Time magazine that the scandal, which they describe as the biggest insider-trading ring since the 1980s, involved more than $15 million in investments and was particularly troubling because it involved blue-chip investors.

“This conduct didn’t occur in obscure boiler rooms, but rather at what are commonly considered ‘top-tier’ Wall Street firms,” Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the Division of Enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), told Time.

According to a report from Forbes, the string of arrests follows a long-term SEC probe of allegations that investment bank employees have been tipping off key hedge fund clients with inside information about upcoming transactions.

Hedge funds, speculative and often risky financial ventures largely restricted to wealthy investors, operate with loose oversight compared to more publicly accessible vehicles such as mutual funds. Some regulators have questioned the wisdom of loose oversight and called for increased hedge-fund scrutiny.

Hearings on hedge funds are scheduled this spring before the U.S. House of Representatives.

Bloomberg quotes David Becker, a former SEC general counsel now in private practice, as saying that incidents such as the insider-trading arrests “strengthen the hands of those who are urging greater scrutiny of hedge-fund activities and their sources of information.”

NEW YORK
The embattled chairman of the National Football League’s research committee on concussions resigned that position last week amid questions over his qualifications.

According to the New York Times, Dr. Elliot Pellman had been the subject of criticism because he had no specialized background in neurology and the findings published by his committee had been debated because they ran counter to results of research from scientists not affiliated with the league.

Pellman will retain his position as team doctor to the New York Jets and will remain as a member of the committee, UPI reported.

The New York Daily News reports that Pellman, who declined public comment on the issue, decided to step down because he felt he had become a distraction to the committee, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Concussions among football players have become a prominent ethics issue in recent months following a series of press reports in which former players say they are suffering various mental illnesses related to repeated head injuries.

Among the more visible cases are former New England Patriot linebacker Ted Johnson, who suffers from depression and memory loss, and former Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Andre Waters, who endured several concussions, suffered from depression, and eventually committed suicide.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the NFL’s concussion committee has been criticized as having minimized the effects and nature of concussions by skewing its data, a charge rejected as “totally false” by Dr. Andrew Tucker, a member of the committee since 1994 and the team physician for the Baltimore Ravens.

Some researchers are warning that the dangers of repeated concussions for football players are greater than previously thought, and that the possibility of future mental impairment extends to college and high school athletes as well.

NEW YORK
Institutional review boards, ethics panels that review research proposals with an eye toward protecting human subjects, are increasingly the target of complaints by faculty who complain that the process has spun out of control and hampers research in fields that could not conceivably pose a danger to participants, according to a report from the New York Times.

Reporter Patricia Cohen notes that institutional review boards, required at all institutions that receive money from most federal agencies, typically “sign off in advance on almost all studies that involve a living person, whether a former president of the United States or your own grandmother…. This results, critics say, in unnecessary and sometimes absurd demands.”

Cohen notes that a report from the American Association of University Professors cites requests by a review board asking a linguist studying a preliterate tribe to “have the subjects read and sign a consent form,” as well as a case in which a review board prohibited a white student researching ethnic issues from interviewing African-American Ph.D. candidates because the experience might be “traumatic” for them.

Among the most vocal objections are those from historians such as Joshua Freeman, who told the Times that review boards generally are based on a “medical model,” which he describes as “inappropriate and ignorant” when applied to history researchers.

While acknowledging that the largely self-enforced procedures at different institutions often are a hodgepodge, review board heads told the Times that it is wrong to assume that all nonmedical research is safe for human subjects.

At the same time, even defenders of the process note that it can change the nature of research by scaring off investigators who lack the time or clout to navigate the complexities of review board oversight.

From the Pew Research Center:

“Social trust is a belief in the honesty, integrity and reliability of others — a ‘faith in people.’ It’s a simple enough concept to describe. But it’s never been easy to figure out who trusts, or why.

“A new Pew Social Trends Survey … found that whites are more trusting than blacks or Hispanics. People with higher family incomes are more trusting than those with lower family incomes. The married are more trusting than the unmarried. The middle-aged and the elderly are more trusting than the young. People who live in rural areas are more trusting than those who live in cities.

“By contrast, the survey also found that there are some demographic and political traits that have little or no correlation to levels of social trust. Men and women; Republicans and Democrats; liberals and conservatives; Protestants and Catholics and the secular — all of these groups have roughly similar levels of trust.

“These responses have fluctuated very little during the four decades that survey research organizations have been asking this question, save for a period in the 1990s when measured levels of interpersonal trust dipped for a number of years, triggering a flurry of speculation and scholarship about the reasons for the decline. But since then, social trust has rebounded to roughly the same level it had been before the trough.

“The new Pew … provides a look at how different demographic groups responded to a battery of three questions about social trust:

• “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people? Some 45% of respondents said most people can be trusted.
• “Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance, or would they try to be fair? Some 59% of respondents said most people try to be fair.
• “Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves? Some 57% of respondents said most people try to be helpful.

“…Cross-national surveys have found that the highest levels of social trust are in the homogeneous, egalitarian, well-to-do countries of Scandinavia, while the lowest levels of trust tend to be found in South America, Africa and parts of Asia. In these multi-national comparative surveys, the U.S. population ranks in the upper middle range of trust.

“…In addition to the demographic groups highlighted at the start of this report, there are other segments of the population in which significant differences emerge on the question of trust. Among them:

“Education: Some 50% of college graduates have high levels of social trust, compared with 28% of those with a high school education or less.

“Social/economic class: Some 50% of those who describe their household as professional or business class have high levels of social trust, compared with 30% of those who describe themselves as working class and 18% among those who describe themselves as the struggling class.

“Military experience: Some 46% of men with military experience (either as veterans or currently in the armed services) have high levels of social trust, compared with 35% among men who have never served in the military.

“Voting history: People who voted in the last presidential election are nearly twice as likely as people who didn’t vote (40% compared with 23%) to have a high level of social trust….”

“The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right he claims for himself.”

– Robert Ingersoll (U.S. lawyer and orator, 1833-1899)