Bok, who will be leading one of next year's sections, says she has long been interested in encouraging ethical awareness among students. Quoting Samuel Johnson, she says the foundation of a "moral philosophy applied to the use of life" should be an integral part of the liberal arts education.

As a member of the board of directors of the Hastings Center, Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, Bok joins Paul Freund, Loeb University Professor Emeritus and 19 other advisers in lending support to the center's goal of establishing a national information center on ethics.

The Hastings Center, which is based in New York, provides information on biomedical ethics to universities and congressional legislators, sponsors lectures, and runs programs in ethical research and development. Bok is currently co-directing a two-year Project on the Teaching of Ethics for the center. The project committee will present a report in a year-and-a-half on what universities are offering in the way of ethics courses in undergraduate and pre-professional curricula. Freund and President Bok are among the advisers to the project.

Harvard's own professional schools display an inconsistency in their ethics curricula that would make an interesting study in itself. Within the past four years, several new courses on professional ethics have been started at the Medical School. Dorothy Rackemann, administrative assistant to the dean of the Med School, says she has noticed an increased interest in ethics by students in the last few years, although she hasn't seen any over-whelming demand for courses.

At the Law School, this year's graduates will be the first to have completed the school under a new academic regulation requiring every student to take at least one course in legal ethics before being given a degree. Instituted in the fall of 1975, the requirement was started because "it was felt that our graduates should have some sense of practical and professional problems as practicing lawyers," Andrew L. Kaufman '51, professor of Law, says.

Law students taking the ethics requirement may choose between 11 different sections, each with a slightly different orientation. Topics offered include professional responsibility, legal ethics and the criminal lawyer, public interest and the private lawyer, and tax practice.

Instead of the lecture ethics course, students may elect to take "Introduction to Advocacy," an intensive field course in which they receive on-the-job training in applied ethics.

Most students questioned say they feel it is a good idea to require ethics in the Law School, but few feel they have become more ethically oriented as a result of completing the requirement.

"By this point in life, people either have or haven't developed a sense of ethics," Donald K. Schott, a first-year student, says.

Christopher L. Goff, a third-year student, says, "People generally agree that the requirement is a failure. It's very boring. All it does is teach the Canon of Ethics, a set of rules required for the bar exam, Theoretically, it's a good idea to teach ethics, but I don't think the course was worth two credits."

Across the river at the Business School, only one course, offered jointly with the Divinity School, is designed specifically for fostering an awareness of business ethics. Donald Roberts '70, director of the office of MBA program administration, does not feel that the Business School is deficient in ethics, however. He says that many ethical questions are raised in the required curriculum, by virtue of the fact that "one can't divorce ethical issues from the rest of business."

The one ethics course that is offered, "Ethical Aspects of Corporation Policy," was begun this year, in response to student interest in business ethics seminars offered by Preston N. Williams, Houghton Professor of Theology and Contemporary Change, over the past several years.

John B. Matthews, Wilson Professor of Business Administration and Williams' co-lecturer, says the current enrollment of 30 students does not indicate "tremendous popularity" but says he anticipates more interest next year.

For the serious seeker of ethics, there is no better place at Harvard than the Divinity School. A separate "Ethics" section in the catalogue list a total of 18 courses, with about two-thirds focusing on "applied ethics," rather than ethical theory.

Ranging from Ethics 110, "Ethics for the Professional" to Ethics 180, "Patterns of Moral Advice in Contemporary Popular American Culture," ethics courses at the Divinity School are far from being exclusively religious.