But David J. Vogel, professor of business and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, says he does not consider individual ethics courses to be of any educational value. If business school students are unable to recognize ethical issues in their other fields of study, then there is little point in isolating the discipline, he says.

While McArthur has repeatedly declined to be interviewed directly by The Crimson, Assistant Dean Joseph L. Bower recently echoed McArthur's earlier statements, saying that "fundamental" curriculum changes with an aim of focusing on ethics would be implemented at the B-School during the next 10 years. Bower would not elaborate, saying major reforms are still under consideration by the faculty.

"Shad and I both feel that this faculty can only make a real impact in this domain if the subject is tackled on an unprecendented scale," McArthur said to reporters at the time of the announcement. "It is clear to us that ethical issues have to be considered as they arise in the profession of business--constantly, and unexpectedly," he said, adding "They have to be imbedded in the very fabric of what we teach and research at Harvard Business School."

Observers say they are not sure that such changes are possible, however. "I think that would take a faculty whose members were already fully committed to business ethics, and Harvard's faculty has a reputation for being antagonistic to applied fields like business ethics," Velasquez said.

Currently only about 60 students are enrolled in the B-School MBA program's lone course devoted to business ethics. An optional course for second year students, "Ethical Aspects of Corporate Policy" is taught by Kenneth E. Goodpaster, an associate professor who will be leaving the B-School after the fall. Goodpaster's colleagues said he was advised by McArthur that his chances of tenure would be slim if he made a bid for a lifetime post.

Donaldson cites Harvard's denial of tenure to Goodpaster and Barbara Ley Toffler--its two associate professors specializing in ethics--as evidence of Harvard's lack of commitment to an ethics program. "I haven't seen them looking around for other people," he says.

Goodpaster and Toffler, along with Laura Nash, a former assistant professor of business administration and researcher of ethics case studies, are well-respected by their colleagues in the field of business ethics, says Hoffman. Nash moved to the Kennedy School when she was not offered tenure across the river.

"[Their denial of tenure] surely seems to leave us with some serious questions as toward the seriousness and competency of the Harvard Business School in establishing such a program," says Hoffman.

And several professors attribute this perceived lack of "seriousness" to a general Business School wide skepticism regarding the academic field of ethics.

"A lot of people are asking whether Harvard is now going over to the quantitative, hard-science attitude," says Norman E. Bowie, a philosophy professor and director of the Center for the Study of Values at the University of Delaware, where a first-year course in ethics is required.

"Harvard has not been in the forefront of the development of business ethics. The faculty at Harvard as a whole hasn't really integrated ethics into their courses. There are one or two people in the school who pay attention to business ethics," says Richard T. DeGeorge, a professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas.

"You can't seem to get tenure at Harvard if you're in business ethics," says Bowie, adding that he would advise junior faculty in the discipline against working at Harvard unless they were guaranteed tenure.

"The current interest in business ethics began after Watergate and didn't come into fruition until the late 1970s and the early 1980's. Harvard was not at all involved in the teaching, the writing and the research that was going on right at the turn of this decade, with the exception of people whom they have fired," says Velasquez.

"I have two worries about this $30 million: one is that they're going to bring people there to teach and to work who haven't studied and aren't skilled in ethical theory," Donaldson says, adding that if Harvard does bring in experienced faculty, "they will essentially ask them to put that training aside and just use the case method--I think that's what happened to Ken Goodpaster."

Some say the B-School's widely praised case-study method of instruction also makes the teaching of ethics extremely difficult.