The coordinating committee of the review suggested that the core curriculum for the school's two-year Management in Public Policy Program (MPP) replace three semesters of required courses in statistics, public management and micro-economics with courses in ethics, politics and macro-economics or finance.

Zeckhauser, an economist and one of the school's leading quantitative professors, says there was still much disagreement among the faculty about the content of the ethics course, with skeptics fearing that the course may end up having little substance.

"I would prefer that ethics pervade the curriculum rather than be taught in one class," Zeckhauser says. "People who are big supporters of the ethics course say that we will get ethics to eventually do just that, but I don't think that will be true."

Emphasizing Ethics

But over the past few years the movement to incorporate ethics and values into the curriculum of the graduate school has been an ever-growing one, increasing in support from almost all directions.

"From the beginning of the curriculum review, it came out clearly that many people, including the president, believed that if the review did nothing else, it surely must address getting more ethics into the curriculum," says Professor of Public Policy Steven Kelman '70. "I think it is a really important and significant step that the Kennedy School becomes the first public policy school in the country to require an ethics course."

In his annual report, Bok stressed the importance of teaching ethics to public officials who will be forced to make ethical choices when setting the agendas of a community.

"Public servants in positions of responsibility do not merely resolve policy problems," Bok wrote. "They must discover what problems are 'out there' and decide which ones to address."

The Kennedy School curriculum should teach student of government how to think systematically about ethical questions involved in agenda-setting and governance, Leonard says.

"The Kennedy School of Government has always been about thought as a guide to action," Leonard says. "Now we want to examine how you should structure thought so it influences action in a positive way."

Although the core course in ethics would be limited to MPP students only, Leonard says he hopes to see the ethics program gradually come to include students from all programs in the school.

"I hope that one of the things that we do with our curriculum review is to keep things experimental for a few years," Zeckhauser says. "I want us to try a lot of different things and see what works."

And Putnam adds that he has no plans to dismantle the quantitative aspects of the Kennedy School's curriculum.

"We do not want to diminish the quality of the kind of things that we have been strong in in the past. The emphasis on quantitative, careful analysis is very important," Putnam says. "But is also important to be disciplined and careful and systematic in thinking about values, just as the school has long been careful and systematic in thinking about the quantifiable elements."