While most students were enjoying their winter breaks, about 40 Iowa State faculty members met in Des Moines last week to discuss issues in bioethics at a two-day retreat titled, “The McDonaldization of the university: Has the Private Sector Become the Hub of Research?”

The keynote speaker was Norman Bowie, who is the Elmer E. Anderson chair in Corporate Responsibility and Strategic Management and Organization at the University of Minnesota and author of “University-Business Partnerships: An Assessment.”

ISU President Martin Jischke was a guest speaker at the retreat, which was held on Jan. 7 and 8.

“I was only there for one session at which I spoke. I enjoyed myself enormously. I thought the piece that I was a part of was quite successful,” Jischke said.

Joe Kupfer, professor of philosophy, attended the retreat. He said that Bowie discussed several issues dealing with the funding of research by industries at the university, including patents and secrecy of research.

“I think Jischke was irritated by the title of the retreat. It might have been one of the reasons he came. He gave a very good talk,” Kupfer said.

Kupfer said Jischke was upset because of Bowie’s discussion of distributive justice. “Who gets the money that the industry puts in? Who gets the results of industrialized or technological applications of research done on campus?” Kupfer asked.

He said it may be that larger corporations are receiving more of a benefit from research than the independent farmer does because of the expense of using new technology created through research.

“It was very good for our faculty [that] the president [came] to this,” Kupfer said. “I thought he was very well-spoken and had done his reading. He was eager to participate.”

Kupfer is a co-director of the Murray-Bacon Center for Ethics in Business which co-hosted the retreat with the Bioethics Institute.

Gary Comstock, associate professor in philosophy and the bioethics program coordinator, played an important role in the planning of the retreat.

Comstock said the bioethics program began in 1986 with a $16 million appropriation from the Iowa state Legislature. “The Legislature decided that they also wanted some discussion going on with the university about the economic, ethical and social implications of the new technologies,” Comstock said.

“Is the new technology going to drive family farmers out of business? Is it going to result in technology as bad for the environment? All of those kinds of questions are the responsibility of the bioethics program to address,” he said.

Comstock said the retreat was organized to address the issue of the influence of private industry on university research. “It was very successful because we began to set these controversial issues out on the table.”

“President Jischke argued strenuously that the university’s on the right path in trying to track private dollars. Tony Smith (professor of philosophy) argued strenuously in the other direction,” he said.

“When a university goes too far in responding to the private sector, it loses its features of being objective, of being neutral and of being a kind of institution that pursues scientific research in a way that is basic,” he said.

“In other words, the university should be a place where science is pursued according to the interests of the individual who researches. When we start responding to private seed corn companies or chemical companies too much, then we’re doing research for private industries rather than for the public good. That was one of the major issues that was debated,” Comstock said.

He said it is absolutely essential that these kinds of conversations are held among faculty. “University means one place of mutual study. We don’t have a university. We have little fiefdoms where everybody sort of camps out and lives their life,” Comstock said.

“We rarely have the kind of conversations that go on at places like Grinnell College where the faculty is smaller and they are rubbing elbows all the time,” he said.

Comstock, who created the title of the retreat, said it was meant with tongue-in-cheek, but also meant to be provocative. “The reason that I chose the McDonaldization of the university is because that phrase has become a kind of slogan for a leveling effect of powerful corporations like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Levi’s worldwide, so there are no cultural differences.”

He said that as corporations get larger and more transnational they can have a leveling effect on the independence and integrity of the more local entities such as the university.

Comstock said that during Jischke’s opening remarks Jischke said, for the record, that McDonald’s sponsors very little research at ISU.

As far as actual progress made during the retreat, Comstock said no actual policy statements were made, but that it got people a long way toward understanding what other people in the university are thinking about the issue.