Why Universities Need Virtues

Brendan Case and Tyler VanderWeele

Culture & Society

Well before the Trump administration launched its recent assault on America’s elite universities, these institutions – indeed, most of higher education – was arguably in a state of crisis. Between 2015 and 2024, the proportion of Americans expressing “a great deal of confidence” in institutions of higher education declined from 57% to 36%, driven by a growing public sense that universities charge too much and offer too little of real value – either professionally or personally – to students. By many measures, even our most prestigious colleges and universities are struggling to fulfill their core mission of preserving, transmitting, and extending human knowledge. Many institutions have been affected by recent exposures of research misconduct and outright data fabrication, while an increasing number of faculty members, to the disappointment of students, are using AI to assess their students’ work. (Meanwhile, upwards of 90% of students now admit to using AI to cheat.) So too, 35% of faculty say they conceal their actual views in order to avoid controversy, far greater than the 9% who reported doing so during the height of the McCarthy era, while 70% of conservative and 50% of liberal students say that they feel uncomfortable expressing controversial views in their classes.

There are doubtless many causes for the current crisis in higher education, but one thread linking the various ills afflicting these institutions is insufficient attention to the moral character of faculty, administrators, and students alike. As we argue in a recent paper on “academic flourishing” in the International Journal of Wellbeing, as well as in a paper that is forthcoming from the British Journal of Education, universities have for too long neglected the link between the moral virtues of their members and success in their core academic aims.

What Is Moral Virtue?

Before we argue for the importance of particular moral virtues to the university’s academic mission, an overview of virtue-talk in general is in order. In what follows, we will largely though not exclusively look for guidance to the moral philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274), as an exemplary member of a continuous if fractious tradition of virtue-theory extending at least from Socrates to the present. In his Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST) Aquinas offers at least two complementary definitions of a moral virtue: “virtue is a good quality of the mind, by which we live rightly, of which no one can make bad use” (ST, First Part of the Second Part, Question 55, Article 4 [hereafter, e.g., 1-2.55.4]) and “virtue is that which makes its possessor good, and renders his work good” (ST 1-2.55.3). For Aquinas, a virtue is a habit – an enduring but acquired character trait – which orients its bearers to pursue the good as good, where “good” means not only what you ought to do or be, but also what would be morally admirable or excellent for you to do or be.

According to a tradition that goes back at least to Plato, there are four principal or “cardinal” moral virtues – namely justice, temperance (or moderation), courage (or fortitude), and prudence (or practical wisdom) (cf. also ST 1-2.61) – on which all other moral virtues depend. Justice disposes us to “render to each his right (reddere cuique suum ius)” (ST 2-2.57.1, corp.), and so to relate to one another with fairness and equity. Temperance helps us to desire the right pleasures at the right time and in the right degree (ST 2-2.141.1-2). Courage equips us to face difficulty or danger without falling into the opposing errors of cowardice or foolhardiness (ST 2-2.123.1-2). And prudence allows us to recognize and pursue the good in particular cases (ST 2-2.47.1-2), including in the exercise of the other cardinal virtues (ST 2-2.47.7). Each of these core virtues is quite broad in scope, and so, to facilitate their application to particular areas of life, the classical tradition proposed many finer-grained sub-divisions of each cardinal virtue, treating, e.g., honesty as a sub-type of justice, and patience as a type of courage. In what follows, we will explore how each of these virtues and their sub-divisions is implicated in the university’s success in its core academic mission.

Virtues in the Classroom

It often, for example, takes significant courage to speak up in defense of controversial or minority viewpoints in academic settings. It is hardly a secret that the free and open exchange of ideas has suffered at universities in recent years, a situation which reflects at least – though certainly not only – a marked lack of courage on the part of many faculty and students alike (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018; Stevens, 2024; Honeycutt, 2024), who find their desire to speak and pursue the truth overcome by fear for their reputations, advancement, or indeed their jobs. In some instances, alas, this fear is sadly well-founded.

Consider the case of Carole Hooven, a former Lecturer in Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. After the publication in 2021 of her book, T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Divides and Dominates Us, Hooven said in a televised interview that human sex is binary and biological. Her comments outraged some members of her own department, who in turn launched a highly public campaign attacking her and her work, which ultimately resulted in her resignation from her role as Lecturer. Hooven demonstrated exemplary courage in speaking unpopular truths, but sadly, the same cannot be said for her colleagues. In a piece reflecting on her experience, she wrote, “A few faculty members, still my good friends, expressed concern about my well-being and supported me personally, and I owe them a debt of gratitude. But despite my pleas for help, those who could have done so failed to defend my right to express my views and to communicate biological facts, to apologize for what happened, or to make any statement on my behalf.”

The attacks on Hooven were the result not only of a failure of courage among some of her colleagues, but equally of a lack of patience and humility among others, faculty and students alike. (For Aquinas, patience is a sub-species of courage concerned with suffering evil (ST 2-2.136.1-2), while humility is a sub-type of temperance concerned with our desire for social status (ST 2-2.161.1-2).) A patient student is able to bear – in a sense, to suffer – the airing even of apparently wrongheaded or harmful views with equanimity, without giving in to fear or anger, in the confidence that the truth will win out in the end, and that all might be made wiser by the contest of ideas. And the humble student realizes that there is usually something to be learned from those who think differently than she does, and that she is rarely right on all accounts. Had Hooven’s opponents been willing to debate her rather than attack her as bigoted and benighted, both sides might have learned and grown as a result; instead, their lack of patience deprived not only themselves but also future generations of students of the chance to benefit from Hooven’s perspective.

Hooven’s travails and other like cases reflected egregious failures not only of courage, but also of justice, the virtue of rendering to others in the community what they are due, whether that is a fitting grade on a term paper irrespective of personal feeling, or even, most fundamentally, attention and leave to speak what they believe to be the truth. Notwithstanding their explicit commitment to the pursuit of social justice in and through their persecution of Hooven, the students and faculty who denied her equal consideration to speak and be heard wronged her, denying her goods to which she was entitled as a community member in good standing. They also demeaned her dignity, not merely as a fellow scholar and teacher, but arguably as a human being owed common courtesy and respect. This commitment to just treatment is arguably essential for progress in knowledge; as John Stuart Mill famously put this point, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.”

In addition to facilitating civil discourse, the virtues of patience and humility, along with courage, teachableness or “docility” (ST 2-2.49.3), and a proper love of learning or studiousness (ST 2-2.166.1-2) are also often needed for other aspects of learning. Academic pursuits typically require considerable time and effort, and frequently lie at the boundaries of a student’s capacities, requiring them to draw on the greater wisdom of their teachers. Learning also means being willing to submit one’s work to those teachers’ frank assessment, an unpleasant requirement which has become ever easier to evade by means of AI tools such as ChatGPT, now used, as we noted above, by as many as 90% of students; the ready availability of these aids to cheating has underscored the continued importance of cultivating honesty in students.

Virtues and Academic Research

Many of the virtues already highlighted are likewise implicated in academic research. Research is often a matter of tedious, repeated failures ahead of any real success – Edison famously tried something like 3000 different types of filament before finding one that worked in his lightbulb – and so researchers need patience to forge ahead despite difficulties, as well as humility to accept when a particular trail has gone cold. And a rash of scandals involving extreme dishonesty in academic research has highlighted the continuing importance of truthfulness for the discovery of new knowledge: from psychologists faking data in studies of honesty, to oncologists manipulating data across dozens of studies for potential cures for cancer, to prestigious university presidents resigning following credible accusations of data manipulation or serial plagiarism, it is clear that the academy remains fundamentally dependent on the honesty of its scholars and researchers.

Even apart from refraining from cheating on exams or plagiarizing research, personal integrity is also important in academic life more broadly. Freshmen arriving on campus typically experience an unprecedented degree of freedom over how and with whom they spend their time. This freedom, provided it is suitably scaffolded, is arguably an important part of a student’s formation. However, the cultures of many university campuses often encourage students to misuse that freedom, resulting in substance abuse or even addiction, strained relationships, or feelings of guilt, which are not only bad for the individuals concerned, but which potentially interfere with their academic pursuits as well. At the very least, students should be encouraged to reflect on their own moral commitments and to try to live up to them.

Finally, a degree of practical wisdom, whose scope is “the application of right reason to action (applicatio rectae rationis ad opus)” (ST 2-2.47.4), is also critical for research, teaching, and study. The academic stereotype of the absentminded professor – a trope which goes back at least to Plato’s story about how Thales was so fixated on the stars that he fell into a well – might make us think of teaching and scholarship as fundamentally impractical endeavors. However, researchers and students alike need prudence to select their research subjects or courses of study, to secure adequate funding, or to engage the right range of colleagues and collaborators to enhance their work without unduly complicating it.

The Virtues of University Leaders

We have so far largely focused on the importance of moral character for faculty and students, but it is no less relevant for university administrators as well. They too must continually make prudential judgments about how best to adjudicate the many competing demands of the university’s constituencies (e.g., demands by lawmakers for public oversight of the use of public funds and by faculty for freedom from outside control of their research). And they too need the virtue of justice to ensure that each member of the community is properly respected in their academic pursuits and given reasonable space to air their views, as well as courage to stand up to demands by students or faculty to suppress open debate or the pursuit of knowledge, particularly when those demands take the form of public demonstrations that violate the university’s own policies.

On Cultivating Virtues

We have argued in the foregoing that the virtues are critical for academic institutions’ success in their core aims, not least by highlighting the lamentable effects of their absence in some areas of college and university life. Inadequate focus on student formation can also have profound effects on an institution’s broader “academic flourishing” as well. Indeed, for some years, many colleges and universities have not only failed to instill these essential virtues in their students, but have, if only unintentionally, fostered such vices as impatience, fearfulness, intolerance, and irrational pride.

All is not lost, however; there are a variety of ways in which university leaders might seek to foster justice, temperance, courage, and practical wisdom in their students, faculty, and staff. For instance, they could regularly speak about the importance of character and about particular virtues in orientation sessions, commencement addresses, and university-wide communications. They might make use of extracurricular character education interventions or seek to embed attention to character within their course offerings, making use of the frameworks and models provided by groups such as the University of Birmingham’s Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue or Wake Forest’s Educating Character Initiative. They might also have requirements for students to volunteer with local charities, or (for confessional institutions) to participate in religious services. They might also seek to evaluate moral character alongside intellectual ability as a factor for admissions. Indeed, most universities probably already engage in some or all of these practices, though with varying degrees of self-awareness and commitment.

One additional and neglected approach to cultivating character on campus, however, would be for universities to engage in more focused efforts at assessing the extent to which students (for instance) feel that their time at the university has fostered their growth in particular aspects of character. In a recent paper, we have proposed a 24-item self-report measure of “university contribution to student formation” in four areas (cognitive and epistemic capacities, virtues for academic flourishing, citizenship and societal contribution, and meaning and flourishing). Campus-wide data from this kind of assessment would allow university leaders to better understand where they are currently struggling to form students, and what aspects of university life are most impactful – for good and ill – in shaping students’ character. Universities interested in joining a movement of likeminded institutions committed to carrying out this kind of assessment and learning from and acting on the results can join the member-sponsored Flourishing Data Collaborative housed at the Human Flourishing Program, where we serve as Program Director (Tyler) and Associate Director for Research (Brendan).

Whatever universities decide to do by way of encouraging virtues for academic flourishing among their constituents, it is imperative to do it quickly; the implication of character defects in many of the public controversies embroiling universities today strongly suggests that they need to renew their focus on the importance of their members’ character for success even in their core aims of preserving, teaching, and cultivating knowledge.

Brendan W. Case, Th.D., serves as the Associate Director for Research at the human Flourishing Program.

Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Director of the Human Flourishing Program and Co-Director of the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion at Harvard University.

July 2025