Academic Integrity Across Time and Place: Higher Education’s Questionable Moral Calling

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter, I call on Canada’s higher education institutions to embrace Veritas (truth), in every aspect of the academy. Academic integrity must transcend discussions of student misconduct and apply to all that we are—our history, our research, our curriculum, our pedagogy, our purpose. Tracing Western higher education’s development from medieval times in Europe, through to the US and Canada, I make the case that the academy has paradoxically been both a dominating and liberating force since its inception. While imposing Western conceptions of morality and truth that have shifted over time, and supporting the imperialist ambitions of Church, monarchy and state, higher education has also elevated its graduates to positions of influence within society and advanced national aims. Despite credos of truth telling and missions of character development, higher education’s moral calling has been—and remains—highly questionable. Given the complex challenges the world is facing today, and the need for Canadian institutions of higher learning to confront their colonial roots, it is time for us to critically examine this history and explicitly (re)position integrity at the core of Canada’s higher education institutions.