General Comments about the Code

Welcome to the IIT Code of Ethics Blog, where we invite you to post your comments about the Illinois Institute of Technology's Code of Ethics. Please feel free to add your general comments o about the code, your suggestions about the different sections of the code, or your ideas about how the code of ethics should be used by members of the IIT community in the future.

Preamble

Having chosen to associate ourselves with IIT, we—trustees, suppliers, students, staff, faculty, donors, alumni, and administrators—have become beneficiaries of what our predecessors made and stewards for our successors. For each of us, the benefit derived from association with IIT depends largely on the conduct of others. If we each do as we should, all associated with IIT should have reason for satisfaction. If even a few fail, the benefits of association will be less and we will pass to our successors less than we might have otherwise. This code of ethics should help us all conduct ourselves as we should:

1. Academic Excellence

Academic excellence. Because IIT’s reputation depends in large part on the quality of the students it graduates, the research it performs, and the scholarship it publishes, we should help students, faculty, and researchers do the best work they can—and attract to IIT those who can do even better.

2. Academic Freedom.

We should give every student a fair opportunity to learn, every faculty member a fair opportunity to teach, and every member of the IIT community a fair opportunity to explore, enlarge, and evaluate human invention and knowledge.

3. Academic Responsibility

We should maintain appropriate standards of accuracy, reliability, credit, candor, and confidentiality in our own work, whether for publication or internal use in class or office.

4. Human Dignity

Because every member of the IIT community deserves the respect due every person, we should treat everyone associated with IIT fairly— avoiding harassment, unjust discrimination, arbitrary treatment, and intimidation in our own conduct and not tolerating them in the conduct of others.

4.1. Mutual Respect

We should recognize the contribution to education, invention, research, scholarship, and governance that differences in perspective, experience, and history offer.