Philosophers often talk about the problem of comparing incomparables or incommensurables. It seems to me that much of our work is about reconciling incompatibles. In the work of philanthropy, we have to sustain high motivation and purpose, we have to be in touch with our mission, while we must also attend to the necessities of organization and resources. In the university we deal with the problem by separating the two: the work of philanthropy is delegated to those who teach management and fund raising and the like; thought about philanthropy is delegated to those who seek to understand the deeper motives of service, who would infer ethical principles from moral behavior, or who ponder the conundrum of whether charity is possible given the free rider problem.

Philanthropy is an integrated idea for me: to study it requires that we keep science and opinion, theory and practice, the normative and the disinterested constantly present and in some tension and balance. The study of philanthropy calls for normative interpretation and even affirmation in the face of careful description, dispassionate analysis, and critical reflection.

For me, the study of philanthropy challenges the blind deference to specialization and "cognitive rationality"¹¹ as the sole or dominant mode of discourse in the university.¹² The study of philanthropy is a broadly liberal art at the same time that it is a narrowly professional or technical subject.¹³ It is certainly multidisciplinary, and may even at times succeed in being interdisciplinary.

The second topic of these remarks, then (the first dealt with the importance of philanthropy in the lives of young people) is about the place of philanthropy and the nature of the study of philanthropy in the university.

For most of you it may well be a dead hypothesis that the university is itself a philanthropic institution. The university is in the tradition of the professions: alongside the development of high competence through advanced study and some other characteristics, there is a commitment to service. There is still some life in that hypothetical wire for me, both for the university and for the professions. That is, I still cling to the notion that professionals can and sometimes do put the interests and well-being of their clients before their own, and that universities can and sometimes do serve the society even to the detriment of their own immediate and short-term interests.

It is the gravamen of the charges against the university and against the professions that they have drifted away from their sense of mission -- lost the understanding of why they exist -- and in doing so have lost the trust and confidence of the society that supports and rewards them.¹⁴

My contention is that philanthropy is both a conceptual tool for understanding the society and a moral action guide¹⁵ for the university and the professions to rediscover their mission.

The university helps the society to better understand the complex moral and other issues that the third sector insists that the society confront. One of the things contemporary social science is best at is pointing out the gap between the rhetorical aspirations of the society and the society's performance in working toward its ideals. Social science research can help philanthropy understand what is going on.¹⁶ Philanthropy must turn elsewhere, however, to seek help in knowing what is to be done.

Philanthropy in the university must address these issues:

•  the extent to which the university is committed to service to the larger society, and the extent to which it is committed first to its own needs and interests; and
•  the extent to which the faculties of the university are capable of balancing the tension between the normative and the disinterested.

The issues that animate philanthropic association and action in the community are a constant test of the relevance and validity of what we teach. Part of understanding philanthropy as thought and action means direct involvement in the complexities and hazards of the world. I have learned about these things from my students; what I teach has to contend with what they learn from their experience:

A student working as a volunteer and intern in an inner city hospital has a context for the reading of Foucault. (In her normal academic studies these days she is more likely to be encouraged to read Foucault, of course, than to read a life of St. Francis or the meditations of Mother Teresa.) There is a cautionary understanding of the law that comes from helping elderly adults in nursing homes find reliable legal advice about the handling of their financial affairs. Service on a board is a good test of one's grasp of notions of stewardship and governance. Helping to distribute surplus flour to remote villages in the mountains of Macedonia provides insight into foreign aid, and into the working relations between government agencies and nongovermental organizations. Study of the philanthropic strategies of the Society of Muslim Brothers and the Nation of Islam is animated by field research in Cairo and Indianapolis. The aggregation, analysis, and extrapolation of data about the medical treatment of children is illuminated by four hours a week as a volunteer at Riley Hospital for Children. One way to assess the plausibility of social critiques of power blocs and elites is to observe them up close as they manifest or contradict the claims of ideology. It is one thing to talk about housing for the poor; it is another thing to renovate a run-down house or to build a new one. Current talk about public-private partnerships or about privatization of government services is illuminated by standing at a bus stop with people who have to stand there every day. It is one thing to advocate support of dance and experimental theater and quite another to raise money for those things.

Given the complexity of experience we try to understand and practice in philanthropy, the best model for thinking about the place of the study of philanthropy in the university we have thus far may be the medical school and medical center. Such places have the great virtue of combining training with education in the sciences on which training is based; of pursuing research and doing grand rounds; of mixing private philanthropy, government grants, and the earned income of professional fees, and charges for institutional services. Medical centers have hospitals, and hospitals have emergency rooms, intensive care units, and ethics committees. Hospitals provide the immediacy and the reality that may be missing from the research laboratory. The research laboratory is a reminder that much that goes on in hospitals could have been prevented. One way or another, medical education and medical practice assume that thought and action are inseparable. No other activity within the university tries to cope with such a broad sweep of action and thought.

For all the obvious and well-publicized problems of medical centers and medical education, they are an attempt to address the full scope of health and illness. It seems to me that we should explore that model in thinking about our own work. Having said that, it would be premature to undertake a Flexner report about the state of philanthropy in higher education. A second Filer commission, however, might move us in that direction.

The passing reference to ethics committees in hospitals reminds me of Brian O'Connell's leadership in advancing the ethical agenda of philanthropy and the organizations which serve it. Like medicine and other true professions, the practice of philanthropy is inescapably moral, judgmental, and consequential. It is significant that Robert Coles has urged his students in medical school to read Middlemarch. Moral and ethical understanding are perhaps best sought in the study of literature, both secular and religious. They are not grasped through reading textbooks in management or public administration or in the so-called nonprofit variations on the theme. As Coles has demonstrated in his own teaching, the search to understand the moral experience can take place in the context of scientific training. The education of the professional is at least in part the development of the habit of obedience to the unenforceable.

A concluding personal note from and about "the first tenured professor of philanthropic studies." To stand for tenure for the first time late rather than early in one's career raised several questions for me that were answered this way:

• It is symbolically important that Indiana University appoint someone to a tenured professorship in this new field; it is a live hypothesis for some of my colleagues that such symbolic behavior strengthens the university's commitment.
• It was important in my case that someone be appointed professor who lacked the only true measure of academic worth -- the PhD. (Fields that tolerate other credentials are red-lined.)
• It was important to me that my appointment be in the School of Liberal Arts but not in a particular department. That nondisciplinary, nonprofessional limbo is exactly where someone like me belongs.
• It was important both to the university and to me that my tenure be based on public service rather than on scholarship. It is affirmation of the notion that public service has a value within the university, and that the experience gained through public service is relevant to the discourse of the university.

On that basis, some far-sighted institution might well discern in Brian O'Connell a resource that is much more central to its work than a passing affair with a visiting distinguished citizen. It would welcome him in courses on government and in ethics, on negotiation and management, on transcending the conflict of cultures.¹⁷

After two years of working together, I asked one of my students what field of philanthropy he wanted to pursue. He said it was his dream to work in behalf of philanthropy itself. He would follow in the footsteps of a Brian O'Connell. I cannot think of a better career for him to follow, or a better exemplar.

In my view, the university should help him prepare for that.

1 T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, T. H. Bottomore, ed., Pluto Press, 1992 (1950).

2 James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense, Free Press, 1993.

3 William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays, Dover Publications, 1956 (1897).

4 Henry Hansmann and others might consider It a Them.

5 Notably President Thomas Ehrlich of Indiana University.

6 Try Robert Wuthnow's Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis, University of California Press, 1987.

7 The chapter on "Membership" in Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice, Basic Books, 1983, is invaluable.

8 I first learned of this through the work of the Ounce of Prevention Fund in Illinois.

9 Isaiah lviii, 7,8, the text of a sermon by Samuel Johnson in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Jean Hagstrum and James Gray, eds., Vol. XIV, Sermons, 1978, p. 39.

10 Bruce Payne defines aesthetic as "the opposite of anaesthetic."

11 See Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Platt, The American University, Harvard University Press, 1975.

12 I have argued elsewhere for "exploratory discourse" as the mode most suitable to philanthropy, borrowing from term from James L. Kinneavy, A Theory of Discourse, Norton & Co., 1971

13 I have also written on "Philanthropy in Liberal Education" for the project on The Governance of Nonprofit Organizations led by my colleague James Wood.

14 It is the phenomenon, very common but largely unexamined, that Kenneth Goodpaster has labeled teleopathy.

15 On moral action guides, see David Little and Sumner B. Twiss, Comparative Religious Ethics: A New Method, Harper & Row, 1978.

16 I am indebted to H. Richard Niebuhr for posing the first ethical question: What is going on? The Responsible Self: A Study in Christian Moral Philosophy, Harper & Row, 1963.

17 After these remarks were presented I learned that Brian will become Professor of Public Service at the Lincoln Filene Center of Tufts University, joining our mutual friend and esteemed colleague Robert Hollister.