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A Textbook Case of Cluelessnes

Friday’s NYT featured an especially awful op-ed piece by law prof Ian Ayres in which he argues that it’s borderline unethical for profs to assign textbooks they have produced. I held off blogging it because I wrote letter to the editor and was waiting to see whether they’d run it, but they didn’t. Here then, for your edification, is what I submitted:

To the Editor: Ian Ayres implies that professors ordering textbooks they have written is unethical and engenders a conflict of interest (“Just What the Professor Ordered,” Op-Ed, September 16, 2005). Prof. Ayres says that by giving students who buy his book a rebate, “we will all know that I assigned the book for the right reason.” One wonders, then, why he authored a textbook in the first place. Presumably he thought he could contribute something to his students’ education by producing a textbook which was superior to others. But if this is his view, then it would be irresponsible for him not to order it. A professor’s responsibility is not to order the cheapest books available, it is to order what he or she judges to be the best ones for a given class, and that would naturally include the ones he or she has written.[end of letter - in signing, I noted both that I am a professor and that I have co-edited a textbook]

They ran someone else’s letter today which makes a similar point, but unfortunately sandwiched among several others supporting Ayres. Two other points I’d make which I was obliged to leave out of the letter for space considerations: 1, Ayres implies that he’s entitled to his profits if anyone else orders his book, so it’s not clear why he shouldn’t be entitled to them. He’s free to turn them down, of course, but his implication is that it’s wrong to profit from his own work, which is absurd. The second letter down today deals with this nicely, IMO. 2, Ayres argues that it would be a good thing if administrations had more control over a professor’s course content and text selection. Um, no.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh weighs in; agrees with me; says it better.

UPDATE ad absurdum: Sorry Plato, you can't use Republic at the Academy - conflict of interest.

Posted on Monday, September 19, 2005 at 8:32 AM | Comments (27) | Return

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