ABSTRACT
The moral status of the requirements imposed by the role of faculty member—and, by extension, other professional roles— remains unclear. The requirements may be held to reflect some kind of metaphysical truth. Academic ethics is less well developed than other branches of professional ethics; its literature contains various assertions about what faculty members should do. Less metaphysically demanding, but still philosophically controversial, is the view that it is analytic, or part of what we mean by such terms as 'teacher', 'professor', or 'faculty member', that a teacher, etc., does or tries to do certain things. There is at least a near-consensus that faculty members should grade according to merit—that their grades should reflect only the degree to which students have mastered the course material, or have displayed the skills that the course seeks to impart. Faculty members have so much power over students that any sexual relationships are bound to be exploitative.
