University Governance As a Principle-Agent Problem
My work has always taken its cue from an ancient moral question: “how to live” as Plato put it. I call that a question of self-governance to mark it as potentially continuous with topics of corporate self-governance in general and university governance in particular. Since university governance manifestly is a hot topic, I will pause from time to time to reflect on what my colleagues in this symposium are saying about current events, but my focus is on self-governance, including how universities govern themselves, and on what is illuminated by treating self-governance as a principal-agent problem.