"We need to produce young men and women who care about themselves - the kind of persons who have some sense of what it means to be an individual with dignity, who respect others, who know that just as you want to be respected, we treat other people as we want to be treated," Payton says. "We made so much progress through the advancement of science and technology. But ethically and morally, we are in a bad way."

Outside Payton's window stands a statue of his famous predecessor, Booker T. Washington, pulling a shroud from the face of a former slave kneeling next to him. "He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people," an inscription reads, "and pointed the way to progress through education and industry."