As I described in my last posting, an Arizonan GOP Senator has proposed to place all instructors in public education under FCC guidelines for obscenity, indecency, and profanity. But there is another danger out there threatening the body politic: liberal faculty. It seems college faculty with conservative political or religious views have barely been holding onto their academic careers in the face of rampant discrimination. Freshman Republican State Representative, and chair of the Higher Education, Innovation and Reform Committee, Tom Forese, proposed HB 2770, a bill amending existing law regarding university and college hiring and promotion practices:
A. A UNIVERSITY OR COMMUNITY COLLEGE SHALL HIRE, FIRE, PROMOTE AND GRANT TENURE TO FACULTY ON THE BASIS OF THAT FACULTY MEMBER'S COMPETENCE AND APPROPRIATE KNOWLEDGE IN THE FIELD OF THAT FACULTY MEMBER'S EXPERTISE AND, IN THE HUMANITIES, THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND THE ARTS, WITH A VIEW TOWARD FOSTERING A PLURALITY OF METHODOLOGIES AND PERSPECTIVES. A UNIVERSITY OR COMMUNITY COLLEGE SHALL NOT HIRE, FIRE OR DENY PROMOTION OR TENURE TO ANY FACULTY MEMBER ON THE BASIS OF THAT FACULTY MEMBER'S POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
B. A UNIVERSITY OR COMMUNITY COLLEGE SHALL NOT EXCLUDE A FACULTY MEMBER FROM TENURE OR SEARCH COMMITTEES OR HIRING COMMITTEES ON THE BASIS OF THAT FACULTY MEMBER'S POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
Forese says he ran for office to "change the world. I'm a small government guy so I believe that the role of government is to protect our life, liberty and property and then get out of the way." Apparently, though, he does want the government to get in the way of a problem that he cannot prove even exists.
As Higher Ed reported, Forese wasn’t aware of anyone in Arizona willing to publicly claim that type of discrimination, telling the Verde News they fear retribution and must “pretend to think or believe in a different way in order to fit in.”
How convenient, evidence that no one can confirm. And along with hitting that fear button, he resorts to what is now a standard practice, invert a liberal cause into a story of conservatives victimized by liberalism. Affirmative action is reverse discrimination. Homosexuals don't want equal rights; they want extra rights. Or, in this case, Arizonans need a measure "to end what. . .amounts to a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy at universities and community colleges--at least for political and religious conservatives." Right, like conservative faculty have suffered the same plight as homosexuals in the military; as if there's outings of conservative faculty who then get the academic equivalent of a dishonorable discharge. What a crock.
The Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), a conservative organization dedicated to "the values of life, marriage and family, and religious liberty," has more to say about this legislation than the Rep. Forese. According to its Family Issue Fact Sheet
Over the past several years, many instances have emerged of teachers and professors facing discrimination as a result of their religious beliefs. The examples include educators at colleges and universities who have either been terminated, refused a promotion, or denied tenure simply because of their religious beliefs.
The "Fact Sheet" cites no study revealing widespread or systematic discrimination against college and university faculty but does give four examples of discrimination, though none from Arizona. Predictably, each of its cases leaves out a lot of the story:
- Ken Howell taught courses on Catholic theology at the University of Illinois, and his adjunct position was not renewed after an anonymous student complaint about "hate speech"--Howell had lectured on the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality, and made it clear that he agreed it was immoral. CAP claims that the Alliance Defense Fund (a conservative group that takes on cases of alleged discrimination against religious conservatives) secured his reinstatement. More likely, it was a secular outfit, the American Association of University Professors, that convinced the university to rescind what I agree to be a knee-jerk decision (see news coverage here).
- CAP declares Mike Adams was denied promotion to full professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington due to his religious beliefs, that "his conversion to Christianity in 2000 was seen unfavorably by Mike’s department chair." Adams lodged a suit against his ex-colleagues claiming the failure to promote was due to religious discrimination, violating the Civil Rights Act, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The court ruled against him, and the ruling reveals that the decision not to promote was not about his religion, but about his increasingly pugnacious behavior in the workplace, including his self-described Ann Coulter style blog, which he listed as relevant scholarly material in his bid for full professor.
- CAP's next victim, Jon Oller, a professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. CAP states as fact that his work on creationism "ultimately [led] to his removal from the classroom and censorship of materials he had published." Well, actually, that's what his recent lawsuit against his department alleges. CAP neglects to mention he's under fire for teaching and advocating the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism, along with the faux theory of creationism and intelligent design, though he has no professional training in either immunology or evolutionary biology.
- CAP finishes with an unnamed person denied tenure at Delta College, a community college in Bay City, Michigan. CAP says "she was unfairly discriminated against solely on the basis of her religious beliefs." Her name is Stephanie Balyasi, and she has filed a lawsuit against Delta making the same claim. But CAP does not note that while at Delta, Balyasi was "
campaigning to incorporate creation science as part of the curriculum." And as someone currently going through the tenure process, I know there could be any number of reasons why she did not get tenure; it depends on Delta's criteria for teaching, scholarship, and service.
In short, CAP not only has little evidence to back its claim that Arizona needs to provide extra protection for politically and religiously conservative faculty, it misrepresents the few cases it has, not to mention that its "sources" for its findings are press releases from its partner, the Alliance Defense Fund. Maybe CAP folks should have a sit-down with Oller about "communicative disorders."
Anyway, a CAP attorney basically admitted there's no hard evidence by calling the bill "proactive," implying that CAP and its legislative allies anticipate discrimination down the road. Here's some real evidence that suggests there's little to anticipate. According to a self-described conservative Republican, Matthew Woessner,
Looking at survey data from all of higher education’s primary constituencies, I began to realize that Republicans and conservatives, while vastly outnumbered in academia, were, for the most part, successful, happy, and prosperous. Fewer than 2 percent of faculty (Republican or Democratic) reported being the victims of unfair treatment based on their politics. Only 7 percent of Republican faculty believed that discrimination against those with “right-wing” views was a serious problem on their campus, compared with 8 percent of Democratic faculty who expressed concerns about discrimination against those with “left-wing” views. Asked to consider what they would do if given the opportunity to “begin your career again,” 91 percent of Democratic faculty and 93 percent of Republican faculty answered that they would “definitely” or “probably” want to be a college professor. Similarly, few rightleaning students or administrators claimed to have been the victims of political mistreatment. Like their Democratic counterparts, most were satisfied with their experience in higher education.
The actual issue is not discrimination against conservatives, but the predominance of liberals in academia. For example, according to a 2008 study of 38 private colleges, far more faculty self-identify as liberal or far left than conservative or far right:
|
Far Left
|
Liberal
|
Moderate
|
Conservative
|
Far Right
|
English
|
12.8
|
58.4
|
19.2
|
9.1
|
0.5
|
History/Political Science
|
10.7
|
57.7
|
20.5
|
11.1
|
0.0
|
Social Sciences
|
10.0
|
52.3
|
26.9
|
10.5
|
0.3
|
Humanities
|
8.4
|
49.1
|
31.8
|
10.7
|
0.0
|
Total
|
6.4
|
46.5
|
30.6
|
16.1
|
0.3
|
From Table 3 in Mariani & Hewitt, "Ideological U? Faculty Ideology and Changes in Students' Political Orientation" PS: Political Science and Politics, 41:4, October, 2008, p. 777.
These findings mesh with those of other studies of all types of colleges and universities, though some researchers note that when professors are asked about particular hot topics (abortion, gay rights, etc.), many who identify as liberal or conservative turn out to be moderate. They also note that the ideological balance varies quite a bit--health sciences and business faculty, for example, are evenly split between liberals and conservatives, and community and non-liberal arts colleges have far lower percentages of liberals than other kinds of academic institutions (you can find summaries of these reports here).
Still, liberals dominate US academia. Why? There seems to be an emerging consensus that self-selection is the main factor. Those with liberal ideals are more likely than those with conservative ones to chose a career in academia. But, as Peter Wood (president of the National Association of Scholars, an advocacy group defending traditional scholarship and conservative faculty) notes, the self-selection thesis begs the question of why liberals are more likely than conservatives to enter academia, and self-selection doesn't necessarily cancel out the role liberal bias may play in academic hiring and promotion decisions.
It's definitely a puzzle, but I don't think the outcome--predominance of liberals among faculty--is on its own evidence of bias. If so, is bias at work in other outcomes such as the predominance of conservatives in the military and enforcement agencies? It seems reasonable to suppose, especially since there's supporting data, that occupations get typecast, get associated with certain values (rightly or wrongly), and therefore draw people who feel they fit the type, who agree with those values.
But the puzzle is irrelevant to the faction of conservative Republicans who frame the predominance of liberals in academia as a threat, particularly faculty in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts. It's odd that the proposed Arizona law shows no concern for the many other disciplines, and because the law targets disciplines with higher percentages of liberals, it appears to be more about constraining those unruly liberals than it is protecting conservative faculty (there are, after all, conservatives in other disciplines).
Moreover, the law reveals an incomprehension of how academic disciplines work. It suggests that by constraining those allegedly biased liberals, the law will foster "a plurality of methodologies and perspectives." PhDs, if their programs are any good, study a variety of methods and perspectives relevant to their fields, and departments will house faculty with a variety of research interests and approaches. Political ideology may contribute to those interests and approaches but is hardly the sole determinant. Anyone that bothered to acquaint her or himself with academia would know that the battle lines within a department are not political ideologies, but research methods and types of inquiries (e.g. rational choice vs. constructivism).
This Arizona law, then, is not based on any thorough or careful understanding of academia, but is just another example of a broader ad hoc campaign by some conservative Republicans against academics, from the slaps at "eggheads" during the Eisenhower years, to "nattering nabobs" in the Nixon years, to the evil "secular humanists" during the Reagan years, to GOP efforts to strip the social sciences of NSF funding, on up to the jibes by current GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum at academia. During the Florida primary, Santorum went so far as to claim that
We’ve lost our higher education. That was the first to go a long time ago. It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college. The indoctrination that occurs at American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America — and it is indoctrination.
What tripe. If true, universities must be really incompetent indoctrinators. According to the 2010 General Social Survey, 9% of 18-22 year-olds identified as Strong Democrats compared to 17% of the entire population; and 25% of the college-age youth identified as Independents compared to 18% of the entire population. Or, according to the Mariani & Hewitt study cited earlier, only 1.1% of those identifying as Conservative or Far Right their freshman year reported being Far Left their senior year. 2.8% of Far Left freshman identified as Conservative their senior year (see Table 5, p. 778).
I'm surprised Santorum trails Romney in Arizona primary polling, 31 to 39%. Maybe he needs to push harder on that narrative of the specter of liberal indoctrination. It should work among those many Arizona Republicans who seem to revel in fear of so many things, from people who don't speak good American to articulate but left-wing professors.
