In 2012 Inbar and Lammers published a paper showing that liberal university faculty were willing to discriminate against conservatives in everything from hiring, to grants, to promotion, to. publication. The more liberal the respondents, they noted at the time, the more willing they were to discriminate.
Their paper set off a chain reaction of claims and counterclaims. Liberals simply didn't believe their results while conservatives took an "I told you so" approach.
We now have confirmation of the Inbar and Lammers results. Researchers Honeycut and Freburg surveyed over 600 faculty from the California system, including faculty from a wide range of disciplines. What is striking about their findings is how close they align with Inbar and Lammers. A nice summary is provide by Tom Jacobs of the Pacific Standard:
“The more conservative respondents reported experiencing a more hostile environment,” the researchers report — which also is not surprising given their minority status. More troubling are responses to the issue of whether they would take ideology into account when reviewing a paper or grant, inviting an expert to a symposium, or “selecting a job candidate between two otherwise qualified individuals.”
In each of these areas, “the more liberal the participant, the more willing they were to explicitly discriminate against conservatives,”
Interesting, huh. Liberals, who rail against certain types of discrimination, OPENLY admit that they will discriminate against conservatives in their own disciplines. In education, almost 1/2 of those surveyed admitted they were willing to discriminate against conservatives.
They continued:
“Many respondents noted that political ideology was irrelevant in their field,” the researchers note, “yet their answers to the quantitative questions showed that they cared very much indeed about the political ideology of the people with whom they work.”
Similar to Inbar and Lammers, these authors also allowed respondents to provide more information through open-ended questions. As is usual, conservatives reported that they hid their political identity out of fear their careers and reputations would be sullied.
Liberals, on the other hand, were incredulous. Here is an example:
"Most conservatives I have met who are faculty have a persecution complex. They are in the minority and feel that they do not get their air time. No one I know would hold it against a conservative for well thought out opinions, yet the few conservatives I know in academia are incapable of justifying their positions."
There are now several studies documenting OPEN discrimination against conservative scholars. At what point do we take affirmative steps to remedy measurable and overt discrimination? At what point do we confront these prejudices?
Here is the Pacific Standard link:
psmag.com/university-faculty-are-just-like-the-rest-of-us-intolerant-2cd674635ed9#.po3oy3ql2
Here is a link to the paper:
spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/09/01/1948550616667617.full.pdf+html
Their paper set off a chain reaction of claims and counterclaims. Liberals simply didn't believe their results while conservatives took an "I told you so" approach.
We now have confirmation of the Inbar and Lammers results. Researchers Honeycut and Freburg surveyed over 600 faculty from the California system, including faculty from a wide range of disciplines. What is striking about their findings is how close they align with Inbar and Lammers. A nice summary is provide by Tom Jacobs of the Pacific Standard:
“The more conservative respondents reported experiencing a more hostile environment,” the researchers report — which also is not surprising given their minority status. More troubling are responses to the issue of whether they would take ideology into account when reviewing a paper or grant, inviting an expert to a symposium, or “selecting a job candidate between two otherwise qualified individuals.”
In each of these areas, “the more liberal the participant, the more willing they were to explicitly discriminate against conservatives,”
Interesting, huh. Liberals, who rail against certain types of discrimination, OPENLY admit that they will discriminate against conservatives in their own disciplines. In education, almost 1/2 of those surveyed admitted they were willing to discriminate against conservatives.
They continued:
“Many respondents noted that political ideology was irrelevant in their field,” the researchers note, “yet their answers to the quantitative questions showed that they cared very much indeed about the political ideology of the people with whom they work.”
Similar to Inbar and Lammers, these authors also allowed respondents to provide more information through open-ended questions. As is usual, conservatives reported that they hid their political identity out of fear their careers and reputations would be sullied.
Liberals, on the other hand, were incredulous. Here is an example:
"Most conservatives I have met who are faculty have a persecution complex. They are in the minority and feel that they do not get their air time. No one I know would hold it against a conservative for well thought out opinions, yet the few conservatives I know in academia are incapable of justifying their positions."
There are now several studies documenting OPEN discrimination against conservative scholars. At what point do we take affirmative steps to remedy measurable and overt discrimination? At what point do we confront these prejudices?
Here is the Pacific Standard link:
psmag.com/university-faculty-are-just-like-the-rest-of-us-intolerant-2cd674635ed9#.po3oy3ql2
Here is a link to the paper:
spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/09/01/1948550616667617.full.pdf+html
RSS Feed