Academic Bias, Academic Freedom

Hold on to your chairs, folks! There are some new studies out arguing — would you believe it? — that THERE ARE MORE DEMOCRATS THAN REPUBLICANS ON COLLEGE FACULTIES! According to Stephen Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, “Increasingly, American academe behaves as if it were a church with a creed rather than a marketplace of ideas.”

One of the studies found Democrats outnumber Republicans among Anthropologists by 30 to 1. Economists, by comparison, are almost balanced, favoring Democrats by only 3 to 1. In the bias Big Game between Stanford and Berkeley (for those of you unfamiliar with this rivalry, the “Big Game” between Stanford and Berkeley is the last football game of the year for both schools), Stanford loses: its faculty favors Democrats by only 7.6 to 1 while Berkeley takes the axe (the prize for the winner of the Big Game), coming in at a whopping 9.9 to 1.

Unsurprisingly, the academic establishment, always lathered up with excitement over “diversity” of pigmentation, is breezily unconcerned with these numbers, believing they are irrelevant to the “expertise” expounded in the classroom.

“The assumption that guides such studies is wrongheaded,” said Roger W. Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors. He contends that the political affiliations of professors are of little consequence in the classroom and that colleges hire faculty members based on their expertise, not how they vote in elections.

No doubt. And I’m sure it is nothing more than pure co-incidence that, according to another article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education, that college students on a number of campuses that were surveyed voted for Kerry over Bush by margins that ranged from just under 2 to 1 to a frequent 3 to 1, noticeably higher spreads than was the case with non-college 18 to 29 year olds.

I’m not sure there is any, or much, actual discrimination in hiring Republicans, or that affirmative action for conservatives is a good solution for whatever the problem is (in fact, I’m sure it’s not), but you’d have to be as out of it as the head of the AAUP not to notice a lack of, for lack of a better term, “diversity” in higher education these days.

Even legitimate problems of bias on campus are easily infected by rampant political correctness. At Fort Lewis College in Colorado, for example, a professor, Andrew Gulliford, has stirred up a hornets nest of controversy by publishing an article on teaching American Indians that his American Indian students, and others, found deeply offensive. (Hat Tip to reader Linda Seebach)

Published in the October edition of American Studies International, the article is an anecdotal work describing the rewards, difficulties and cross-cultural complications of having a student body that is 18 percent American Indian.

In it, Gulliford described his American Indian students as “polite and well-groomed” and “quiet, almost to a fault, slow to speak up, reticent to challenge professors.”

Students have complained that the comments are paternalistic at best and subtle racism at worst….

Gulliford used many real first names in the article in relating stories about family curing rituals and sacred tribal sites and objects. He also used excerpts from student works to illustrate his points. But he did not ask permission or inform students that their information was to be published.

Gulliford, in short, is in hot water and may well deserve some sort of disciplinary action, which the college seems about to apply. The Chronicle of Higher Education, writing about this case today, reports:

The college’s Faculty Senate on Wednesday unanimously endorsed a resolution, written by its Intracultural Committee, that says the article is “offensive” and “reinforces stereotypes regarding Native Americans.” The resolution also says that the professor appropriated “confidential statements by Native American students” that may have been motivated by a “callous disregard” of their privacy rights.

I have no problem with discipline being meted out for disregard of privacy or related breaches of academic standards, but for a faculty senate to censure a professor for an article in a scholarly journal that is “offensive” and “reinforces stereotypes” is exactly the sort of violation of academic freedom that led to the creation of the AAUP in the first place, complete with fear about losing favor with benefactors.

“We’re most concerned we don’t lose our standing with Native American people,” [ Richard M. Wheelock, an associate professor of Southwest studies at Fort Lewis] said. The college, which began as a federal institution and was later given to the state, is required to offer free tuition to American Indians.

The AAUP was founded in large part to protect professors from retribution for offending money-providing academic patrons. Perhaps someone should remind Fort Lewis of that as it goes about determining exactly what offenses Prof. Gulliford has committed.

Say What? (6)

  1. Michelle Dulak Thomson November 20, 2004 at 8:20 pm | | Reply

    If Gulliford did use real first names and excerpts of students’ work without their permission, then he really is in hot water and deserves it; that is close to the top of the list of academic no-nos.

    On the other hand, the complaint that his article “reinforces stereotypes regarding Native Americans” is strange. Is there really a stereotype of Native American students as “polite and well-groomed [ . . . ] quiet, almost to a fault,” &c.? I’ve never heard of this characterization; it must be so rare a perception that no one’s even bothered to counter it.

    (Thought experiment: suppose Gulliford’s article had described his Native American students as contentious, angry, and slovenly. Think it would still have been denounced as “reinforcing stereotypes”? I do.)

    The odd thing is that group characterizations like Gulliford’s are the bread and butter of the diversity-seminar folks. Ethnically-based different “learning styles,” &c., are something I was repeatedly told I had to know about when “teaching to diversity.”

  2. Ross November 21, 2004 at 11:37 am | | Reply

    Just out of morbid curiosity, how much trouble are we talking about for the actual actions, not the using his actual actions as an excuse to punish him for his opinions. Using only the student’s first name provides some (not enough admittedly) level of anonymity. In general, would this be a major offense in an article that does not divulge illegal activity?

    Assuming that the excerpts he used were identified as excerpts should he be required to get permission from the student’s? Would fair use apply?

    It seems to me that this would not be subject to IRB approval because his article was not empirical. Since his article is an opinion piece shouldn’t it be held to lesser standards than a research paper would be? A much more serious charge would be if he made up excerpts that did not really exist, but that does not seem to be the case here.

    I am just curious about what the rules are in case I ever write an opinion piece.

  3. bains November 21, 2004 at 1:57 pm | | Reply

    As a Fort Lewis College alum, I can attest to what Prof. Gulliford posits. I remember the reluctance one Mt Ute had to speaking in class (a 400 level philosophy course with 8 students) and the discomfort expressed when that reluctance was pointed out. Using anecdotal evidence and real names is, however extremely insensitive. A reprimand is in order.

  4. Current FLC Student from Dine' Nation November 22, 2004 at 2:34 am | | Reply

    First and foremost, the legal and ethical violation most prominent in this arena is the fact that the quotes he uses are from student exams, as well as personal and private discussions without students’ knowledge. As a Professor and Director of a prestigious research repository, Dr. Gulliford envokes authority in the subjects of which he writes. He explained in his defense that he intended the article to be read by an audience who may have never met a Native American. His article gave no plausible foundation for educating Native American students. Rather, Dr. Gulliford’s article read like a run-of-the-mill tourism brouchure. Essentially, the problem is that this situation causes a division of trust between student and faculty. This is further offset by the fact that the student and faculty are waiting on the institution to make a decision concerning the merits of this issue. This being said, the majority of the student body understands that this is an ethical issue more than a legal issue. But to ensure the trust necessary in an academic forum, a student and a professor must respect each other as equals. As it stands, most college campuses operate under a paternalistic framework. Consequently, when dealing with Native American students, there is often the misconception that Native students are inadequate academically as well as socially. Thus, the issue of stereotyping in the article is about the descriptions given to Native American students being littered with generalizations. These descriptions are reminiscent of boarding school days when children were abused merely due to speaking their own language, being stripped of their traditional clothes and identity, as well as being displaced farther and farther from their homes and cultures. Furthermore, this issue is rooted in, and allows to fester, many wounds both in the past and in the present. As a Fort Lewis Student, the value of this institution is beyond quantification. But as things stand on campus, it is obvious there is a need for change. And as students, we will work for that change for the good of our school.

  5. Anonymous November 22, 2004 at 12:05 pm | | Reply

    “But to ensure the trust necessary in an academic forum, a student and a professor must respect each other as equals.”

    I’m sure that trust is a necessary prerequisite in a teacher-student relationship. However, the teacher and the student are not equals. In the eyes of the law, perhaps, but not academically.

    The Left has created this Frankenstien monster; it was only a matter of time before the monster returns to the castle to destroy its creator.

  6. Douglas Hainline January 1, 2005 at 11:57 am | | Reply

    “students and professors must respect each other as equals”? Obviously they are not equal in terms of knowledge (usually). But perhaps the person who used this phrase meant, equal in some fundamental respect? I.e. must respect each other as every human being should respect another?

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