Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: We [American colleges and universities] champion tolerance, except for conservatives and evangelical Christians.We want to be inclusive of people who don't look like us-so long as they think like us." -New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof (2016a)Higher education leads the way in working toward a more diverse, representative, welcoming, and supportive environment that increases inclusiveness, promotes greater equity, and enriches the learning experience by creating an atmosphere where all community members can flourish in an open marketplace of ideas, opinions, and beliefs (Haidt et al., 2015; King, Jr., Mitchell, McIntosh, & Bell-Ellwanger, 2016).Pluralism is a well-established value in the academy, and it enjoys broad backing-except for individuals who do not share the overwhelming liberal political bias in higher education.In support of this position Kristof (2016b) cited Dr. George Yancey, a black, evangelical Christian sociology professor at the University of North Texas, who said "Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black.But inside academia, I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close."While this quote suggests, unsurprisingly, that higher education may be unwelcoming to religion, particularly Christianity (Larson, 2010), the more important point is that higher education seems to have created an intellectual monoculture in many disciplines (Etchemendy, 2017) that are unreceptive to those with viewpoints, understandings, ideologies, and political beliefs not endorsed by the political left. 1 Even having ideas thought to be inconsistent with a person's ethnicity can be problematic.French (2016), for example, noted that affirmative action was less robust for African-Americans and Hispanics who held notions seemingly incompatible with their ethnicity:
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4387888388