by Thomas L. Trevethan

Compromising Scholarship: Religious and Political Bias in American Higher Education (Baylor, 2011) Buy on Amazon

George Yancey, Professor of Sociology at the University of North Texas, has put us all in his debt by offering a methodologically rigorous study of political and religious bias in American colleges and universities in his book, Compromising Scholarship: Religious and Political Bias in American Higher Education (Baylor Press, 2011). His conclusions are anything but flattering. About his own discipline of sociology he concludes:

The only thing I have demonstrated with this quantitative work is that membership in certain social groups negatively affects the chances one has of obtaining an academic position if that membership becomes known to the scholars in a search committee… This documentation of the hiring bias, beyond unmasking an uncomfortable reality, can help us to understand the boundaries of acceptable scientific research and thus the limits of science itself. (81-82)

And of a wider swath of the academy he concludes:

The reality is that we do have a problem with social bias in academia. It is warranted to argue about the extent to which this bias exists, but this research provides evidence of it existence. To ignore this evidence is to put one’s head in the sand and pretend that the problem does not exist. We can no longer hide behind the argument social bias is merely the unfounded charge of conservative religious and political opportunists. With this research, there is now empirical evidence documenting this bias. (137, emphasis added)

Empirical Evidence of Bias

The shape of Compromising Scholarship marks out the shape of Professor Yancey’s argument. He introduces the topic of his investigation, the shape of his book, the history of investigations about bias in the academy, and himself in the first two chapters. In this introduction his own social characteristics, location, and potential bias is canvassed. Yancey is an African-American, self-confessed evangelical Christian, a political independent, a son of the South from a home of lower socio-economic stature. And he notes how this identity affords both advantages and disadvantages as he undertakes this investigation. In the interests of similar candor your reviewer should also note that George Yancey is a good friend of InterVarsity Faculty Ministry and especially of the Emerging Scholars Network, as well as an author published by InterVarsity Press.

Yancey’s investigation begins with his own discipline, sociology. This affords him the advantage of a more intimate knowledge of the discipline he probes most extensively. He focuses his investigation on potential bias in hiring. But he also recognizes the barrier to investigating a highly educated population afforded by “social desirability effect,” the tendency of individuals to make themselves look good when they are answering survey questions. So he presents his survey as an analysis of collegiality, or in this case the ability to have a harmonious social environment, asking questions to probe which kinds of people with which sociologists are willing and unwilling to work. We have seen his conclusion above, but in the end the effect of the “social desirability effect” still hovers in the background as a factor for which it is impossible to control. Of course this hovering influence would only tend to minimize the bias that the survey actually discloses.

The fourth chapter engages in “qualitative research” by analyzing 42 blogs of those who hold a PhD in sociology or are presently (in 2008) doctoral students in sociology. I found this chapter less interesting than others. It was no surprise that these bloggers were motivated by “culture war” dynamics that tended to conflate religious and political conservatives in responding to adversaries. Yancey’s most potent observation is that even people who have been trained in detecting social deception were fooled dauntingly often by rumor that met with their political approval. Scholars who were trained in critical thinking and stereotype biases are quite vulnerable when they have some “skin in the game.”

Chapter five applies the quantitative research methodology to a much wider range of academic disciplines and leads to the disquieting conclusion of pervasive bias we noted above. Chapter six draws these findings together and assesses their impact on the scientific enterprise. Professor Yancey makes two points that seem to me particularly impressive:

• The real power of bias comes from its hidden nature. (153)
• Bias threatens the freedom and fruitfulness of scientific explorations. (161-164)

The problem here is not just that individuals will be burdened with unexpressed prejudice and harmed in the process of considering a job or a career in the academy. That would certainly be unjust and harmful to the reputation of the academy. But in limiting the acceptable range of questions that can be asked and explored, it arbitrarily shrinks the science.

A Real Problem with Real Consequences

Professor Yancey’s investigations and arguments leave me persuaded. There is an unacknowledged bias against religious and politically conservative people in the academic world. This should be a matter of concern to all thoughtful women and men on campus. In particular, I appreciate three aspects of his case.

Professor Yancey has given us research that is methodologically rigorous. Most complaints about bias against conservative Christian groups and political conservatives have been anecdotal. Stories are powerfully persuasive, but they can be powerfully misleading if the anecdote is not connected to more empirical research that demonstrates that the anecdote is a part of a larger trend. Evangelicals love anecdotes, and launch whole ministry efforts and programs on their basis, while showing no concern for careful sociological and theological considerations. Professor Yancey has given us a wonderful example of what is actually required. This is not ersatz social science, and that is a great gift.

Professor Yancey presents his research and conclusion with an admirable humility. This marks him as someone who is not an ideologue. He frequently notes the limits of his research. It cannot lead to conclusions about the intensity or degree of bias. It does not explain why academics hold this bias. It does not determine ways that bias works in pernicious way in areas other than hiring decisions. Yancey knows that objections can reasonably be made to his research and he seeks, persuasively to this reader, to reply to them with a lovely combination of respect and strength of conviction (see pp. 140-146). This is a work that not only seeks to make a statement; it also invites discussion and further research.

Finally, I appreciate the force and seriousness with which he presents his case. He keeps on reminding us that it is the lives and futures of real women and men that are at stake. For example, he acknowledges the legitimacy of an objection that appeals to the lack of strength of the bias he finds. The critic notes that his data indicate that most express a “slight” influence in their preference against religious and social conservatives. Surely, they conclude, this is negligible. Yancey replies,

But let us assume that those who stated that they were slightly less likely to support a candidate did exhibit a great deal of bias. Does this truly lessen the importance of these findings? Let us imagine that instead of a fundamentalist, we are looking at a Jewish candidate. Would we be concerned if “only” a quarter of academics were slightly less likely to support a candidate because he or she is a Jew? What sort of justifiable uproar would develop from such a finding? This illustration clarifies what is at stake. Even such slight resistance would mean that anti-Semitism would influence whether or not an individual would obtain a position. That clearly is unacceptable. Should it not also be unacceptable that a person’s Christian beliefs influence his or her ability to obtain an academic position, if the job is at a non-religious campus ? (143)

Just so. Scholarship is compromised when such bias is allowed to continue in its powerful secrecy.

Interesting confirmation of Yancey’s thesis has been offered in a lecture by Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Psychology at University of Virginia, presented to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Discrimination is a frequent topic in this professional society’s gatherings. Haidt makes a compelling case that political conservatives face considerable bias in his profession and that bias impoverishes research. At one point in his talk, Haidt asked the one thousand attendees how many were political liberals (about 800 hands were raised), libertarians (40 hands), and then conservatives (3 hands). “This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. Dr. Haidt noted that such a distribution of views would immediately cause a social psychologist or sociologist to assume the presence of bias, if it involved any other criterion. He argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals. The New York Times reported on this lecture and the response to it in this recent article. You can listen to Haidt’s talk online as well.

How Should We Respond to Bias?

For all the good work Professor Yancey has done, however, I find myself unable to follow him in his suggestions for how we ought to respond to this systemic bias. Let me offer two objections to his proposals.

In his quantitative chapter on bias among sociologists, he remarks that he advises his graduate students to avoid any discussion of religious or political views in job interviews (62). Now, this advice might be reasonable given the bias his research demonstrates, but it also seems unwise to me on several accounts. I find it hard to square with several of Jesus’ foundational sayings about discipleship. For example:

If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels. (Mark 8:38)

For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, but the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. (Matthew 12: 34-36)

These sayings of Jesus do not directly contemplate a contemporary job interview. But they do make silent, privatized discipleship an impossible option. Nor does our Lord’s teaching urge us to brashness or rashness or carelessness. But the Lord’s words in Mark 8 are preceded with a call to deny ourselves, take up our cross (an act of self sacrifice), and follow him. That necessarily includes the challenging setting of an interview for employment or promotion. In some circumstances, at least, we are required to speak as an act of conscience.

Further, if we hide our ultimate commitment to Jesus from view, what will happen when our new colleagues discover that we are a serious disciple? Will they feel misled by our employment interview? Could they not legitimately feel resentment at our evasiveness? How will we live and speak when we have adopted the habit of self-censorship? And how will we ever challenge the power of secrecy, so eloquently discussed by Professor Yancey, if we persist is accepting self-censorship?

Let me repeat, I do not think a job interview requires us to say everything, and often our religious view will not come up. It is, after all, illegal to raise such questions in an employment interview. What is more, the Master tells us to be “wise as serpents.” But not fearful, unfaithful, unbelieving. Many have conquered their fears, been winsomely candid, and found our God faithful. And so, God helping you, should you!

The final chapter of Compromising Scholarship considers “What Can Be Done to Deal with Social Bias in Academia?” Yancey suggests that we deploy the full array of contemporary methods for controlling and resisting bias, including diversity management programs, control of bias speech, and anti-racism activism, including addressing systemic issues of social justice and correction of institutional structures of injustice.

While Professor Yancey wants to limit the chilling effect of these efforts to eradicate bias against religious and political conservatives, I fear that the unintended consequences of these measures may actually be more damaging than the bias he so carefully documents. We have used these means to attack other sorts of bias, and mostly have driven the bias underground. Politeness is the order of the day when someone is watching. No one on campus sees themselves as racists, but the moral and spiritual realities of life lived east of Eden keep surfacing to mock our shallow optimism about human nature. Meanwhile, we live in ethnic or political or religious silos and develop few opportunities and little language for confronting or discussing bias. The intellectual climate of the university is smothered under a blanket of politically correct niceness.

Again the New Testament advocates an alternative stance: active resistance with no attempt at vengeance and redemptive suffering by the oppressed. Read Matthew 5:38-48, Romans 12:14-21, and 1 Peter 2:13-25; 3:8-17, and ask what they instruct those who follow Jesus to do in the face of undeserved hatred and discrimination. Give serious thought to how our context is different than that of our sisters and brothers living under Roman Empire and what difference these changes make, but do not arbitrarily make relative these challenging teachings.

By obeying and following them, those ancient spiritual kin of ours emerged victorious in the struggle for the soul of their culture. I do not doubt that some kinds of discrimination require legal redress. We may be thankful for much of the anti-bias effort against racism. But in our case as Christian disciples we are called to win the hearts and minds of our neighbors and not so much to beat off their irrational bias against us. We should expect others stand up for us, like Gamaliel (Acts 5) and Gallio (Acts 18) did for the apostles. And, God helping us, we are called to out-live, out-work, and out-think our adversaries.

For all the ways Professor Yancey has empowered us to do just these difficult and glorious things, things we may be certain he would applaud and to which he has committed himself, we are in his debt.

Thomas Trevethan is a veteran InterVarsity staff worker who has served at the University of Michigan for many years, now working with faculty on that campus. He is one of InterVarsity’s most gifted Bible expositors and has also authored the books The Beauty of God’s Holiness (InterVarsity Press) and Our Joyful Confidence: The Lordship of Jesus in Colossians (DILL Press). Tom holds an M.A. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He and his wife Barb live in Ann Arbor.