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Heterodox Academy

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Heterodox Academy
AbbreviationHxA
Formation2015; 9 years ago (2015)
FounderJonathan Haidt and Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz
Location
Interim Executive Director
Manon Loustaunau
Websiteheterodoxacademy.org

Heterodox Academy (HxA) is a non-profit advocacy group of academics working to counteract what they see as a lack of viewpoint diversity on college campuses, especially political diversity.[1]

History

In 2011, Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, gave a talk at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in which he argued that political conservatives were under-represented in social psychology and that this hinders research and damages the field's credibility.[2][3] In 2015, Haidt was contacted by Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, a Georgetown University law professor, who had given a talk to the Federalist Society discussing a similar lack of conservatives in law and similarly argued that this undermines the quality of research and teaching.[3] Haidt and Rosenkranz formed "Heterodox Academy" to address this issue. Initial funding for the group came from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation and The Achelis and Bodman Foundation.[3][4] The Heterodox Academy website was launched with 25 members in September 2015. A series of campus freedom of speech controversies, such as those surrounding Erika Christakis at Yale and the 2015–16 University of Missouri protests, coincided with an increase in membership.[3]

Membership was initially open to tenured and pre-tenure professors, but has been expanded to adjunct professors, graduate students, and postdoctorals. The group has a selective membership application process which is partly intended to address imbalances toward any particular political ideology.[3] In July 2017, the group had 800 members internationally.[3][5] As of February 2018, around 1,500 college professors had joined Heterodox Academy, along with a couple hundred graduate students.[1]

In 2018, Debra Mashek, a professor of psychology at Harvey Mudd College, was appointed as the executive director of Heterodox Academy.[1][6] In 2020, the organization had around 4,000 members.[7]

Programs and activities

In 2016 and 2017, Heterodox Academy published an annual Heterodox Academy Guide to Colleges, a ranking based on "political conformity and orthodoxy".[5][8][9][10]

In June 2018, Heterodox Academy held an inaugural Open Mind Conference in New York City, featuring several academic guests recently involved in campus free speech issues, like Robert Zimmer, Lucía Martínez Valdivia, Allison Stanger, Alice Dreger, and Heather Heying.[11][12]

From 2017 through 2021, Heterodox Academy published the podcast Half Hour of Heterodoxy, which featured interviews with numerous researchers including political scientists Matt Grossmann, Ashley E. Jardina, and Norman Ornstein; psychologists Amy Edmondson, Cristine Legare, and Jonathan Haidt; sociologists Musa al-Gharbi and Fabio Rojas; economist Glenn Loury; humanities professors Michael S. Roth and Jacques Berlinerblau; historians Alice Dreger, Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer, and Lawrence B. Glickman; and philosophers Jason Stanley, Teresa Bejan, Cailin O'Connor, and Robert Talisse. [13] Non-academic guests included authors, critics, and journalists such as A. J. Jacobs, Meghan Daum, Sheila Heen, Greg Lukianoff, Amy Westervelt, James Poniewozik, Robert Wright, Carol Quillen, David Frum, and Charlie Sykes.[13] As of January 2022, Listennotes.com ranked it as a top 1% podcast in terms of global popularity.[14]

Heterodox Academy operates an online platform named "Open Mind" that seeks to reduce political polarization in schools and workplaces. The organization also administers a "Campus Expression Survey", designed to allow professors and college administrators to survey their students' feelings about freedom of expression on campus.[15]

Ideology and reception

Heterodox Academy describes itself as non-partisan.[6] In 2018, the group's website described its mission as encouraging political diversity to allow dissent and challenge errors.[6]

Zack Beauchamp of Vox maintains that "by working to promote the idea that liberal bias and ... political correctness is [sic] a crisis, they provide ammunition" to conservative lawmakers who would pass laws to restrict academic freedom. On a more concessive note, Beauchamp acknowledges that "Heterodox Academy's core staff are too principled to support such measures."'[16]

Marcy Van Fossen et al. write: "A recent [Heterodox Academy] study surveyed students from hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities and found that 62% reported that students are reluctant to state their views in the classroom due to a perceived campus culture that does not support viewpoint diversity (Stiksma, 2021). The most common reasons for students' reticence were that other students or professors would criticize their views as offensive or wrong."[17][18][19] In a July 2021 University World News article, historian of education Jonathan Zimmerman reported on faculty members’ concern about the consequences of dissent: "In a survey of 445 professors conducted last year by Heterodox Academy, over half said that they believed expressing a dissenting view at work could harm their careers."[20][21]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Friedersdorf, Conor (February 6, 2018). "A New Leader in the Push for Diversity of Thought on Campus". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on May 25, 2018. Retrieved May 24, 2018.
  2. ^ Tierney, John (February 7, 2011). "Social Scientist Sees Bias Within". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 9 August 2014. Retrieved March 9, 2019.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Goldstein, Evan R. (June 11, 2017). "The Gadfly: Can Jonathan Haidt Calm the Culture Wars?". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Vol. 63, no. 40 (published July 7, 2017). pp. B6–9. Archived from the original on May 4, 2019. Retrieved March 6, 2019.
  4. ^ "Variety and Heterodox Academy: The Chris Martin Interview". TheBestSchools.org. August 2016. Archived from the original on March 6, 2020. Retrieved March 9, 2019.
  5. ^ a b Belkin, Douglas (June 24, 2017). "Colleges Pledge Tolerance for Diverse Opinions, But Skeptics Remain". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on June 27, 2017. Retrieved March 4, 2019.
  6. ^ a b c Lerner, Maura (April 24, 2018). "Nurturing a new diversity on campus: 'Diversity of thought'". Star Tribune. Archived from the original on May 24, 2018. Retrieved May 24, 2018.
  7. ^ Wehner, Peter (May 24, 2020). "Jonathan Haidt Is Trying to Heal America's Divisions". The Atlantic. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
  8. ^ Richardson, Bradford (October 24, 2016). "Harvard among least intellectually diverse universities: Report". The Washington Times. Archived from the original on 25 May 2018. Retrieved May 24, 2018.
  9. ^ "The Heterodox Academy Guide to Colleges: Starting A Methodological Discussion". Heterodox Academy. October 27, 2016.
  10. ^ "Heterodox Academy Releases Updated Guide to Colleges | HeterodoxAcademy.org". November 4, 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-11-04.
  11. ^ Rubenstein, Adam (June 22, 2018). "Heterodoxy Now". The Weekly Standard. Archived from the original on 2 March 2019. Retrieved 1 March 2019.
  12. ^ Bartlett, Tom (June 21, 2018). "A Conference's Recipe for 'Viewpoint Diversity': More Free Play, More John Stuart Mill". The Chronicle of Higher Education. New York. Archived from the original on 2 March 2019. Retrieved 1 March 2019.
  13. ^ a b "Half Hour of Heterodoxy". Half Hour of Heterodoxy. January 24, 2022. Retrieved January 24, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  14. ^ "Listen Notes: Half Hour of Heterodoxy". Listen Notes. January 24, 2022. Retrieved January 24, 2022.
  15. ^ Mikics, David (July 21, 2019). "The High Priest of Heterodoxy". Tablet. New York, New York. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  16. ^ "The myth of a campus free speech crisis". 31 August 2018.
  17. ^ Marcy Van Fossen, James P. Burns, Thomas Lickona & Larry Schatz, "Teaching virtue virtually: can the virtue of tolerance of diversity of conscience be taught online?" Journal of Moral Education (2021), 1.
  18. ^ Harry Bruinius, "Why free speech is under attack from right and left," Christian Science Monitor, July 21, 2021
  19. ^ Matthias Revers & Richard Traunmüller, "Is Free Speech in Danger on University Campus? Some Preliminary Evidence from a Most Likely Case," KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie volume 72, pages471–497 (2020)
  20. ^ Jonathan Zimmerman, "Universities, we have a problem we are afraid to speak of," University World News: The Global Window on Higher Education, 1 July 2021
  21. ^ McWhorter, John. "Academics Are Really, Really Worried About Their Freedom," The Atlantic Monthly, September 1, 2020
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