“The fact that Mike Pence can’t articulate [religious liberty], and Asa Hutchinson doesn’t care and can’t articulate it, is shocking,” Kingsfield [a pseudonym] said. “Huckabee gets it and Santorum gets it, but they’re marginal figures. Why can’t Republicans articulate this? We don’t have anybody who gets it and who can unite us. Barring that, the craven business community will drag the Republican Party along wherever the culture is leading, and lawyers, academics, and media will cheer because they can’t imagine that they might be wrong about any of it.”...Much more at the link.
Christians should put their families on a “media fast,” he says. “Throw out the TV. Limit Netflix. You cannot let in contemporary stuff. It’s garbage. It’s a sewage pipe into your home. So many parents think they’re holding the line, but they let their kids have unfettered access to TV, the Internet, and smartphones. You can’t do that. And if you can’t trust that the families of the kids that your kids play with are on the same team with all this, then find another peer group among families that are,” he said. “It really is that important.”
April 6, 2015
"This [law] professor is a practicing Christian, deeply closeted in the workplace..."
"...he is convinced that if his colleagues in academia knew of his faith, they would make it very hard for him.... He agreed to speak with me" — writes Rod Dreher — "about the Indiana situation on condition that I not identify him by name or by institution."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
100 comments:
The most frustrating thing (for me) about this Indiana scenario is the inability of the conservatives/right/religious to articulate what the religious issue is and why they are protecting civil rights. Secondary to that are the "conversations" exhibited on talk shows where not one person is articulating the religious position and concerns, even on Fox, the allegedly conservative network.
I'm not even that religious, nor would this issue effect me in any way (I have lots of gay friends and relatives and have been to their ceremonies and marriages), I'm just driven crazy by the non-stop BS. Really, it should not be limited to the religious, we've truly given up our freedom of association in this country.
You can't deny Christ and remain in Him. Either your faith or your work comes first. Every Christian faces this test. You needn't be proselytizing or aggressive, in fact it's better not to be, but you do need to be known as a Christian be remain one. Matthew 10:33
That should be "to remain one - not "be ..." typos!
The Christian Right lost the Perception War in Indiana. Gov. Pence was pretty worthless in recognizing what was happening and advocating for his cause. He's not that old -- white hair notwithstanding -- but didn't seem to recognized the twitter avalanche coming.
We're well on the way to recreating the old Organization Man conformism that we heard so much about back in the '50s, though the mechanism has changed along with the targets. The old deviant lifestyles were kept in the shadows by the mild disapproval of the many; the new deviant lifestyles will be kept in the shadows by the shrill hatred of the few.
My husband and I sometimes wonder... as Catholic homeschoolers with a pack of kids... are we just natural counter-cultural rebels?
In the 50s, would we have been beatniks?
Some of our acquaintances who are more in tune with the culture sneer at us as squares and conformists.
But when everyone is a hip non-conformist, it takes a rebel to be square.
So...the question is... are we just doing what we like, or are we just rebels who must set ourselves against whatever the dominant culture is?
“The fact that Mike Pence can’t articulate [religious liberty], and Asa Hutchinson doesn’t care and can’t articulate it, is shocking,” Kingsfield [a pseudonym] said."
No, not shocking. To be expected. As yours truly "explained" in a previous post :).
@Tank: "The most frustrating thing (for me) about this Indiana scenario is the inability of the conservatives/right/religious to articulate."
The Christian Right needs to get better spokesmen. Better and tougher, more aware. This is why Cruz will resonate. Fox is barely right of center. Even their best (Krauthammer) or most popular (O'Reilly) will not speak for most conservatives.
@sparrow: "You can't deny Christ and remain in Him. Either your faith or your work comes first. Every Christian faces this test."
Most American Christians today will fail this test. Even (especially?) the big "conservative" megachurches are all about feel-good self-help. But for serious Christians it is a time of trial. I expect a new "fundamentalist" retreat, as happened about a century ago, at the time of the first Progressive onslaught.
I've seen this anecdote elsewhere on the Web.
How does this differ journalistically from the Rolling Stone account of "Jackie"?
I have a friend who is a devout Christian who never let his kids watch much TV, didn't have cable, no smartphones, etc, etc. Same age as I am, now he has kids with good jobs, husbands and wives, and grandkids.
Boy he sure is stupid.
We don't have a lot of media in the home, but I don't watch any programming I would feel uncomfortable having an older teen watch with me.
I have guilty pleasures of watching Fox's Empire or ABC's Once Upon a Time and some of the talent/reality shows like 'The Voice'.
For us it is entertainment, not our moral compass and that is the change in our culture how media works.
We don't rely on the media to provide 'wholesome' entertainment. The NICK/Disney channels are nothing more then a narcissistic trap. Did Hanna Montana or iCarley ever feed the poor or save someone from the well (like Lassie)
It stinks that Neil DeGrasse Tyson is kind of a jerk, but I won't stop my ten year old from watching old NOVA episodes from his tablet.
Even if you're not religious, as a parent you are their moral compass. Do something (by example) other then be their cook and maid.
We're people by our actions, not by what the media powers claim we are.
There will be times I've informed by kids that we will have to silent, for survival. They know what happened in Kenya.
Sure it is easy to think that will never happen here, but those christian college students didn't think it would happen to them either.
It has become a race to the bottom in victimology.
Won't anyone stand up and say, 'I had it easy'.
I had it easy.
and I want it to be easy for others as well.
"Blow up your TV, throw away your paper. Go to the country, build you a home. Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches. Try 'n find Jesus on your own." -- by Maywood’s finest, Mr. John Prine
I had it easy, and worse; I didn't appreciate it. Moreover I still have better than I deserve. Deo Gratias
It is important to stand on principle. Within living memory insufficiently religious people were denied academic appointments.
It's hard to be a martyr, even when martyrdom is loss of one's job rather than one's head, like the Copts are going through.
I also had it easy. But I did my best to make it hard.
This:
“They make so many errors, but they don’t want to listen.”
"There’s a lot of looking down on flyover country, one middle America.
"It’s all about power. They’ve got cultural power, and think they should use it for good, but their idea of good is not anchored in anything. They’ve got a lot of power in courts and in politics and in education. Their job is to challenge people to think critically, but thinking critically means thinking like them. They really do think that they know so much more than anybody did before, and there is no point in listening to anybody else, because they have all the answers, and believe that they are good.”
Pop culture is basically crap. But ignoring it has not worked well thus far.
He's not that old -- white hair notwithstanding -- but didn't seem to recognized the twitter avalanche coming.
Who, honestly, cares what Twitter monkeys think? Given how few have enough substance to actually fill 140 characters, I don't know why we are so anxious to appease the belligerently sophomoric.
Some of our acquaintances who are more in tune with the culture sneer at us as squares and conformists.
But when everyone is a hip non-conformist, it takes a rebel to be square.
Indeed. TODAY is way more conformist than the 1950's ever were. Everybody is required to think and believe the same thing or else you're evil.
Twitter is one of the most useless things ever foisted on the public by narcissists who believe people need to know what they think RIGHT NOW.
Any politician who, when hearing of a growing backlash by Twitter, responds with "Who gives a damn about Twitter?" will get my vote.
Won't anyone stand up and say, 'I had it easy'. - ARM
Will all the targets of my tax collection efforts please admit that any money that have earned fell from the sky and flew into their wallets?
There are so many people who face *actual* hardships in life, like not feeling like working, or studying in school, whatever, that need your money so much more than you do.
Happy to oblige, ARM: I'm not a victim, therefore there's no such thing as a victim.
They’ve got cultural power, and think they should use it for good,
Their first problem is that they have no way to define "good" beyond "what I think is right".
I had it easy. My children have/had it easy. Two of them have made good use of their good fortune. One seems hell-bent on making his life significantly harder.
I've seen this anecdote elsewhere on the Web.
How does this differ journalistically from the Rolling Stone account of "Jackie"?
Seriously, we're mocking Rolling Stone everywhere today for their willful naivete in buying into a narrative they wanted to hear, but we had far more evidence from the beginning on the "Jackie" episode than we have about this completely anonymous one.
Have we gotten to the point that narrative alone, whether anonymous journalism or TV plot device, is all we really need anymore to base our thinking upon?
Is, "well, it could have been true, whether it was or not" all we really need now?
Social media matters.
All information and influence comes from our news feeds.
Depending who you follow and friend, that is the only think you will EVER SEE.
The Christian law professor is saying what many believing Christians are coming to understand. His Christianity is not underground because he is paranoid: were his beliefs known, his career in his secular humanist institution would be finished.
During this Easter Triduum, the media applauded and fanned the persecution of the Christian pizza maker even as the massacre of Christians in Kenya was being reported. The anti-Christian narrative was everywhere this year. Even nice-guy libertarian Penn Jillette endorsed the government's right to make Christians with strongly held beliefs be forced to participate in gay weddings. (See Reason for that story).
Surely Christianity will survive, but it may need to return to the catacombs to do it.
Tank: Really, it should not be limited to the religious, we've truly given up our freedom of association in this country.
Bingo. We let this cat out of the bag when we decided the Civil Rights Act of 1964 magically superseded the First Amendment to the Constitution. Either the Constitution protects freedom of association in the private sphere or it doesn't. Yes, that means a business owned by racists or evangelical Christians can refuse to serve people for reason many—even a clear majority of us—may find bad. Guess what? I still see "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" in businesses, and my reaction has always been: duh. It's a private business.
The problem is the left doesn't want "private businesses." "The personal is the political." "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." But don't you dare call it fascisn!
"Surely Christianity will survive, but it may need to return to the catacombs to do it."
The caves in Cappadocia seem nicer.
Turn away from media all you want, unplug, drop out..the leftist SJW culture juggernaut will roll right along without your input. You'll awaken like Rip Van Winkle to an unrecognizable world.
It takes balls to stay in it and fight.
"I have a friend who is a devout Christian who never let his kids watch much TV, didn't have cable, no smartphones, etc, etc. Same age as I am, now he has kids with good jobs, husbands and wives, and grandkids."
Exactly. I have friends in Tucson who are sincere Catholics, no TV except to play video games. The mother took each of the three sons out of school for a year to home school. The oldest is a Marine officer, the second is a junior or senior in college majoring in engineering and the youngest is in college now. They are great boys, good in sports, one plays classical piano very well.
The father is an airline captain.
You took the opportunity to oppress when it was there, and now that it's gone, you want to say you are oppressed. Man up, losers. You lost. And you deserved to lose. Now, stop acting like losers. If you can. (I bet you can't!) . . .
. . . where the whimpers of the losers of the DOMA case continued, along with slurpy wound-licking over my calling them losers — which is what they were, having lost in that case — and advising them not to whine over the more-or-less false perception that they'd been called bigots.
Shorter Althouse:
Man up, you oppressors who falsely believe others are calling you bigots.
We are back into Roman Empire days. Pliny the Younger who was Ruling in what is now northern Turkey asked for instructions on his this very issue from Emperor Trajan in 112 AD in a CYA letter to Rome.
Should Christians who are guilty of no other crime be executed for their faith. They seemed to him generally harmless, but they had refused to renounce their faith, so he had had them executed.
The Emperor replied that he did the right thing, but not to seek out Christians who hide their faith.
The Professor quoted Galatians 5:1. That scripture is the direct order from Paul to Christians not to accept legalism over themselves from false teachers. Refuse that yoke of slavery, says Paul.
Paul also ruled out food diets, Feast day keepings and Sabbath day keepings in addition to the famous required circumcision of non Jews. Paul said that trying to keep Moses's Law was useless garbage but that knowing Jesus' resurrection had replaced it.
But of course that was why Paul was continually followed and stoned, or imprisoned or run out of town by the False Christians still preaching legalism as if it is Christianity to control the lucrative Religion Business based on guilt.
Paul was the first Calvinist.
Valuing open-mindedness, as I do, I'm currently working my way through "What's So Great About Christianity" by Dinesh D'Souza.
So far, his argument seems to be that lots of ordinary people think it's great and science guys like Richard Dawkins haven't got everything in the world all figured out yet.
I'm assuming it'll get better later on, ever the cockeyed optimist that I am . . . that I am.
We are seeing the rise of North Korean conditions in America.
We need to reacquaint the public with Locke and Smith and private property as the only stay against the overwhelming power of the State.
"What's So Great About Christianity" by Dinesh D'Souza
The value and dignity of each individual human soul.
Paul Zrimsek said...
I'm not a victim, therefore there's no such thing as a victim.
Not sure that the second clause is necessarily dependent on the first.
@Writ Small
DOMA was terribly written. It was not a defense to marriage, but clearly anti-gay marriage.
I can defend marriage without being negative towards gays or same-sex relationships.
We would be BETTER OFF without DOMA.
From instance is how the Catholic Church defines marriage "by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring;"
There is nothing homophobic about that, it doesn't not condemn homosexuals in any form/ It just states that heterosexual behavior opens itself to procreation and the obligations to children that follow.
Now read DOMA. It doesn't give marriage a purpose, but specially goes out of its way that isn't about same-sex couple without any reasoning.
Those that worship the pretend man in the sky above the middle east desert should be careful whom they admit this mental illness to.
I'm sure you'd hide your racist and homophobic beliefs as well.
The survival instinct is strong and actions have consequences.
It's just a pinch of incense to Caesar, you Christian atheist cannibals, what's the big deal?
It's just a cake, bigots.
Nothing new under the sun.
Those that worship the pretend man in the sky above the middle east desert should be careful whom they admit this mental illness to.
And some people just have to be assholes for the sake of being assholes.
First, they came for the inconvenient babies...
Our liberal society is evolving from a principled state of tolerance to a totalitarian state of selective exclusion. Perhaps it's just a recurring phase in humanity's chaotic development.
I think I truly believe that businesses should be able to discriminate as private entities.
However, they should also suffer the marketplace consequences of doing so.
He's wrong about not having someone to articulate our position.
Ted Cruz.
"“Throw out the TV. Limit Netflix."
So, in later life, they may get ambushed by a reporter and step on some sacred cows without even knowing it..
It could be the odds are very small.
Not sure that the second clause is necessarily dependent on the first.
It isn't, of course: getting people to say that they, personally, aren't victims does nothing to establish that no victims are out there. You might ask yourself, sometime, why you spend so much of your time trying to get people to agree to statements that are beside the point.
You really can't shield them from others forever...
Progressives do so quite well. Progressive kids have the backbone of a washcloth in the face of a differing opinion.
"Render unto Caesar", but Caesar wants 35% plus interest and penalties.
Homeschooling doesn't really 'shield kids from others' unless you're doing the full-on cult thing. They still go out into the community and meet people. In fact, they're MORE out in the community than 'normal kids' because they have more time since they're not warehoused 7 hours a day.
These days 'Normal' is only allowing your kids to mingle with carefully selected agemates in carefully selected activities .
If you think the kid who wakes up, gets on the bus, spends all day at a desk and then goes to travel soccer practice for 3 hours a day 6 days a week isn't sheltered, you're delusional.
I love the not so subtle references the great moral decline and end times fetish. No wonder islamic state religious scholars recognize jesus as a profit.
Callahan: the world is run by assholes that count on sheep who buy the notion that the meek shall inherit the earth.
As for us, we threw out our television/cable about eight years ago when my daughter was 6. She used to watch a tv show called Kim Possible. One day, my wife is telling my daughter to do something and she puts her hand up and says, "Talk to the hand!"
My wife, astonished, asks, "Where did you hear that?" and my daughter says, "Kim Possible!"
And that was the end of television in our home.
Now my children get all of their television from Netflix and Hulu and we control what they watch much more closely. Plus it has the added benefit of no commercials, or very few commercials. Which I love.
They also watch youtube, which I don't understand. But my boys love watching other people playing video games and talking about the games they are playing. It's odd, but we only let them watch the guys who are clean and articulate, and they get to write them letters of appreciation, which I also like. More interaction, rather than just watching passively on tv.
My daughters at State U have found that their fellow students who were public-schooled are quite sheltered from different ideas. They were rather shocked that my daughter expressed the opinion that women should not be in combat. Unheard of. In fact, it was best summed up in one girls well-thought out reply of "That's f'ked up!". It is a deep well of sober reflection, multiple points of view, and tolerance in the Honors College.
Basically, all kids are sheltered from others. For instance, when was the last time your kids talked to a young-earth creationist? They're a significant chunk of the population, but to most people, they're 'something I heard about on TV."
With homeschooling, you're actually forced to mingle with a wider range of people, because since there are so few homeschoolers, you get a more diverse group.
We actually have to drive an hour each way if we want our kids to hang out with other families who are 'just like us.'
OTOH, if you're a school/soccer family, everyone you socialize with is probably just like you.
But anyway, my point was more--- what is 'counter-cultural and rebellious' has changed. So...many of the people who pride themselves on being 'hip rebels' now are actually members of the majority culture rebelling against a weird subculture.
I think we'd probably have been weirdos even in the 60s, but we would have been f/sf/trekkie rather than mainstream 'hippie.' Dealing with all that constant emoting is just way too much work.
Paul Zrimsek said...
It isn't, of course: getting people to say that they, personally, aren't victims does nothing to establish that no victims are out there.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. The issue is how gullible do you have to be to believe that a wealthy tenured law professor's life is blighted by prejudice. I have known born-again Christians who work in biology departments who had had no significant problems.
Almost everyone falls outside the mainstream on some issue and can feel put upon at times, but financial security makes it all relatively unimportant. To raise that mild discomfort to victimhood requires considerable suspension of belief.
The issue is how gullible do you have to be to believe that a wealthy tenured law professor's life is blighted by prejudice.
You may recall that Henry Louis Gates Jr. got pretty good mileage out of a similar claim.
The former CEO of Mozilla. Enough said.
ARM
It's the wealth and comfort itself that is the snare here. If our professor didn't want to preserve it he would be more forthright with his peers. Still while it's only a minor problem relative to martyrdom it's still oppressive to work within an ideological bubble if you don't share that ideology. If the office politics were reversed perhaps you could muster up some sympathy.
"Howard said...
Those that worship the pretend man in the sky above the middle east desert should be careful whom they admit this mental illness to."
Here we have an advocate of the Beatles song "Imagine."
Richard Fernandez does his usual good job of discussing the consequences of such thought.
The dream of a secular, liberal world isn’t going to happen. Pew projects that by 2050 “Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world”. However, ”atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion … will make up a declining share of the world’s total population”. The Muslims will outnumber them. In fact the Hindus will outnumber them.
Not only will liberal secularism not inherit the earth, the trope that Christianity is a Eurocentric religion foisted on the poor benighted colored masses will finally be laid to rest. Islam will become a major European religion and make up 10% of the population. Over the same time frame, Muslims will outnumber Jews in America. Statistically Christianity will become the black man’s religion and “four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.” It is not fanciful to think that by then, all the best white people will be Muslims.
AReasonableMan unreasonably wrote:
"The issue is how gullible do you have to be to believe that a wealthy tenured law professor's life is blighted by prejudice."
I bet every wealthy, tenured, Black law professor believes that his life is blighted by prejudice.
Paul Zrimsek said...
You may recall that Henry Louis Gates Jr. got pretty good mileage out of a similar claim.
My recollection is that he was arrested by the cops for trying to get into his own home. Not exactly equivalent.
sparrow said...
If the office politics were reversed perhaps you could muster up some sympathy.
If everyone is a victim then no one is a victim. I guess that is the strategy at play here, but it only diminishes the players.
Intense dislike is a first-world problem.
Thanks to Obama, Iran will show us now what intense dislike - also known as hatred - really is like in the real world.
This has just begun.
I was home schooled, and of a libertarian/conservative persuasion. It was and is my nature to talk frankly about my views, but generally only if asked during a conversation.
Back in university, I worked at the public relations arms for a spell, and after a few weeks there, it became clear enough. They thought everyone there was of the same mind (far left) and spoke as such. I do not really think I would have suffered overt reprisals, but they made it clear what they thought of anyone outside of their band of thought, and it was clear that respect and their evaluation of my intelligence and work quality would suffer if I opened my mouth. That is endurable for a temp position...otherwise, its a hostile work environment.
AReasonableMan unreasonably wrote:
"I guess that is the strategy at play here"
Based on what?
This doesn't make a lot of sense. The issue is how gullible do you have to be to believe that a wealthy tenured law professor's life is blighted by prejudice. I have known born-again Christians who work in biology departments who had had no significant problems.
I'm guessing university faculty being incredibly Democratic is not bias or discrimination. Republicans just don't want high paying jobs with incredible job security...well, if you're a Leftie. Tenure seems to be less secure if you're conservative.
the world is run by assholes that count on sheep who buy the notion that the meek shall inherit the earth.
Yet folks who mock those "sheep" killed about 100M people last century.
Yeah, we should listen to atheists. Really.
My recollection is that he was arrested by the cops for trying to break into his own home.
FTFY.
"My recollection is that he was arrested by the cops for trying to break into his own home."
Yeah, his neighbors who are 95% white were worried that there might be a burglar. Neighbors can be like that if they like their neighbors.
ARM
I'd say your lack of charity diminishes you. Office politics and the ill treatment of peers is petty, ugly and endemic. You needn't exaggerate the victim status to regard the practice as uncivil. But then an authentically reasonable man would know this.
sparrow said...
Office politics and the ill treatment of peers is petty, ugly and endemic.
We have yet to establish that this actually happened. He is tenured, so he was clearly not prejudged academically.
Funny, I consider the "700 Club" to be raw mental sewage.
Oh the sheer amount of butthurt going on is delicious.
The premise that a "practicing Christian" needs to be "deeply closeted" to succeed at an "elite law school" seems odd, to say the least. The late Bill Stuntz (first at UVa and then at HLS) or David Skeel (at Penn) made no secret that they were devout evangelical Christians; both held endowed chairs at their respective law schools (Skeel still does). Both were prominent in their fields -- Stuntz in criminal law, Skeel in debtor's rights and bankruptcy. Both schools also have many observant Jewish faculty members.
Althouse will know better, but the premise of this article doesn't ring true to me.
Ghosthunter Michael K said...
Here we have an advocate of the Beatles song "Imagine."
Pitiful and factually incorrect. As usual.
Æthelflæd said...
They were rather shocked that my daughter expressed the opinion that women should not be in combat.
"Special operations troops doubt women can do the job"
Studies that surveyed personnel found "major misconceptions" within special operations about whether women should be brought into the male-only jobs.
...the survey results have "already driven us to do some different things in terms of educating the force."
So "education" to counteract "misconceptions". That sounds familiar, somehow.
"I have just read that a young woman named Sage Santangelo has failed the infantry-trainimg course for Marine officers at Quantico, bringing the rate of female failure to 29 out of 29."
MichaelK I could care less what the numbers are. Hysterical delusion on a massive scale is still pathological. Your implied point that Christians are less crazy than Muslims is not compelling.
Ferdinande said..
"So "education" to counteract "misconceptions". That sounds familiar, somehow."
My daughter is expecting to be hauled off to sensitivity training any day now.
"Pitiful and factually incorrect. As usual."
Have I ever met you ?
Did I fail to tip you or something ?
Creep.
"Hysterical delusion on a massive scale is still pathological."
Oh, I agree. I heard some woman from the Association of University Women say that one in four female college students is raped. It is really getting wild.
As for religion, Atheism is just one more and has no more proof than fundamentalist Christians do. Or Muslims for that matter.
It's sort of like what Prof. Althouse said, how she couldn't possibly display a picture of an American flag in her office, or her colleagues would pillory her.
MichaelK: I agree on both points. Atheists are as bad as vegans, televangelists, statin pushers and Womyns Studies lecturers.
"[T]hey can’t imagine that they might be wrong about any of it."
They might not be wrong. Maybe Kingsfield is wrong. But I doubt that he could imagine it.
Howard: "Your implied point that Christians are less crazy than Muslims is not compelling."
Really? How do you think your dumb-assed comments would play in Saudi or Iran?
"The issue is how gullible do you have to be to believe that a wealthy tenured law professor's life is blighted by prejudice."
I remember liberals believing that life of Obama, the president of the United States is blighted by prejudice. And how about Oprah Winfrey, hurt to her soil by a poor girl in Switzerland?
Hyphenated American said...
I remember liberals believing that life of Obama, the president of the United States is blighted by prejudice.
I can't recall anyone thinking this. He seems to have led a charmed life.
I doubt the Clintons felt much sympathy.
My own experience in academics has been a near universal disdain for the conservative and the Christian. I don't doubt there is widely held prejudice. I remember seeing George W Bush ridiculed as part of "professional" public Scientific talks during his presidency. This happened multiple times at conferences and lectures. No such ridicule was possible, or tolerated against any leftist. It was a violation of trust and an crossing of boundaries but that is also typical of the left. No safe haven is allowed. To be fair it does vary place to place with some groups more actively hostile than others.
Richard > you must be a liberal who's never felt the social pressure of the left. Just because it's not part of your experience doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The heavy bias against anyone outside the leftwing star chamber is self evident in the naming of Althouse as a prominent conservative.
ARM the fact that the man is closeted is why he has tenure: that's the claim.
sparrow said...
ARM the fact that the man is closeted is why he has tenure: that's the claim.
You didn't address Richard's point that there are 'out' Christian law academics as well as academics of all stripes. The leader of the human genome project, Francis Collins, is a born-again Christian. And, there are many observant Jews in academia.
I can address that - very successful late career people who are secure in their positions can come out. Perhaps the prof in question over estimates the backlash or has an especially hostile Dept Chair. As I said it varies. A few exceptions don't mean much. Collins by the way is more of philosophical deist from what I've read from him, but perhaps his faith has deepened.
Also it's my experience that political disciplines like law are worse than the sciences and that the better the scholarship (at least in the sciences) the less overt the bias.
Also Jews are a special case because they are a minority and being a jew or of jewish background actually helps in some academic circles. I know I was born jewish.
Collins is a self-described Evangelical Christian, has been dismissive of agnostics and is an outspoken advocate for his brand of Christianity. So, you can't eliminate him quite that easily.
The arts are somewhat different to the sciences, but the sciences and engineering are what dominates most campuses, both numerically and financially.
Collins came out late and even if he was treated beautifully it's irrelevant. So there are other rare exceptions: I never claimed universal hostility - just widespread bias. The arts are at issue here because the prof in question is a lawyer.
sparrow said...
I never claimed universal hostility - just widespread bias.
Anecdotes are not evidence. You can't accuse an entire profession of bias just because you feel that it is biased. Academics have strongly held opinions, on a range of topics, only some of which they actually know anything about, but to argue that they are systematically biased requires something more than anecdote.
One last point a tenured faculty member is not immune from administrative reprisals and social ostracizing. Sure they are not the existential threats , but they are still real and unjust. Why is is so hard to accept the common place mistreatment those who differ ie the outsider? It happens in many contexts for a wide range of reasons. Can you only acknowledge the possibility if it fits neatly into your comfortably rigid categorization of good guys and bad guys? The world view that Lefties can do no wrong. Show a little flexibility in your thinking.
"to argue that they are systematically biased requires something more than anecdote"
Fair enough I agree
sparrow said...
The world view that Lefties can do no wrong.
As a moderate I have no problem seeing the idiocies of the left. More often than not they are their own worst enemy.
The problem I have with this particular anecdote is that in some arts departments it seems that every single member of the department feels ostracized along some parameter. They are intrinsically hostile work environments, as far as I can tell. You could get a similar story from almost anyone. To quote Sayre: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."
"... But to argue that they are systematically biased requires more then anecdote."
It may be anecdotal, but their work product, that is, students and graduates, argues strongly for liberal bias and close-mindedness.
hombre said...
their work product, that is, students and graduates, argues strongly for liberal bias and close-mindedness.
To quote myself:
"College professors trend liberal, young people trend liberal, correlation is not causation.
If this particular belief were actually true then right wing parents must have failed to introduce adequate critical thinking skills and/or failed to provide convincing support for their own beliefs, despite years of intimate contact with their children. Otherwise, their children would not be so susceptible to the wiles of professors who can apparently simultaneously beat the intricacies of single-variable calculus into the skulls of their progeny while also inculcating them with Marxist ideology."
ARM,
Wait, wut?
just wanted that in the record, more later. Just throwing this out there:
You're fighting acceptance of the premise. Assume arguendo it is true. Then what? Do you oppose it? Or welcome it as validation of some virtue?
My God is bigger than the people who would destroy me. I bet his is too. I hope he shows some faithful courage in sharing what God has done for him and his family.
Trey
Post a Comment