Compromising Scholarship
Religious and Political Bias in American Higher Education
By George Yancey
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Subjects: All Higher Education, All Sociology |
Conservative and liberal commentators alike have long argued that social bias exists in American higher education. Yet those arguments have largely lacked much supporting evidence. In this first systematic attempt to substantiate social bias in higher education, George Yancey embarks on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the social biases and attitudes of faculties in American universities—surveying professors in disciplines from political science to experimental biology and then examining the blogs of 42 sociology professors. In so doing, Yancey finds that politically—and, even more so, religiously—conservative academics are at a distinct disadvantage in our institutions of learning, threatening the free exchange of ideas to which our institutions aspire and leaving many scientific inquiries unexplored.
“Yancey issues a clarion call to those of us in higher education that we must do a better job practicing the political tolerance that we so vigorously preach.”
−Marie A. Eisenstein, author of Religion and the Politics of Tolerance: How Christianity Builds Democracy
"Groundbreaking. This research brilliantly unmasks the subtle social, philosophical, and ideological forces behind the exclusion of conservatives and their viewpoints from the academic enterprise."
—Louis Bolce, Associate Professor of Political Science at Baruch College, City University of New York
George Yancey is Professor of Sociology at the University of North Texas. His most recent books include Interracial Families: Current Concepts and Controversies and Interracial Contact and Social Change. He lives in Argyle, Texas.
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