Heterodox Academy

Last updated
Heterodox Academy
AbbreviationHxA
Formation2015;9 years ago (2015)
Founders Jonathan Haidt, Chris C. Martin, and Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz
Location
President
John Tomasi [1]
Interim Executive Director
Manon Loustaunau
Chair, Board of Directors
 Jonathan Haidt [2]
Website heterodoxacademy.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. [3] The organization was founded in 2015 by Jonathan Haidt, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, and Chris C. Martin. As of 2023, Heterodox Academy had about 5,000 members.

Contents

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 American conservatives were under-represented in social psychology and that this hinders research and damages the field's credibility. [4] [5] 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. [5] Haidt was also contacted by Chris C. Martin, a sociology graduate student at Emory University, who had published a similar paper in The American Sociologist about the lack of ideological diversity in sociology. [6] [7] Haidt, Martin, and Rosenkranz formed "Heterodox Academy" to address this issue. [6] [8] [9] [10] [11] Initial funding for the group came from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation and The Achelis and Bodman Foundation. [5] 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. [5]

Membership was initially open to tenured and pre-tenure professors, but has been expanded to adjunct professors, graduate students, and postdoctorals. Initially, the group had a selective membership application process which is partly intended to address imbalances toward any particular political ideology. [5] In July 2017, the group had 800 members internationally. [5] [12] As of February 2018, around 1,500 college professors had joined Heterodox Academy, along with a couple hundred graduate students. [3]

In 2018, Debra Mashek, a professor of psychology at Harvey Mudd College, was appointed as the executive director of Heterodox Academy, a position which she held until 2020, after which an interim executive director was appointed. [3] [13] [14] In 2020, the organization had around 4,000 members. [15] John Tomasi, a political philosopher at Brown University, became the first president of Heterodox Academy in 2022. As of early 2023, membership had grown to 5,000. [16]

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". [12] [17] [18] [19]

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. [20] [21]

The organization administers a "Campus Expression Survey", designed to allow professors and college administrators to survey their students' feelings about freedom of expression on campus. [22]

Ideology and reception

Heterodox Academy describes itself as non-partisan. [13] In 2018, the group's website described its mission as encouraging political diversity to allow dissent and challenge errors. [13]

According to Vox's Zack Beauchamp, Heterodox Academy advances conservative viewpoints on college campuses by ignoring the data and arguing that such views are suppressed by left-wing bias or political correctness. [23] Commentators such as Beauchamp and Chris Quintana, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education , have disputed Heterodox Academy's contention that college campuses are facing a "free-speech crisis", noting the lack of data to support it and arguing that advocacy groups such as Heterodox Academy functionally do more to narrow the scope of academic debates than any of the biases they allege. [23] [24]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of California, Irvine</span> Public university in Irvine, California

The University of California, Irvine, is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and professional degrees, and roughly 30,000 undergraduates and 6,000 graduate students are enrolled at UCI as of Fall 2019. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity", and had $523.7 million in research and development expenditures in 2021. UCI became a member of the Association of American Universities in 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression</span> American free speech organization

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), formerly named the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit civil liberties group founded in 1999 with the mission of protecting freedom of speech on college campuses in the United States. FIRE changed its named in June 2022, when it broadened its focus from colleges to freedom of speech throughout American society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Reading</span> University in Reading, Berkshire, England

The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 1926 by royal charter from King George V and was the only university to receive such a charter between the two world wars. The university is usually categorised as a red brick university, reflecting its original foundation in the 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collin College</span> Community college system in Texas, U.S.

Collin College is a public community college district in Texas. Founded in 1985, the district has grown as the county has grown from around 5,000 students in 1986 to more than 58,800 credit and noncredit students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Cantor</span> Academic and University Administrator

Nancy Ellen Cantor is an American academic administrator and the chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark, in Newark, New Jersey. A social psychologist, Cantor is recognized for her scholarly contributions to the understanding of how individuals perceive and think about their social worlds, pursue personal goals, and how they regulate their behavior to adapt to life's most challenging social environments. Previously, Cantor was the first woman chancellor at Syracuse University. Prior to that she was the first woman chancellor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Earlier, she had been provost at the University of Michigan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greg Lukianoff</span> American free speech advocate

Gregory Christopher Lukianoff is an American lawyer, journalist, author and activist who serves as the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He previously served as FIRE's first director of legal and public advocacy until he was appointed president in 2006.

Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz is an American constitutional law scholar, professor, and Broadway producer. He writes and teaches in the fields of constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and federal jurisdiction. He is the son of billionaire investor and philanthropist Robert Rosenkranz.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Haidt</span> American social psychologist

Jonathan David Haidt is an American social psychologist and author. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at the New York University Stern School of Business. His main areas of study are the psychology of morality and moral emotions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jordan Peterson</span> Canadian clinical psychologist (born 1962)

Jordan Bernt Peterson is a Canadian psychologist, author, and media commentator. Often described as conservative, he began to receive widespread attention in the late 2010s for his views on cultural and political issues. Peterson has described himself as a classic British liberal and a traditionalist.

Moral foundations theory is a social psychological theory intended to explain the origins of and variation in human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, modular foundations. It was first proposed by the psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Craig Joseph, and Jesse Graham, building on the work of cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder. More recently, Mohammad Atari, Jesse Graham, and Jonathan Haidt have revised some aspects of the theory and developed new measurement tools. The theory has been developed by a diverse group of collaborators and popularized in Haidt's book The Righteous Mind. The theory proposes that morality is "more than one thing", first arguing for five foundations, and later expanding for six foundations :

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Boghossian</span> American philosopher and pedagogist (born 1966)

Peter Gregory Boghossian is an American philosopher and pedagogue. Born in Boston, he was a non-tenure track assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University for ten years, and his areas of academic focus include atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and the Socratic method. He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists, and of How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide.

Academic bias is the bias or perceived bias of scholars allowing their beliefs to shape their research and the scientific community. It can refer to several types of scholastic prejudice, e.g., logocentrism, phonocentrism, ethnocentrism or the belief that some sciences and disciplines rank higher than others.

The political views of American academics began to receive attention in the 1930s, and investigation into faculty political views expanded rapidly after the rise of McCarthyism. Demographic surveys of faculty that began in the 1950s and continue to the present have found higher percentages of liberals than of conservatives, particularly among those who work in the humanities and social sciences. Researchers and pundits disagree about survey methodology and about the interpretations of the findings.

Neil Louis Gross is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology and chair of the department of sociology at Colby College. He is also a visiting scholar of New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge. He has written several books on sociological and political topics, and also blogs for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Gross edited the American Sociological Association's journal Sociological Theory from 2009 to 2015. He previously taught at the University of Southern California, Harvard University, Princeton University, and at the University of British Columbia.

Quillette is an online magazine founded by Australian journalist Claire Lehmann. The magazine primarily focuses on science, technology, news, culture, and politics. It also has a podcast, hosted by Jon Kay.

<i>Passing on the Right</i>

Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University is a book-length study published in 2016 and written by Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn Sr. The study explored the question of the existence of a liberal or anti-conservative academic bias in the United States via interviews with 153 professors from 84 universities who identify as conservative.

The intellectual dark web (IDW) is a term used to describe some commentators who oppose identity politics, political correctness, and cancel culture in higher education and the news media within Western countries.

<i>The Coddling of the American Mind</i> 2018 non-fiction book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure is a 2018 book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. It is an expansion of a popular essay the two wrote for The Atlantic in 2015. Lukianoff and Haidt argue that overprotection is having a negative effect on university students and that the use of trigger warnings and safe spaces does more harm than good.

Higher education in the United States is an optional stage of formal learning following secondary education. Higher education, also referred to as post-secondary education, third-stage, third-level, or tertiary education occurs most commonly at one of the 4,360 Title IV degree-granting institutions, either colleges or universities in the country. These may be public universities, private universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or for-profit colleges. US higher education is loosely regulated by several third-party organizations.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion refers to organizational frameworks which seek to promote "the fair treatment and full participation of all people", particularly groups "who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination" on the basis of identity or disability. These three notions together represent "three closely linked values" which organizations seek to institutionalize through DEI frameworks, even if some scholars argue that, for instance, diversity and inclusion should be decoupled in some cases. Some frameworks, primarily in Britain, substitute the notion of "equity" with equality: equality, diversity, inclusion (EDI). Other variations include diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB), justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, or diversity, equity, inclusion and access.

References

  1. ↑ "The Team at Heterodox Academy". Heterodox Academy. Retrieved August 21, 2023.
  2. ↑ "Board of Directors". Heterodox Academy. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 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.
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 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.
  6. 1 2 Jonathan Haidt (June 20, 2019). 2019 HxA Open Inquiry Awards. New York: Heterodox Academy. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
  7. ↑ "The Well-Meaning Bad Ideas Spoiling a Generation". Nautilus | Science Connected. 2019-03-06. Retrieved 2022-01-28.
  8. ↑ Rauch, Jonathan (2021). The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. p. 317. ISBN   9780815738862.
  9. ↑ Wehner, Eric (May 24, 2020). "Jonathan Haidt Is Trying to Heal America's Divisions". The Atlantic. Retrieved January 15, 2022.
  10. ↑ "Heterodox Academy, Our Mission". Heterodox Academy. Retrieved January 15, 2022. Heterodox Academy was founded in 2015 by Jonathan Haidt, Chris Martin, and Nicholas Rosenkranz, in reaction to their observations about the negative impact a lack of ideological diversity has had on the quality of research within their disciplines.
  11. ↑ "In College Classrooms, A Spreading Silence On Hot-Button Topics". John Templeton Foundation. Retrieved January 16, 2022. Heterodox Academy was founded in 2015 by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, sociologist Chris Martin, and legal scholar Nicholas Rosenkranz because all three worried that a lack of ideological diversity within their disciplines was impacting the quality of research
  12. 1 2 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.
  13. 1 2 3 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.
  14. ↑ "Deb Mashek, PhD". LinkedIn. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
  15. ↑ Wehner, Peter (May 24, 2020). "Jonathan Haidt Is Trying to Heal America's Divisions". The Atlantic . Retrieved July 27, 2020.
  16. ↑ Bartlett, Tom (January 9, 2023). "How Heterodox Academy Hopes to Change the Campus Conversation". The Chronicle of Higher Education . Archived from the original on January 9, 2023. Retrieved August 21, 2023.
  17. ↑ 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.
  18. ↑ "The Heterodox Academy Guide to Colleges: Starting A Methodological Discussion". Heterodox Academy. October 27, 2016.
  19. ↑ "Heterodox Academy Releases Updated Guide to Colleges | HeterodoxAcademy.org". November 4, 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-11-04.
  20. ↑ Rubenstein, Adam (June 22, 2018). "Heterodoxy Now". The Weekly Standard . Archived from the original on 2 March 2019. Retrieved 1 March 2019.
  21. ↑ 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.
  22. ↑ Mikics, David (July 21, 2019). "The High Priest of Heterodoxy". Tablet . New York, New York . Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  23. 1 2 Beauchamp, Zack (August 31, 2018). "The myth of a campus free speech crisis". Vox. Archived from the original on 1 March 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
  24. ↑ Quintana, Chris (April 30, 2018). "The Real Free-Speech Crisis Is Professors Being Disciplined for Liberal Views, a Scholar Finds". The Chronicle of Higher Education. ISSN   0009-5982. Archived from the original on 1 March 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.