Heterodox Academy

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] It was founded in 2015 by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist, and Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, a constitutional law scholar.

Heterodox Academy
AbbreviationHxA
Formation2015 (2015)
FounderJonathan Haidt and Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz
Location
Executive Director
Debra Mashek
Websiteheterodoxacademy.org

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]

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.[13]

Ideology and reception

Heterodox Academy formally 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]

According to Vox's Zack Beauchamp, Heterodox Academy advances conservative viewpoints on college campuses by playing into or presenting the argument that such views are suppressed by left-wing bias or political correctness.[14] Commenators such as Beauchamp and Chris Quintana, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, have disputed Heterodox Academy's assumption 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.[14][15]

See also

References
  1. 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. Goldstein, Evan R. (June 11, 2017). "The Gadfly: Can Jonathan Haidt Calm the Culture Wars?". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 63 (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. 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. 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". web.archive.org. November 4, 2017.
  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. Mikics, David (July 21, 2019). "The High Priest of Heterodoxy". Tablet. New York, New York. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
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