NY Times confesses liberal bias, in academia, prejudice against evangelicals, GOP

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Shocking many on the left, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof outed the bias of academia, how the bias against evangelicals and Republicans. Kristof offered up harsh words and a message criticizing the intolerance of liberals.

The article begins with “Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.”

“Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,” George Yancey, a black and evangelical sociology professor told Kristof. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”

He then turned his question to his Facebook followers who offered up their brand of intolerance and bias:

“Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false,” said Carmi.

“The truth has a liberal slant,” wrote Michelle.

Calling out their “liberal arrogance” he noted that they hold “no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.”

Kristof dug deeper, citing polls and surveys showing the absence of the conservative voice on the university scene, even quoting one study which illustrates that “it’s easier to find a Marxist in some disciplines than a Republican.”

The discrimination becomes worse if the applicant is an evangelical Christian. According to Yancey’s study, 59 percent of anthropologists and 53 percent of English professors would be less likely to hire someone they found out was an evangelical.

“Of course there are biases against evangelicals on campuses,” notes Jonathan L. Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard. Walton, a black evangelical, adds that the condescension toward evangelicals echoes the patronizing attitude toward racial minorities: “The same arguments I hear people make about evangelicals sound so familiar to the ways people often describe folk of color, i.e. politically unsophisticated, lacking education, angry, bitter, emotional, poor.”

“I am the equivalent of someone who was gay in Mississippi in 1950,” a conservative professor is quoted as saying in “Passing on the Right,” a new book about right-wing faculty members by Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn Sr.

Kristof  added that “This bias on campuses creates liberal privilege” stating that a “…test preparation company she is using offers test-takers a tip: Reading comprehension questions will typically have a liberal slant and a liberal answer.”

“Universities are unlike other institutions in that they absolutely require that people challenge each other so that the truth can emerge from limited, biased, flawed individuals,” Jonathan Haidt, a centrist social psychologist at New York University says. “If they lose intellectual diversity, or if they develop norms of ‘safety’ that trump challenge, they die. And this is what has been happening since the 1990s.”

His conclusions: Universities should be a hubbub of the full range of political perspectives from A to Z, not just from V to Z. So maybe we progressives could take a brief break from attacking the other side and more broadly incorporate values that we supposedly cherish — like diversity — in our own dominions.