Four Things I Learned about Students and Faculty from Academically Adrift
Earlier this year, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa created quite a stir with their book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Their central claim: if the goal of college is to teach students how to think critically, then colleges are failing at their primary purpose.
My latest Emerging Scholars Blog post. The whole thing is here.
The Lamp Post: A Resource for Christian Faculty
Last Friday, Faculty Ministry sent out the September issue of the Lamp Post.
The Lamp Post is an email publication specifically for Christian faculty, with articles and resources intended to help Christian faculty in their spiritual, academic, and community life on campus. A typical issue might feature a Bible study written specifically for faculty, announcements about upcoming faculty events, an article from a faculty member reflecting on some aspect of faculty life, or a review of a new book with particular relevance for Christian faculty.
You can see a summary of the contents here, and subscribe for free on the Faculty Ministry website.
What I Wish I’d Known About Faculty Life: Teaching the Curriculum, Etc.
I remember when I was in graduate school, the best advice I was given was from a friend who had recently secured a tenure-track position. He said, “Kevin, it’s a big world out there, and most departments do not teach the sort of anthropology you’ve learned, and many places have people who are critical of it. You’ll need to learn more faster after becoming a professor than you ever have had to do in graduate school.â€
American Flag at William Jewell College
On Friday, our week in review linked to Patricia Cohen’s article about political liberalism in the academy, “Professor is a Label That Leans to the Left.” The article was based on the work of sociologists Neil Gross (U. British Colombia) and Ethan Fosse (a PhD candidate at Harvard, where Gross worked until recently), who propose that academic liberalism is due to typecasting, similar to how nursing is considered a “woman’s job” by most Americans.
The academic profession “has acquired such a strong reputation for liberalism and secularism that over the last 35 years few politically or religiously conservative students, but many liberal and secular ones, have formed the aspiration to become professors,†they write in the paper, “Why Are Professors Liberal?” (PDF) That is especially true of their own field, sociology, which has become associated with “the study of race, class and gender inequality — a set of concerns especially important to liberals.â€
Photo Credit: bbaltimore via Flickr
Gross, along with Solon Simmons of George Mason, has written a number of articles that have been quite valuable to my personal understanding of the academy, “The Social and Political Views of Professors” and “How Religious Are America’s College and University Professors?” Both papers are worth reading. I’ve distilled some of the more interesting numbers from the 2nd paper, along with some other sources, for a description of the climate for Christians on campus that I often share with churches.
The excellent website GetReligion.org, which focuses on the mainstream media’s converage of religion, asked if there were any “religious ghosts” in the article — that’s “GR-speak” for religious angles to a story that a journalist overlooked or ignored. Specifically, what role does religion play in the politics of university professors? Steve Rabey of GetReligion.org writes,
I wish Cohen had devoted more space to discussing the religious elements of academia’s liberal tilt. Unfortunately, she only briefly mentions “secularism†and academia’s preference for professors who embrace “a non-conservative religious theology.â€
Personally, I think there is a religious component to the political liberalism of the academy, but it’s a complex relationship. Here’s what I wrote in my comment on GetReligion.org:
There’s really a need for two distinct articles, if not more. There’s the issue of conservative politics and the academy, and then there’s the issue of “conservative†religion and the academy. Many “conservative Christians†that I know in the academy, who hold to “conservative†views of Scripture, salvation, historicity of Jesus, etc., have overall political views that would be considered liberal by most Americans. In our culture at large, conservative religion and conservative politics are closely intertwined, but I think they are much further apart within the academy. (The most politically diverse group I know is the community of evangelical campus ministers, grad students, and faculty that I work alongside.) I’d love to see this distinction between religion and politics within the secular academy explored a bit more.
But enough of my thoughts. What do you think?
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