Many students who identify as Evangelical Christians and attend a state or public university are reporting severe bias against their beliefs in the classroom. “Tenured Bigots,” is the title of Mark Bergin’s article in World Magazine which highlights statistical proof of enormous prejudice by faculty members against evangelicals.
Surprised? Of course not! The findings about attitudes toward Evangelicals actually turned up in a study designed to gauge anti-Semitism. The analysis was conducted by Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. In the survey of 1,262 faculty members across 712 public colleges and universities, Evangelical Christians scored the highest unfavorable rating from faculty with a 53 percent, while Mormons placed second with 33 percent. Jews scored the lowest unfavorable score with 3 percent. Bergin also noted in his article:
Tobin was shocked. And his amazement only escalated upon hearing reaction to his results from the academy’s top brass. Rather than deny the accuracy of Tobin’s findings or question his methodology, academy leaders attempted to rationalize their biases. “The prejudice is so deep that faculty do not have any problem justifying it. They tried to dismiss it and said they had a good reason for it,” Tobin told WORLD.
Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), told The Washington Post that the poll merely reflects “a political and cultural resistance, not a form of religious bias.” In other words, the college faculty members dislike evangelicals not for their faith but the practical outworking of that faith, which makes it OK.
In another landmark case at Missouri State University, junior Emily Brooker objected to an assignment in which students were asked to write their state legislators and urge support for adoptions by same-sex couples. The evangelical social-work major was promptly hauled before a faculty panel and charged with maintaining an insufficient commitment to diversity.
Robert Shibley, vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), told WORLD his organization can hardly keep up with intellectual intolerance and free-speech infringements against evangelical and conservative groups. “College campuses overall are not living up to the ideal of having a marketplace of ideas, of having true intellectual diversity to go along with racial and religious diversity,” he said.
The University of Mississippi, a public university, where I received my undergraduate degree may not entirely fit into the paradigm of this analysis. Of course I had the leftist professors who praised the Sandinistas, and extolled the virtues of Alger Hiss and Ho Chi Minh. Another professor had a banner in his office which read, “workers of the world unite!”
But I also had a criminal justice professor at Ole Miss who, in a class on terrorism, preached the doctrines of Christianity, cited Scripture, and railed against the horror of abortion and religious pluralism, almost on a daily basis. Still another professor discussed the importance of the American Civil Rights Movement in the context of a powerful Christian revival, which of course it was. And another professor spoke in a glowing manner about the intense Reformed Christian faith of Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.
There may be hope for some students who would like to attend a state university or college and get a solid education. Looking back at college for me, in many instances it was the hedonistic students, with their sexual trysts and binge drinking, who carried a more pronounced anti-Christian message on campus. In their own way, these students had a more destructive influence on campus than any “Tenured Bigot” on the faculty.
