Graduate students in a philosophy department somewhere in the English-speaking world did some online sleuthing about a job candidate for a position in their department, and learned that the candidate seems to hold views they find offensive. In particular, they found reports (including alleged quotes) that the candidate had expressed in online fora the view that homosexual acts and premarital sex are immoral. The candidate’s original postings on this matter were not found, and were presumed to have been deleted or made private.
At a meeting in advance of the candidate’s campus visit, the graduate students discussed the matter. Some students expressed the view that hiring the candidate would create a “hostile atmosphere” for gay and lesbian students. One proposal on the table was that the students boycott the candidate’s job talk. This proposal was rejected in favor of an alternative: writing the faculty to urge them to withdraw the candidate from consideration for the position. Some such notes have been sent, I am told; they include links to the relevant sites and say something along the following lines: “I am concerned about evidence showing that [the job candidate] has defended the view that homosexuality is immoral. If the candidate has in fact defended this view, I would not be comfortable having this person as a member of our community.” Not all of the graduate students support this initiative, I am told.
The above information comes to me via an anonymous source (who provided means by which to verify relevant details). The hiring process is still currently underway. I will not be naming the school nor the candidate. Please do not try to do so in the comments. Discussion of the issues here is welcome, particularly of whether the offensiveness of a job candidate’s views is an appropriate basis for rejecting the candidate. In the discussion, it may be useful to distinguish between the holding of these views, the arguments for these views, the expression of these views, and the behavior inspired by these views. If it helps, we can call the candidate with offensive views COV.
(Yes, I realize that offensiveness appears to be the topic of the month here at Daily Nous.)
The graduate students are acting inappropriately. The idea that merely holding the view that homosexual sex acts are immoral will create a hostile environment is ridiculous. Perhaps there is slightly more reason to think that someone who would post about his or her views on sexual morality would create a hostile environment, but it still strains credulity. There is a huge difference between holding and discussing a false view and creating a hostile environment based on the false view.
Further, were such considerations sufficient to justify dismissing a job candidate, who may hold his or her views based on sincere and richly reflective religious convictions, it would be impossible for almost any religiously conservative candidate to get a job in philosophy, Christian, Muslim or Jew. Do you believe the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church? Are you an orthodox Jew? Are you a traditional Muslim? Well, then the philosophy profession isn’t for you. Go home, bigot, or shut up about your views, lest you lose your job or never find one.
This is a particularly challenging question. It splits into two levels: 1) the right to hold unpopular opinions; 2) the right to reject people on the basis of an issue over which the individuals have no control (for example, ethnic background). Regarding the first of these, the individual is probably of a conservative religious background (could be Christian, Muslim, Jewish), and academia has tended to favor secular perspectives. This is a form of political correctness, and serves us poorly. I happen to have a personal (and politically correct) bias against fascists and authoritarians – should these strongly held biases be a basis for professional rejection? Regarding the second point, I believe it is fair to reject individuals who demonstrate racist, sexist, anti-religious, anti-ethnic biases. The key is that the person is acting to judge people on the basis of criteria they cannot change. Most of us believe that homosexuality, trans-gender identification, and the like, are inborn, not really changeable. The same is not, however, true of premarital sex. So I think a discussion of the basis of the COV’s positions should be in order. Is the bias against pre-marital sex, be it male-male, male-female, female-female? If so, do they allow for same-sex marriage, or do they have a blanket rejection of homosexuality? If the latter, I would personally disqualify them from candidacy for the position.
Philosophy is a domain of discourse: When ideas and thoughts are bad/deleterious/divisive, we deal with them by talking about them — we analyze them as well as contextualize them so that we may expose why it is the case that we should think the thoughts are bad. The same is true of thoughts we believe are good/useful/helpful.
This view is a philosophical stance, and I believe its to be taken seriously and dealt with dialogically.
I think that the move which made by these students aims to quiet these views through a form of censorship. Good philosophical practice necessitates dealing with these views and dialoging with them.
Let the candidate sink their own chances by trying to argue for the view that homosexuality is immoral in their job talk.
I think we should endorse the claim that holding and publicly promoting false views is evidence of lack of philosophical competence, with the caveat that being persuaded to change one’s mind about false views after having promoted and discussed them publicly should be deemed evidence FOR a candidate’s philosophical competence. (That is: I think we should both endorse and act on the claim that admitting error for previously held and promoted beliefs is extremely valuable.)
What’s more: if I’m wrong about this, and am not able to be persuaded by good evidence and reasons, then that should count against my own candidacy for relevant jobs. (Perhaps even it already has!) Note that I publish under my own name.
I suspect that offense is a red herring in most cases where it is discussed – as the language of this post and the responses demonstrate, there is a subjectivity to what is considered offensive that makes it seem very iffy to base much of anything on it. (After all, another group might find it offensive to say that homosexuality is morally permissible.) I am inclined to think that when offense (or the possibility of it) is seen as having potential moral significance – like in this case – it is not the purported offensiveness that is really relevant but something else. (Something like marginalization, which would explain why the offensiveness of condemning homosexuality is considered potentially morally significant, while the offense someone might feel at seeing two men kiss chastely in public is not.)
If this notion is correct, focusing on the offensiveness, rather than what may really be offering any “moral oomph” involved, may be misleading.
Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention, Justin, and for carefully focusing the discussion on the general issue rather than the particular case. I have two quick thoughts.
1. Some quite distinguished philosophers, including my colleague Michael Tooley, have defended the view that infanticide is morally permissible. I am pretty sure that this view strikes a large number of people as repugnant, offensive, deplorable, etc. Unless one thinks that people like Tooley (and Peter Singer) should not be viewed as suitable candidates in a philosophy job search, I think this is pretty good evidence that defending views widely considered to be offensive should not, by itself, count against a candidate.
2. This puts much more weight on the claim that the COV would contribute to a hostile environment. I do think that if there is reasonable evidence that a person will contribute to a hostile environment, then it is reasonable (perhaps obligatory) to count that against them (and perhaps decisively). However, the claim that a person holds the views attributed to COV strikes me as extremely weak evidence that COV would contribute to a hostile environment. Many philosophers, for example, believe that eating meat is immoral. They think that their carnivorous colleagues are engaging in seriously immoral behavior that they could very easily avoid at little if any cost. But while holding these views, they seem to be able to treat their carnivorous colleagues respectfully, professionally, etc. There are obviously differences between this case and the case of same-sex relationships, but I think the burden would be on those who would rule out a candidate for holding the view that same-sex relationships are immoral to show why holding that view would lead the candidate to treat others disrespectfully, unprofessionally, etc. while holding the view that eating meat is immoral does not lead philosophers who hold that view to treat others disrespectfully, unprofessionally. Absent an explanation that satisfactorily meets this challenge, I do not think that it would be appropriate to take COV’s views on these issues into account in making a hiring decision.
Anyone who follows Supreme Court appointment hearings might have the same thought that I had: COV is getting Borked!
I’m not sure whether or not the students’ behavior is appropriate. But whether it is appropriate or not, I expect this sort of thing (i.e., grad students looking out into the Internet for evidence about job applicants) to be more the norm than the exception. I imagine that current graduate students, armed with google, will be looking here, at Leiter, the other blogs, the reddit philosophy communities, etc. to see what they can learn about what job candidates are actually like. And I’m guessing they’ll see through the pseudonyms we’ve decided to use. (Hi classmates at my mid-range Leiterrific department!!) Current graduate students (and others on the job market) should probably take note: until you’re safely installed (and tenured), there are at least pro tanto, pragmatic reasons not to get involved in public debate or to conduct your public behavior conservatively and diplomatically.
So, here is the first thing that ought to be borne in mind: graduate students have next to zero power over the hiring process. As a graduate student, I was part of two hiring committees at two institutions where our lowest-ranked candidate was hired. The grads in this case are not “censoring” anyone, simply because they CANNOT “censor” anyone. This is a group that will be affected by the hire voicing their collective opinions to the faculty. They have every right in the world to express the opinion that the candidate’s views make him unfit for inclusion in the community. Ironically, to say otherwise IS to advocate censorship.
Second, the mere fact that the candidate’s views *may* be based on “sincere and richly reflective religious convictions” cannot decide the issue, since there are possible religious systems that recommend or forbid literally every form of behaviour. All the reflective equilibrium in the world can’t possibly qualify an adherent of the Nazi-NAMBLA religion for inclusion in our communities, right? So let’s not pretend that having one’s views anchored in a religious tradition gives them a single iota of credibility.
If anyone is from that department is reading: I’m super LGBTQ friendly and totally open to be recruited. My teaching brings all the students to the yard.
For me the most important questions would be whether there is evidence that the COV treats students or colleagues differently because of his/her views (contributing to a hostile environment, as David Boonin said above) or whether the nature of the OVs are such that students could never trust that they weren’t being treated differently. For instance, I could not in good conscience send an instructor who believes that the members of some race or gender are intellectually inferior into the classroom. Students from that group could never trust that this instructor would assess their work fairly. Without knowing more about the specifics, I don’t know how to answer these questions about the case at hand. And maybe they aren’t the only questions that need to be asked, although they’re where I would start.
If your institution requires ideological commitment to a set of particular, controversial issues in order for you to be a qualified to be there, then privatize your institution and draft a statement of faith detailing those ideological commitments. Otherwise, find better ways to insulate yourself from ideological diversity that won’t put you on the losing end of a lawsuit.
I agree! Things would be different if we’d have a hard time discerning which views are false and which are true. Luckily, this is not the case (especially in philosophy).
As someone who has openly argued against gay marriage online and has since changed my view, I hope I will not be denied a job for something I said years ago and but longer believe. People change their views. Hopefully philosophers do this often as new evidence comes in. So, even if you think the candidate should be denied a job for holding offensive moral views (which I don’t buy for a second for the reasons mentioned above), you still need really good evidence that this philosopher STILL holds his/her offensive moral views.
It is clear who is really creating the “hostile atmosphere” in that department.
“I think we should endorse the claim that holding and publicly promoting false views is evidence of lack of philosophical competence”!!
This can’t be true. There are philosophers of the highest competence who defend both sides of almost every issue: some of those philosophers must be defending false views. David Lewis held all sorts of false views (modal realism, if none other), but, um, I doubt there was anyone more competent than him.
I’d be interested in seeing if there is a good reply to Boonin’s comment. A good number of vegan philosophers I know are publicly strident about it. But *none* of the “conservative” philosophers* I know are publicly strident about it. Obviously, I don’t doubt that there are strident conservative philosophers, but our COV obviously isn’t one of them.
* I think this is generally true, but it is certainly true of those with conservative views about sex.
Without the benefit of seeing the alleged quotes, my reaction is “What is our profession coming to?”
I don’t understand the argument JDRox is making about Lewis. The following things seem perfectly consistent.
1. Lewis was an incredibly competent philosopher.
2. Lewis’s endorsement of modal realism was evidence against his competency.
They’re consistent because we have lots and lots of other evidence for Lewis’s philosophical competence. Indeed, even in _Plurality_, he offers sound arguments for lots of philosophically important claims. So that very book is evidence for his competency, even if we hold the falsity of its central thesis against him.
I don’t know what I think about whether endorsing false views is (some, defeasible) evidence against competency or not. But this isn’t a good objection to the view.
Oh, and Lewis’s own paper “Mill and Milquetoast” is worth reading on the connection between judgments about truth and judgments about philosophical competence. I don’t know if I agree with all of it, but it’s a useful way to think about the problem.
A couple thoughts:
1.) As Mark mentioned above, one thing worth considering when conducting google hunts is the date of the problematic posting(s). People do learn and change their minds, and we should be open to that possibility (if it’s plausible in the given case!). I think this is especially important for the generation of graduates going on the market now, since they were part of the internet explosion of the late nineties and early aughts, and may well have been too young to know much better when they posted (or at the beginning of their university/grad careers, etc.).
2.) I don’t know how it works there, but here, graduate students do get one vote in the hiring process, and we have a number of chances to offer feedback, including during the hiring meeting(s). I don’t know that I’m entirely comfortable with the idea of asking the department to remove a COV from the search outright (that seems bound to produce acrimony), but perhaps that’s because I feel that I can trust a sufficient majority of my department not to vote to hire such a candidate once such information was brought to light by graduate students, whatever the candidate’s other credentials.
One obvious problem here is that we have competing “hostile climates” at stake. What this case shows is that these graduate students think that anyone with an old fashioned sexual morality has no place in their department, and thus anyone who might have any marker of such beliefs (anyone of a certain religious persuasion, to take the most obvious example) is automatically suspect as a potential member of that department. That is not surprising (this is happening throughout the corporate world, and the university often takes that world as its model), but noteworthy nonetheless. It is noteworthy, because it assumes the following: believing in a certain sexual morality means that you think you think you ought to enforce this morality on others; believing certain things about a sexual orientation in the abstract means that you will act or think it appropriate to act in negative or unprofessional ways towards persons with that orientation here and now; LGBT persons want no professional ties with those who do not share their beliefs about LGBT issues, collegiality and even deep personal friendships depend upon a shared sexual morality or politics, etc. In my experience, including experience in departments that have vocal social conservatives and openly LGBT members alike (I have been in 3 such departments now), none of these assumptions have proven to be warranted (all of them are questionable independent of that experience).
I have argued that philosophers need to engage in better behaviors in professional contexts. This is very important to me, in large part to open up philosophy to under represented groups. So while I support norms of professional conduct, and expect colleagues to abide by them, I do not think we as a profession should have norms of right belief (that is, it should not be a condition of being a professional philosopher that you hold to certain moral or political beliefs–we should not enforce some kind of “orthodoxy” qua philosophers). For instance, I find Peter Singer’s views about disabled persons extremely offensive and morally wrong (I’m hardly alone here). But I would never consider censoring them, or not hiring someone just because she holds them or finds them plausible. I think this is compatible with my desire and commitment to having more disabled persons represented in philosophy.
Anyway, I am hopeful that such a view can be made to work out, and I believe it is necessary to preserve free speech, free inquiry, and pluralism as I understand them. But this is terribly complicated, and one sees that problems will immediately arise and have to be wrestled with, and I’m not going to attempt to do that here.
Peter Unger thinks people don’t exist. I think a case could be made that hiring people like him would create a very awkward and possibly offensive working environment.
Most of those commenting seem to have taken a very firm ‘intellectual freedom’ sort of line. It would be helpful to calibrate the strength of this view. Those who argued this way, would you please respond to the following? For these cases, hold fixed all facts of the actual COV case except replacing COV’s controversial views as follows:
DOV has advocated the view that interracial sexual relationships are morally wrong.
EOV has advocated the view that women should not hold positions of authority over men.
FOV has advocated the view that the forcible relocation of Native Americans in the 1800s was morally justified as a means to progress.
GOV has advocated the view that 1930s Nazi persecution of Jews (though not the Holocaust) was morally justified as a means to social stability.
Note that for the historical cases, the candidate is not making a relativistic claim of mitigation (‘that’s just how they thought back then…’) but is instead expressing his or her own present day view.
I am not claiming that these are all identical to the COV case. There are relevant differences. Rather, I am using these cases to calibrate. It would seem to me that an absolutist ‘intellectual freedom’ line ought to say that *none* of these are grounds for actions like those taken by the grad students in COV. If that is not your view, then what principle, short of the absolutist position, are you upholding instead?
The candidate shouldn’t be disqualified because he or she believes homosexuality is wrong. What then of the grad students’ concerns? If the person is hired, the department should have public discussions on the topic, and so show how the disagreement can be dealt with philosophically. This way both people who agree with the candidate and those who don’t can have a chance to express themselves about a matter that is deeply important; and in that process they can build a sense of community that otherwise might seem impossible to establish together.
Where will the time come from to have such public discussions in the department? Faculty do three things: teach, research, service. Public discussions aren’t teaching (no one is getting graded). They are not service either exactly, though they serve a big purpose. They are most like research in the sense of engaging publically with colleagues and having philosophical discussions. So some research time can be used to facilitate such discussions. From somewhere time has to be found to have these conversations publically in the department. Otherwise people’s experiences will get repressed, which will lead to seeing strong political actions as the only way to have one’s experiences recognized.
“I feel that I can trust a sufficient majority of my department not to vote to hire such a candidate once such information was brought to light by graduate students, whatever the candidate’s other credentials.”
Is this even legal?
Remind me not to work in a department that would not have hired Plato, Cicero, or Aquinas because of their views on sexual morality.
Here is how this case is being presented: The students “found reports (including alleged quotes) that the candidate had expressed in online fora the view that homosexual acts and premarital sex are immoral. The candidate’s original postings on this matter were not found, and were presumed to have been deleted or made private.” My first thought was that this hardly counts as evidence of anything. In what sense is this allusion to the candidates views at all reliable? Was the posting anonymous? Is there certainty that person alluded to is identical to the candidate (they might have the same name)? This is the internet, after all, complete with cyber-bullying. My second thought was that these sorts of responses to views that one disagrees with (perhaps even rightly) can end up impacting both academic freedom and free speech. It is increasingly important to preserve the freedom to express views with which one disagrees. What I prefer focusing on is differential treatment and insisting on what Jennifer Frey calls “norms of professional conduct”. Dale Miller raises a similar point.
I certainly agree that those claims are consistent. I do think there is a tension between them, however, at least if by “evidence” we mean “significant evidence that is not easily swamped”. And the claim that “holding and publicly promoting false views is evidence of lack of philosophical competence” is not really interesting or relevant unless we mean that. The drift of Miller’s comment seems to be that it is legitimate to oppose hiring COV, since it was discovered that COV held some false views, and holding false views is evidence of incompetence. If holding false views was only insubstantial evidence, or easily swamped evidence, of incompetence, his point would be irrelevant to this discussion. But maybe I’m missing something?
In any case, I myself think that almost all of Lewis’s (most famous) views are false–and in some cases obviously false–but I don’t think I have *any* evidence that Lewis “lacked philosophical competence”. But of course now I am not arguing, just sharing my feelings. But I do think a lot of people will share those feelings.
AJF,
With all due respect, I think that the cases that you raise do more to obscure the issue than to illuminate it. The intuitions in all these cases that it would be problematic to hire such a person derives, I submit, from the fact that, given the way the world actually is, anyone who held these views would most likely be a seriously bigoted person.
It’s not impossible, however, to imagine that a completely decent person could hold any of these views (perhaps with the exception GOV) on the basis of philosophical argument. And in that case – viz. the case in which there is no reason to think that the person would treat people of color unfairly or advocate bigotry or whatever – it would be absolutely inappropriate to not hire him/her merely because one finds the view ‘offensive’ (whatever that means).
Well, I guess this means that I should stop applying to tenure-track positions in philosophy. Given that I have defended the view that homosexuality is *not* immoral online, a group of graduate students where I’m applying who think otherwise might find it “uncomfortable” if I bring my partner to social events, accuse me of creating a “hostile environment” by my very presence, and use one of the most visible platforms in the profession to undermine my candidacy before my on-campus visit even occurs.
Jennifer Frey @21
‘these graduate students think that anyone with an old fashioned sexual morality has no place in their department, and thus anyone who might have any marker of such beliefs (anyone of a certain religious persuasion, to take the most obvious example) is automatically suspect as a potential member of that department.’
While it may be true that these graduate students think this, I can’t see that the facts as reported by Justin license this conclusion. Could you say more about why you think they do?
Is refusing to hire someone because they have beliefs that are the official beliefs of a recognized religion, e.g. Roman Catholicism, that they belong to a form of discrimination on the basis of religion?
Bill: Here’s how Justin presents the case. Candidate X has written online (or allegedly wrote) that sex acts a, b, and c are morally wrong. The graduate students found these moral beliefs offensive. They also found that the fact that candidate X both holds and expresses these beliefs to be sufficient grounds for ruling him or her out as a member of the department (literally, candidate x is not qualified to be a member of the community for holding and expressing these moral beliefs about certain sex acts).
Surely it can’t be lost on anyone that some groups are more likely to hold that sex acts a, b, and c are morally wrong, including members of certain religions (catholics, muslims, orthodox jews, evangelical christians, and so on). You’d have to live in a cave not to know that the Catholic Church teaches that essentially non-procreative forms of sexual activity are immoral. So, if you think that believing and expressing this belief disqualifies you from professional philosophy, then you will find job candidates that identify as members of this religious group immediately suspect until you have evidence that the candidate deviates from orthodoxy on this matter.
This seems like a reasonable enough inference to me.
@12
You are surely right that the grad students in question are not censoring someone, in the sense of directly exerting their power in order to punish a person for that person’s views. However, they do appear to be advocating for censorship, and that seems like it could be objectionable even if it is not itself an act of censorship. Compare with a parallel case in which grad students demand that a gay philosopher not be hired on account of their sexual orientation. Even though the grad students would not have direct power over the hiring process, such a demand seems objectionable. (And, importantly, it would be objectionable not merely because it expresses an objectionable attitude, but also because it promotes unjust behavior by the people who actually make the hiring decision.)
As for your claim that the students have every right to say what they have said, and that they should not be censored, you are again surely right – but who has suggested otherwise?
Just so no confusion creeps in, this comment (from JDRox, 2:59) is in response to Joshua Miller’s previous comment, not mine.
Responding to Anon @ 3:26pm:
I don’t understand your complaint about the cases – I don’t think you’ve raised an important distinction between them and the actual COV case. In my opinion, to borrow your words: “given the way the world actually is, anyone who held [the views of COV] would most likely be a seriously bigoted person”. That makes it parallel to the cases I’ve presented. The question, in the case of COV and my hypotheticals, is whether someone’s holding views that are correlated with serious bigotry can be a reason to hesitate to employ them. I am asking whether those who answer ‘no’ recognize any limitations on this answer, or whether they are absolutists about ‘intellectual freedom’.
Your answer to my question appears to be that you accept absolutism, provided that the candidate hold their views “on the basis of philosophical argument”. I wonder how we are to assess whether a person genuinely holds their views on such a basis. Is it enough that the person advance a set of claims, written in respectful academic prose, purportedly leading to the controversial conclusion? What if the argument in that set of claims is extremely unconvincing to anyone other than the author? Is that still “on the basis of philosophical argument”? If so, it would appear to be extremely easy for any trained philosopher to count as holding any horrible view whatsoever “on the basis of philosophical argument”. You may then be committed, if you accept absolutism about ‘intellectual freedom’ to accepting the candidacy of all my DOV-GOV and some far worse hypothetical candidates as well.
I think we should endorse the claim that holding and publicly promoting false views is evidence of lack of philosophical competence
I think this is a mistake. There’s a clear distinction between being what we might call philosophically (i) competent and (ii) sensible. The distinction is illustrated nicely by the following famous quote of Lewis:
Once the menu of well-worked-out theories is before us, philosophy is a matter of opinion. Is that to say that there is no truth to be had? Or that the truth is of our own making, and different ones of us can make it differently? Not at all! If you say flatly that there is no god, and I say that there are countless gods but none of them are our worldmates, then it may be that neither of us is making any mistake of method. We may each be bringing our opinions to equilibrium in the most careful possible way, taking account of all the arguments, distinctions, and counterexamples. But one of us, at least, is making a mistake of fact. Which one is wrong depends on what there is.
In these terms, roughly: being sensible is a matter of having true or plausible views; being competent is a matter of bringing one’s opinions to equilibrium in the most careful possible way, taking account of all the arguments, distinctions, and counterexamples. Surely we all know people who are competent but not sensible (I think Lewis himself is a perfect example).
Perhaps even if it’s conceded that sensibleness and competence are distinct virtues, the claim is that they’re nevertheless correlated. But I don’t know of any evidence for this.
(
The apt question about the candidate, as others have I think already explicitly and implicitly said, is whether they would discriminate and/or create a hostile work environment, especially (but not exclusively) with regard to those over whom the candidate, if hired, would have power.
The discussion to this point has proceeded on the presumption that the discovery was that the candidate has expressed the view that sex between persons of the same sex is immoral. While I believe it is, on the basis of first-person experience and reliable testimony, true as a rule of thumb that people who hold this belief tend to act badly towards persons who do have (or are presumed to have) sex of the sort the person regards as morally prohibited (in a way that, again merely rule of thumb, vegetarians do not so behave) I don’t think either of those rules of thumb constitute adequate reason for raising doubts about this person’s candidacy.
On the other hand, I also wonder whether the description of the case as having discovered that the candidate holds the view that “homosexual acts and premarital sex are immoral” captures what’s going on, or whether it was so described in an effort to vague-it-up, so as to prevent discovery of the particulars. I don’t in any way object to the effort, if that’s what’s happened– I neither have any idea, nor want any idea, of the particulars in the particular case at hand. But. There are many things I have read and heard–some in public fora– philosophers say about gay people, about the ways in which it is permissible to treat gay people (including professionally) that I would– unlike the ‘mere’ claim that “homosexual sex is immoral”– regard as serious prima facie grounds for wondering whether a person who avowed such views would be capable and in fact willing to abide by non-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation and gender identity. And I wonder whether there’s an effort being made to capture such remarks under the general characterization in the original post, in part because I find myself unwilling here to give specific examples precisely because (as outrageous as they are) I cannot see a way of doing so that would not identify particular person(s). Suppose that were the case. Suppose for instance (to take an example that is actually merely hypothetical, as far as I know) someone said, “of course we should watch out for those gay philosophers in the classroom–everybody knows that gay people are pedophiles”. If I discovered that a job candidate had said this, I would think this would at least warrant investigation of their past behavior (insofar as it is possible).
@Levi:
“You are surely right that the grad students in question are not censoring someone, in the sense of directly exerting their power in order to punish a person for that person’s views. However, they do appear to be advocating for censorship, and that seems like it could be objectionable even if it is not itself an act of censorship. ”
There is no legitimate definition of censorship according to which the grads are advocating for it. To take one example amongst many, here’s the wikipedia definition:
“Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.”
But refusing to hire someone cannot legitimately be construed as suppression of their speech, right? What expressive capacity did the candidate have *before* the potential hire that they would then have *lost* as a result of not being hired? None. The grads are not advocating for censorship. They are advocating for non-inclusion in a community on the basis of perceived dangers to that community. Which is basically a ubiquitous feature of all human communities. If it is to be included under a (broadened) definition of censorship, then “censorship” becomes morally unobjectionable.
Some very religious persons are among the staunchest defenders of secularism and freedom of expression. Just because someone advocates for a religious viewpoint online is not adequate justification to bar them from a classroom, under the presumption that they would discriminate against those not of their religious persuasion. Likewise, someone could be an anti-religion advocate, and also be a great defender of secularism and the freedom of expression, including the freedom of religious expression. The question is how they would treat colleagues and students in a professional milieu. And, presumably, someone with a PhD has established a history regarding their treatment of colleagues and students in a professional milieu. We need not sleuth out their personal religious views on morality to determine this. In fact, it is probably a very poor indicator.
“But refusing to hire someone cannot legitimately be construed as suppression of their speech, right?”
As an absolute matter, no, it can absolutely be construed as suppression of their speech. In this case, it’s a little murky because we don’t know if it’s a public institution.
But I definitely think the frequent argument, rarely challenged, that hurt feelings are so profound a source of suffering that they should override open debate and remove free speech protection (and I use “free speech” in its broad meaning not limited to government suppression), is extremely problematic, especially in the vague “hostile atmosphere” form it usually takes.
Is the department part of a public or private institution? I ask only because in the wake of UIUC’s treatment of Salaita, many argued that even if UIUC wasn’t in violation of contractual obligations they had to Salaita, they (as a public institution) might have nevertheless violated his First Amendment rights by refusing to honor their offer of employment merely on the basis of his tweets. I am not a lawyer, but if the department in question is part of a public institution and they acquiesce to the graduate students’ call to withdraw consideration of the candidate on the basis of something that he allegedly wrote years before (particularly something that reflects his political or religious views), then is that not relevantly similar to some of the problematic aspects of the Salaita case? After all, in Rutan v. Republican Party, 497 U.S. 62 (1990)–one of the cases that Salaita supports seem to lean on–SCOTUS held that it is unconstitutional to base hiring decisions of low-level public employees on party affiliation and support. Presumably, the same is true for one’s (no doubt, wrong in this case) moral judgments concerning the permissibility of various sex acts.
Again, I’m not an expert on the legal intricacies of these issues, but on its face, it seems that the graduate students *might* (I emphasize “might” because I’m genuinely unsure) be advocating something illegal.
I don’t take Justin Coates to be actually asking for an answer to the question of whether the department is public or private, but just to be clear, please do not attempt to answer that question or provide any specifics about the case.
DC writes: “But I definitely think the frequent argument, rarely challenged, that hurt feelings are so profound a source of suffering that they should override open debate and remove free speech protection (and I use “free speech” in its broad meaning not limited to government suppression), is extremely problematic, especially in the vague “hostile atmosphere” form it usually takes.”
I think it is certainly true that sometimes arguments are made which use the harm of mere hurt feelings to argue for suppression of speech. But there’s harm in going too far in the other direction as well – speech alone can and does have documented harmful effects, particularly for minority groups (stereotype threat, for one). So the idea that we’re just talking about mere hurt feelings, rather than something more substantial (not necessarily what DC meant is true here, but some would certainly like to say so) runs the risk of ignoring real, morally meaningful harms involved.
Joe, let me amend my previous comment. It may or may not be censorship, and it may or may not be objectionable, for the faculty to withdraw their consideration of COV on the basis of COV’s statements. Be that as it may, my contention is that the grad students’ lack of power in the process does not isolate them from moral criticism. *If* it would be wrong for the faculty to withdraw their consideration, then the grad students are urging the faculty to do the wrong thing. Urging someone to do the wrong thing may not always be wrong, and it might not even be prima facie wrong. But it’s at least the sort of thing that could be wrong, so that – as my example of the anti-gay grad students shows – it is not enough to vindicate someone to show that they were merely urging a bad action, rather than performing it themselves.
Like anonymouslgbt said (#38), the apt question is whether they will discriminate, create a hostile work climate, or seriously, negatively impact the climate of the department and university. The mere holding of the view that homosexuality is immoral doesn’t guarantee that they’ll do those things. Does it make it more likely? Probably. How much more likely? I don’t know.
From the details of the case Justin gave in the original post, I just don’t think it makes sense to say much about whether the actions of the graduate students are justified or unjustified. I simply don’t know. If the graduate students are objecting to the mere fact that the candidate holds certain views, that doesn’t seem like a compelling reason not to hire the candidate. But maybe the graduate students have deeper objections (e.g., did the candidate go around hectoring gay people? did the candidate harass or otherwise condemn colleagues? if so, that’s a good reason not to hire).
A person above gave a good example of someone whose views shouldn’t disqualify him for a job. Here’s a good example that would form a contrast case: Germaine Greer and the speech she recently gave at Cambridge full of denial of the existence of transphobia, in addition to a history of trying to keep trans women from gaining status at universities (look it up, it’s quite awful). That’s a case where someone’s actions would seem to clearly make a climate more negative.
Without any further information on what the article calls “online sleuthing”, there is really no basis for any adequate assessment of what is going on here. Unless the candidate knowingly attached his or her full name to the statements in question, there is absolutely no basis for using such information in a search. If I was a member in that committee, I would argue that, as soon as the subjective expectation of privacy a candidate can reasonably have is compromised, the “evidence” in question is inadmissible as such. And if my dear colleagues had a different opinion, I would search redress through the appropriate channels.
AJF,
Let me try to put this more clearly. The question on the table is whether it’s acceptable to not hire someone because they hold a view that is considered offensive. This is a different than the question of whether it’s acceptable to not hire someone because they are a bigot and therefore will be likely to engage in various forms of harmful behavior. What I am saying is that your cases are cases of the latter sort, where what’s at issue is the former sort. It is certainly true that someone might think that homosexuality is wrong (for religious reasons, for example) while nonetheless being a perfectly decent and respectful person to all the members of her department.
I don’t think the real issue here is about free speech or silencing. I think it’s a simple matter of justice. Suppose that COV is, in fact, the best candidate for the job, and that all the committee members recognize this, and that, absent this letter, COV would have been offered the job. Now that the letter has been sent, I think it’s *very* unlikely that COV will be offered the job, even if all the preceding is true. (What committee would want to bring someone into the department that the graduate students oppose so vocally? What a mess that would be!). If both of those things are true (and there’s a least a decent chance that they are), then a real injustice has been done here. Who knows if COV will ever get another shot at a job?
I am a bit confused as to why some people think it’s clear the graduate students are acting inappropriately. I really don’t think this is an easy case to judge without knowing exactly what it is they’re protesting. The views expressed seem under described (presumably to preserve anonymity). I know, for example, of philosophers who have argued for what I think are morally reprehensible views about women in the context of defending their views on sexuality. If my department were considering hiring them, I wouldn’t hesitate to object on that basis.
Suppose we grant the students’ note as something that justified not hiring COV. Would we, by the same logic grant that hiring committees would be engaged in reasonable due diligence when they asked on interviews “Have you ever (publicly) held view X, or Y, or Z, which some of our students find uncomfortable?”
(Kathryn, I know, for example of philosophers who have argued for what I think are morally reprehensible views about Palestine in the context of defending their views on Global Justice. If my department were considering hiring them, I wouldn’t hesitate to object on that basis. I am going to ask Steven Saliata if he would agree.)