Politicization at a Dutch University
Intellectual Diversity and Particular Political Persuasions at 'Proud to
be Progressive’ Places
BSc. Coen Schuring, 10439625 Master Thesis
MSc Urban Sociology First reader: dr. I Tzaninis
Second reader: Prof. dr. B. Volker 29-8-2017
schuringcoen@gmail.com University of Amsterdam Word count: 23, 827 (Excluding appendices)
2
Table of contents
Page
Foreword……….. 5
Abstract……… 7
Chapter 1: Introduction……… 8
Social-political relevance of the subject……….. 8
Problem definition………... 8
The university and its identity………. 9
Research question……… 11
Outline………. 11
Chapter 2: Theoretical framework………... 12
2.1 Explanations for the prevalence of leftist lecturers & students at the FMG………...……….. 12
2.1.1 The nature of social science(s)……….... 12
2.1.2 Political ideology and personality traits……….. 12
2.1.3 Political persuasions and personal preferences………... 13
2.1.4 The role of education to the political views of students………. 14
2.1.5 Possible discrimination against conservatives……… 14
2.2. Sociology: A Tale of Two Narratives... 15
2.2.1 Explanations for the current campus culture at the university………...…………...16
2.2.2 Identity politics and the social sciences……….. 18
Chapter 3: Methodology………. 21
The teacher interviews………. 21
3
Chapter 4: Qualitative results ………..22
4.1 The political identities of teachers……….23
4.2 Teachers’ philosophy about teaching………..…... 23
4.3 The interdependency between the political affiliation of lecturers and education………..28
Identity politics, postmodernism and the curriculum……….. 30
4.4 Support for quotas to enforce political diversity in the faculty….……… 33
Chapter 5: Quantitative results……… 37
5.1 Demographic information……….. 37
5.2 The political identity of students………... 39
Individual political labels………. 41
Political opinions of social science students……… 42
5.3 Political diversity at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences………... 45
5.4 Politicization of teachers………47
The task of a teacher during the educational process……….. 48
5.5 Changing political views of students during their students at the University of Amsterdam……… ……….. 49
5.6 The expression of (political) preferences on campus……… 51
5.6.1 The number of students that do not express themselves during seminar groups………. 51
5.6.2 Reasons students give for not expressing themselves during seminar groups………. 52
5.6.3 Support for speech codes on campus……….. 56
4 5.8 The most important factors that shape the political views
of social science students………. 59
Ordinal regression analysis……….. 62
Chapter 6: Conclusion………. 64
6.1 Limitations ……….. 65
6.2 Recommendations………. 66
6.2.1 Making the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences more welcoming to non-leftists………. 65
6.2.2 Steps the professoriate can take to let right-wing students join…….. 66
Bibliography……… 70
Appendix 1: List of abbreviations ……….. 78
Appendix 2: Political parties that currently have a seat in the Dutch Parliament or were influential during the last national Dutch elections ……… 79
Appendix 3: The teacher interviews ………... 83
5
Foreword
This thesis is written as a completion to the master Urban Sociology, at the University of Amsterdam. The subject of this thesis, political diversity at the social science faculty and how the political views of students are shaped by the university, has been a personal topic of interest for quite some time and was chosen after I had some interpersonal experiences during my studies at the University of Amsterdam that I thought were interesting to research sociologically.
I would also like to thank both of my supervisors that helped me with my master thesis throughout the last months. My first supervisor, dr. I. Tzaninis, helped me with the formulation of the research question and his recommendations concerning useful literature also were a great help. I would like to thank my second supervisor, prof. dr. B. Volker, for helping me by assessing the thesis proposal, where she provided critical feedback and input that complemented the other feedback I received earlier.
I have been conducting research on this topic since April, and I found this period of research very interesting and informative.
Coen Schuring Amsterdam, August 2017
6
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His
reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if
he really does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for
preferring either opinion…”
7
Abstract
Universities have never enrolled so many students as today. Consequently, these places of higher learning have played an ever increasing role during the formative years of countless young adults. This master thesis reviews how students of six educational departments of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences – namely Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, Psychology, Human Geography, Planning and International Development, and Communication – are shaped by several different variables, both in- and outside of the university. The (possible) politicization of college students by sociology teachers and how politicization relates to the current climate concerning intellectual freedom will also be covered.
Keywords: politicization at higher education, social science students, intellectual freedom, teacher interviews
8
1. Introduction
My owninterest regarding the question of ‘intellectual diversity’ was sparked after a couple of personal experiences I had with regards to expressing different (political) opinions during several seminar meetings1 of sociology courses. These opinions were mostly connected to the topics of meritocracy, race, social inequality and gender. Expressing these opinions to my fellow students led to some instances of social exclusion, i.e. people not greeting me back or excusing themselves shortly after I had joined their group. It gave the impression of a form of ‘groupthink’, where the smallest infraction of going against the narrative was seen as a dissenting viewpoint and the desire for conformity and harmony was what expected and hoped for. This experienced lack of intellectual diversity is what started my thought process about the absence (or presence) of diversity of thought at the social science faculty of my university.
Social-political relevance of the subject
Interestingly, the topic of intellectual diversity was also recently discussed in the Dutch parliament, where a motion was put forward by Pieter Duisenberg, a member of the House of Representatives and politician for the political party of the VVD (see the list of abbreviations in Appendix 1 and the list of Political parties that currently have a seat in Dutch Parliament or were influential during the last national Dutch elections in Appendix 2 for a more detailed description of the political parties). The goal of the motion is to let the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen or KNAW) investigate if “self-censorship and limitations of diversity of scientific perspectives play a major role in the Netherlands” (Hendriks, 2017). The fact that the Dutch parliament wants to know if (social) scientific disciplines are influenced by a lack of viewpoint diversity underlines the social-political relevance of my master thesis. The KNAW will have a meeting in the fall of 2017 and subsequently take a position in relation to intellectual freedom within the social science faculty.
Problem definition
Universities are suitable for this research subject as more Dutch students are attending college than in any other decade (DUO, 2016: 4), these places of higher learning constantly teach and confront students with new ideas and the faculties of higher institutions increasingly have more influence in shaping the ideological predispositions of college students (Horowitz 2006, 2007). This confrontation with new ideas inevitably leads to processes of politicization; however, the
9 theories on politicization processes do not pay a lot of attention to the experiences of individual students (Hanson et al. 2012: 356). The teaching staff of the sociology faculty, in particular, has been interviewed, seeing as American studies throughout several decades have repeatedly found that sociology professors tend to be the most liberal professors in academia, politically speaking (Turner et al., 1963; Lipset & Ladd 1970, 1972; Klein et al., 2005).
A recent study done in the United States corroborates this sentiment, where they found that Democratic professors outnumbered their Republican counterparts on a ratio of about 12:1 (Langbert et al., 2016). This article primarily looked at voter registration of faculty members at 40 leading U.S. universities in the fields of Journalism/Communication, History, Economics, Law, and Psychology. These results showed that D: R ratios have gone up since 2004 and the age profiles suggest they will probably go up even further in the future (Idem.). This shows the end of an ‘institutionalized disconfirmation’ (Haidt, 2016), where an institution with little political diversity among the professoriate that institutionalizes critique and disconfirmation by filtering out the bad, partisan and/or biased ideas and research in academia does not always work. Similar findings came from two scholars at the University of Tilburg, the Netherlands, who showed that the social psychology department is overwhelmingly politically liberal (left-wing) and that this lack of ‘intellectual’ diversity leads to ideologically biased selection of research questions, selective interpretation of evidence, and even to discrimination against libertarian and conservative (right-wing) students and faculty members (Inbar & Lammers, 2012).
The university and its identity
During the introduction week at the beginning of the year, a faculty speaker said that “we would be studying in one of the most wonderful and inclusive cities in the world and were going to make a great impact in society at large”. This could be seen as evidence of a larger, faculty-wide sentiment of a university that self-identifies as “internationally oriented, innovative and involved” (Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2017b), compared to Amsterdam as an inclusive, liberal city. The identity of Amsterdam as a liberal city is corroborated by the exit polls from the March 2017 Dutch national elections. This shows that GreenLeft is the biggest party in the Dutch capital city with 19,3% of the votes, followed by the D66 that has 18,2% of the votes (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2017; Slot et al., 2017). The University of Amsterdam has historically been a liberal place, both in principle and sovereignty, but has gone in a different direction since the early 1970s. This was the moment that the protected status of the municipal-university was no longer valid and the Executive Board (College van Bestuur) could, for example, decide
10 which professors to hire (Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2017a). This eventually led to growing neoliberal trends that focus on efficiency (rendementsdenken) and had an adverse effect on the quality of education (Van der Wusten, 1998: 36).
Since the 1950s, there has been an ever increasing rate of diversification in regards to the curriculum at universities throughout the Western world that came alongside more democratization (Idem.: 38). The eventual consequence of this can be seen in the case of the UvA Maagdenhuis occupation in 2015 that occurred after the university announced it would be eliminating several degree programs because of austerity measures and budget issues. Students and staff members alike decided to protest and demand more democratization and decentralization (Commissie Democratisering & Decentralisering, 2016). The interdependency between the previously mentioned trends of neoliberalization, the politicization of students and the role faculty members and fellow students play in this process by advocating for a particular stance all come together in the university of the present day. Actually, does a university that is guided by these neoliberal policies employ many left-leaning professors at all? This remains to be seen.
Still, it has to be noted that all these trends at universities are occurring amidst a Dutch society that has (partly) gone towards the right side of the political spectrum in the past several years. This argument can be supported in light of the results from the last Dutch national elections. If these are reviewed, we see that all of the widely considered right-wing parties received 64% of the vote, with conservative (more nationalist) right-wing parties gaining 7 seats in parliament and progressive (more globalist-centered) right-wing parties gaining 5 in comparison to the last elections in 2012 (Kiesraad, 2017; Appendix 2).
With universities being largely influential in higher education, the teachers are quite literally the first and (maybe even) foremost source that give students new information. The role lecturers play in this possible politicization process cannot be underlined enough. Therefore, the question how – if at all – the teaching philosophy of lecturers form the political opinions of university students is a crucial one. It could also be that another variable is more influential when forming students’ political views. All this information begs the question if and how the political views of graduate and undergraduate2 social science students are affected by several different factors in and around the university.
11
Research question
This leads to the formulation of the following research question: “How are students’ political views formed at the social science faculty of the University of Amsterdam, in light of the teaching philosophy of lecturers?”
The aim of my thesis is to research how the political views of social science students are formed at the social science faculty of the University of Amsterdam, and how this relates to the lecturers’ philosophy about teaching. My expectation is that higher education has changed the political views of both liberal/left-leaning and conservative/right-leaning students in considerable but different ways. I am also personally interested if other social science students have experienced some form of social exclusion after they have expressed (political) viewpoints that were not very popular.
Outline
This master thesis will precede as follows. Various explanations for the prevalence of leftist students and lecturers will first be discussed in the theoretical framework, along with previous research and the discourse around identity politics. The subsequent methodology chapter will briefly cover the research design, data collection and sampling. After this, the qualitative and quantitative data analysis will be conducted. The thesis will be concluded with an evaluation of the main findings, a discussion and recommendations for future research.
12
2. Theoretical framework
This chapter will represent the necessary theoretical framework to answer my research question. The theoretical topics will include: (1) several explanations for the prevalence of left-leaning students and lecturers at the Faculty of Societal- and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) and (2) an explanation why sociology mostly covers topics and information in the curricula that could be considered as left-leaning.
2.1 Explanations for the prevalence of leftist students & lecturers at the FMG Before we look at the current situation of intellectual freedom at the UvA social science faculty, we must first find out what the reasons are for it currently being the way it is. The social scientific literature does not seem to give a singular all-encompassing explanation why there are so many left-leaning professors (and students) at the social science faculty. The answers that many academic have put forward, which are manifold, mainly seem to be connected to (1) the essence of social science(s), (2) differences in personality traits, (3) differences in interests and self-selection, (4) liberalization during education, and (5) – perhaps to a smaller extent – discrimination.
2.1.1 The nature of social science(s)
The first explanation is connected to the nature of the inquiry in the discipline (Eitzen & Maranell 1968: 152), where intellectual examination of traditional beliefs discuss the negative and positive consequences for social arrangements (like tradition) that result in a milieu of social critique and a subsequent weakening of traditional belief. Therefore, it could be likely that either (A) individuals who have previously experienced these aforesaid weakening of tradition select the disciplines that critically examine these or (B) individuals in the behavioral/social sciences are socialized towards liberal attitudes by virtue of them being members of the discipline (Idem.). The latter is unsurprising as challenging frequently held beliefs and changing the status quo is the antithesis of conservatism, by definition.
2.1.2 Political ideology and personality traits
The two personality traits that most parsimoniously explain the personal differences between the political orientation of liberals and conservatives are Open(ness) to (New) Experience(s) and Conscientiousness, respectively. Conservatives tend to avoid unfamiliar situations with uncertain (financial) outcomes and are attracted to careers that are both structured and practical in nature. They are also more inclined to be more robust and behaviorally significant with regards to social dimensions of ideology (Carney et al., 2008). Liberals are more drawn towards creative fields and are, generally speaking, more open-minded, novelty-seeking and curious
13 (Idem.: 816). Wilson’s psychological theory of conservatism (1973) (as cited in Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Solloways 2003: 356) argues that liberals gravitate to having personality traits that are more often associated with ambiguity and uncertainty. This could be a reason why they go into a field like academia where they can satisfy their curious minds (McCrae, 1996). Conservatives, on the other hand, could be more inclined to have jobs in private employment or to be attracted towards the larger salaries that are found here. This might explain why there are so few right-wing students (and teachers) in academia.
2.1.3 Political persuasions and personal preferences
Apart from the fact that liberals tend to be “less interested in financial success and more interested in writing originals works” (Woessner & Kelly-Woessner, 2009a, as cited in Duarte et al. 2015: 28), these disparities in individual interest may be augmented by the concept of “birds of a feather flock together”, also known as the “homophily” effect (Byrne, 1969; McPherson, 2001). When a domain or field starts to favor a certain way of thinking or is inhabited by certain kinds of individuals, the field will likely become increasingly attractive to the people befitting that predilection. Over time, the group itself may become characterized by its group members and people outside of that field will come to recognize the entire field by that characteristic, just like firefighters are typically thought of as being male or social scientists are seen as left-leaning/liberal (Duarte et al., 2015: 28). When that happens, right-wingers/conservatives could get the impression that they do not belong there and decide to opt out of enrolling in these disciplines altogether. This form of self-selection, coupled together with the personality differences, might generally explain a sizeable part of the under-representation of right-leaning individuals in the social science faculty.
2.1.4 The role of education to the political views of students
Research done in the 1970s studied how conservative students were ‘liberalized’ during an introductory sociology course in university (Eitzen & Brouillette, 1979). The politicization process was measured by incorporating conservative and liberal items into a questionnaire that they answered at the beginning and end of their semester. The students were found to shift overwhelmingly towards a liberal direction, regardless of their age and/or their professor’s theoretical orientation. The most notable reasons (apart from the curriculum and teachers’ influence) for this shift were: “the absence of parents, new experiences and the exposure to a wide range of persons, ideas and peer pressures” (Feehan, 2004). When the topics covered in the curriculum were taken into account (racism, sexism, power and wealth distribution, social inequality and unrest, crime and poverty) and led by a liberal professor, a significant portion of
14 the class were persuaded to (join) the political left (Eitzen & Brouillette, 1979: 123). So, education has shown to be of importance in the politicization process of college students. Parents, educators and politicians also feel that students are directly influenced by liberal college environments (Fish, 2004; Horowitz, 2004) and while it may be true that there are a sufficient number of liberal college students, it is also true that not all colleges actually liberalize students. Alternatively, it could also be that conservative or liberal students enter college and become even more entrenched in their own values during the first year of college because of the (mostly) liberal views of their peers. This entrenchment of values among conservative and liberal students is part of a phenomenon that has aptly been described as the Entrenchment Hypothesis (Feehan, 2004). However, other longitudinal studies that have followed several thousands of college students found that political socialization mostly develops as a function of one’s peers, and not necessarily education (Astin, 1993; Dey 1997). So, group norms and being surrounded by individuals that have particular political persuasions would be the defining factor when it comes to being conservative or liberal in university.
2.1.5 Possible discrimination against conservatives
Maranto & Woessner (2012) suggest that discrimination against conservatives could partially explain why there are so few conservative or right-leaning students in the social sciences. They note that this discrimination might not necessarily be done intentionally. Instead, conservatives might become isolated or disconnected from the rest of the ‘liberal’ campus simply because they are in the minority. This could lead to conservatives assessing that that specific college experience is ‘not for them’ and subsequently self-selecting out of completing an advanced degree in the social sciences (Woessner & Kelly-Woessner 2009a: 3). The political-ideological imbalance in the humanities and social sciences could be explained by the significant importance that is put on ideals; this might be one of the reasons the political disparity among students is less prolific in the business, economics and math departments (Langbert et al., 2016). This does not mean that there are no individual cases where conservatives experience (some) hostility in certain disciplines or individual courses. It does seem to mean that it does not profoundly affect their overall assessments of the college experience (Woessner & Kelly-Woessner 2009a: 4). This group can still thrive in higher education; professors on the right side of the political spectrum turn out to be “just as happy as their liberal counterparts, if not more so” (Abrams, 2016: 7) .
15
2.2 Sociology: A Tale of Two Narratives
Sociologist Christian Smith (2003) argues that the academic field of sociology has become a cohesive moral community throughout the years and developed specific, and complementary, sacred values. This ideological shift was mostly done in “various social sectors where the public authority of religion has diminished, in particular, education, science, law, and journalism.” (Smith, 2003). He describes the view of the (current) cohesive sociological moral community thus:
“Once upon a time, the vast majority of human persons suffered in societies and social institutions that were unjust, unhealthy, repressive, and oppressive. These traditional societies were reprehensible because of their deep-rooted inequality, exploitation and irrational traditionalism … But the noble human aspiration for autonomy, equality, and prosperity struggled mightily against the forces of misery and oppression and eventually succeeded in establishing modern, liberal, democratic… welfare societies. While modern social conditions hold the potential to maximize the individual freedom and pleasure of all, there is much work to be done to dismantle the powerful vestiges of inequality, exploitation, and repression. This struggle for the good society in which individuals are equal and free to pursue their self-defined happiness is the one mission truly worth dedicating one’s life to achieving” (Idem.: 82).
This narrative – which Smith (2003) refers to as that of Liberal Progress – might explain why there is a copious amount of sociological research done on topics like social change and control, sex and gender, race and ethnicity, social stratification and inequality, and stereotypes. The goal of (mainly) doing research on these topics is “to identify privilege exploitation, prejudice, and unequal opportunity in order to inform cultural practices and policy and legislative reforms that will make society more free, equal, and fulfilling for its individual members. In particular, this means identifying and critiquing class inequality, racism, sexism, heterosexism, corporate exploitation, and other forms of discrimination privilege, and injustice” (Idem.83). This often leads to sociologists developing policy that could eventually provide the intellectual foundation of many political causes and, consequently, taking up progressive (political) causes themselves. However, sociology is not always preoccupied with forward-looking progress and emancipation that is difficult to envision. Another possible and competing extrascientific narrative is that of Ubiquitous Egoism, which stands in stark contrast to the forward-oriented narrative. Whereas the Liberal Progress narrative is one of forward-oriented thinking, the
16
perspective of Ubiquitous Egoism is considered a retelling of the more sinful half of the Enlightenment. This perspective is formulated as follows:
“Once upon a time, people believed that human self-centeredness was a moral flaw needing correction through ethical and spiritual discipline towards self-sacrificial love for neighbor and commitment to the common good. Even today, many people believe this. But as noble as it sounds, more perceptive and honest thinkers have come to the cold, hard, simple fact that, beneath all apparent expressions of love and altruism, all human motives and concerns are really self-interested. In fact, notions such as love and self-sacrifice themselves have been tools of manipulation and advantage in the hands of Machiavellian actors. Idealists persist in affirming moral commitment to the welfare of others, but they are naïve and misguided. Truly honest and courageous people who have intellectually “come of age” are increasingly disabusing themselves of such illusions and learning to be satisfied with the substitute idealism of helping to build the best society possible, given the constraints of ubiquitous rational egoism” (Idem. 83-84). This gives the present day sociologist the choice between a (paradoxical) “inspiring drama and credulous optimism or more sobering satire and cynical pessimism” (Idem. 85). There are, of course, more narratives that offer more romantic and nostalgic views of the past (like the
Community Lost perspective which is a narrative on the tragedy of industrialization, modernity,
and globalization), but these were more prominent in the last century and have since lost a lot of influence in contemporary sociological thinking since the 1980s. Although all these narratives involve a particular and specific reading of history and a certain set of assumption with which to interpret the social world, it seems that the previously mentioned two narratives most often vie for ideological supremacy and explanatory power within the academic field of sociology (Isik 2015: 122).
2.2.1 Explanation for the current campus culture at universities
The sociologists Campbell and Manning (2014) explain how victimhood culture has come to be the dominant moral culture on (some) university campuses. This new moral culture is a new (transitionary) stage in the evolutionary process from two and distinct types of cultures. They argue that previously, humans either lived in an honor culture or in a dignity culture. The former is a culture where people’s reputation is seen as honorable where “one must respond aggressively to insults, aggression, and challenges or lose honor” (Campbell & Manning, 2014: 28) and not fighting back is interpreted as a failure to conform to the cultural zeitgeist, even
17 insofar that “in honor cultures, people are shunned or criticized for not exacting vengeance but for failing to do so” (Cooney, 1998: 110 as cited in Campbell & Manning, 2014: 28). The reliance on authority and law – even when it is available – is also despised, because letting your own affairs being handled by others is viewed as lowering your standards (Idem.). Dignity cultures, on the other hand, emphasize a status that cannot be affected by other people’s opinions – dignity. Public reputation is less important, developing a “thick skin” is even preferable and children might even be taught that “sticks and stones might break your bones, but words will never hurt me.” Non-violent, but direct, solutions should be pursued when a clash seems unavoidable. The court system or the police could be helpful in these situations and playing judge, jury and executioner yourself is widely denounced, although the use of authority figures or institutions should only be done as “quickly, quietly and rarely as possible” (Idem. 30).
Victimhood cultures contain elements of both honor cultures and dignity cultures, as they highlight sensitivity and status with a strong moral dependency on third parties. The cultural heterogeneity of contemporary social settings, like university campuses, reinforce the importance of public opinion and organized authority (the dean or a teacher) and these remain effective tools for social sanctions (Idem. 32). This could mean that the authorities are notified when a person (unintentionally) insults someone else and use the opportunity to enforce their own (perceived) oppression and social marginalization to underline their need for assistance and respect, instead of bolstering their own strength, dignity and/or honor (Idem. 31). Social-psychologist Jonathan Haidt (2012; 2016) – partly inspired by the sacred values of the cohesive moral community in sociology that were referred to earlier by Smith (2003) – identified six so-called sacred (victim) groups on university campus and these are (1) Blacks, (2) women, (3) the LGBT(QIA+) community, (4) ethnic minorities (like Latinos in America), (5) people with disabilities and the most recent addition: (6) Muslims. It must be noted that referring to these groups as sacred victim groups, does not mean these groups do not face any discrimination, however. Haidt continues by saying that students can not only gain status by being a victim, but also by “sticking up” or protecting other victims from their peers/other students who marginalize or attack these victim classes. A great example of this moral dependency could be seen at Emory College during the American elections of 2016 (Haidt, Idem.; Robinson, 2016), when a student chalked ‘Trump 2016’ on several places around campus. After some students said they felt they were ‘in pain’, ‘feared for [their] lives’ and ‘thought a KKK rally was going on’, they went to the president of the Atlanta college who, in turn, send a campus-wide email in which he promised to make policy changes regarding the ‘regular’ and ‘structured’ for
18
difficult dialogues.
According to Haidt (Idem.), the consequences of the moral dependency of this type of
culture are manifold. First, once the moral status of the victim has become the prevailing social currency at a university, it is very hard to change this form of looking at the world as students are taught there are two groups – victims and oppressors. Second, there “can never be peace in a victimhood culture as there is eternal conflict and grievance because of the (constant) struggle for [victimhood] status. Third, students are afraid to speak up/out and are self-censoring. Fourth, students advocate for the implementation of a “safety” culture because words and ideas are seen as “violence” and need trigger warnings and “safe spaces” to solve this issue. Any transgressions against a student should be solved by involving a third party that is an authority figure. Lastly, the victimhood culture could extend to other spaces and places outside of university and student might support these concepts elsewhere in the form of protests.
A recent survey done by the Higher Education Research Institute (2016) underlines this predilection and shows that college students have become much more engaged with politics and student activism than in previous years (Eagan et al. 2016: 7). These have mostly taken the form of other student protests that have occurred at several high-end universities throughout the Western world. Becoming more politically involved might not be a bad outcome in and of itself, but it does seem that these student protest sometimes target or affect people who are not involved. A good recent example of this is can be seen in the case of Evergreen College, in May 2017. This is where leftist students targeted their leftist professor – who was sympathetic to their cause and a political ally - because he dared to go against the marginalized or sacred groups on campus. Other examples of student protests can be found at the protests at Yale University and the University of Missouri in 2015 (Pearce, 2015) where student activists marched to end racial hostility in the institution, the case of the University of Berkeley, California earlier in 2017 when a protest against conservative speaker Milo Yiannapoulos resulted in violent students denying him access to give a talk to the Republican student body (Zurcher, 2017), or in the UK, the Netherlands and other European countries against tuition fees.
2.2.2 Identity politics and the social sciences
But where do all these underlying ideas and concepts come from and how have they become so popular amongst students especially? The study of literature first encountered a hermeneutical problem when they noticed complex texts could be interpreted in multiple (and perhaps even an unlimited number of) ways (Heidegger, 1927). Eventually, this became the central claim of
19 French intellectuals like Jean-Francois Lyotard (1979) who took the ethos (which was then referred to as postmodern, as virtue of it being popular in a period of contemporary history known as postmodernity) out of the domain of art movements and into the realm of philosophy. This lead to the idea that it wasn’t difficult how to interpret the (social) world but how to see it. Humans, for example, can be broken up into a variety of ways; they can be selected for based on their hair color, their gender, the color of their skin, their weight, ad infinitum. Then the question became what are the right categories to parse humans apart by?
The initial postmodern thinkers like Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida made a successive claim of deconstruction, where Western values like reason, truth, and reality (meta-narratives) are critically evaluated because they argue that Western civilization has used these concepts to oppress, destroy and dominate the world (Rorty 1989; Derrida, 1995). Lyotard contends that: “Reason and power are one and the same. Both lead to and are synonymous with prisons, prohibitions, selection process, the public good” (in Friedrich 1999, as cited in Hicks 2004: 3). Everything is seen through the lens of power politics and power dynamics and, whilst discursive analyses of power precede the postmodern ethos, the argument that reason is used as a tool to suppress marginalized groups is often made in these circles.. This is exemplified by the following quotes:
“It is meaningless to speak in the name of – or against – Reason, Truth or Knowledge” (Foucault 1993: 2) and “Reason is the ultimate language of madness” (Foucault 1965: 95).
Political injustices are therefore most prominent in the West because this is where power and reason have been developed. This pain and suffering is not distributed equally, however; “males, whites, and the rich have their hands on the whip of power, and they use it cruelly at the expense of women, ethnic minorities, and the poor” (Hicks 2004: 3). Where the old Marxian axiom had the economic struggle of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as its center, it has since then morphed into an oppressor-oppressed group dichotomy that is preoccupied with the struggle for (institutional) power.
The second generation of postmodernists came out to push for a kind of equality because weaker narratives were marginalized. This explains how students who are unfamiliar with names like Derrida, Rorty or ones that are more familiar in the social sciences such as Foucault, Bourdieu and Habermas might not necessarily know these theorists by heart because their ideas outlive their authors. If some groups are oppressed, or at least more oppressed than others, then that will (over time) create a specific protected status which will consecutively make that person
20 part of a sacred group. Being sympathetic to and coming to the defense of these groups makes you easy to identify as an ally and come across as a virtuous person.
Furthermore, postmodern thinkers reject some of the most important Enlightenment values like the importance of individual agency and identity, and governance in relation to liberalism (Idem.14). Instead, they replace these with social subjectivism, dividing people into groups based on sex, race and other social or demographic groups (Nicholson & Seidman, 1995: 2), oppression and conflict, and communitarianism (Fogel, 1999) or various other forms thereof. The (political) application of this anti-individualist and collectivist strain of thought is often times referred to as identity politics (Kruks 2001: 85) which is defined as “Political formations around identity [people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc.] with typically [the] to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context [in order to] assert or reclaim ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant oppressive characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination”(Cressida, 2016). An individual then becomes the exemplar of his/her race or gender, which leads to notions like white privilege or male privilege (McIntosh, 1993).
The influence of identity politics in education should, therefore, accentuate the harmful deeds of the oppressor groups (the rich, whites, and males) and focus on the accomplishments of these oppressed groups (the poor, ethnic minorities, women) (Hicks 2014: 18). Eventually, members of the oppressor group are - hyperbolically - sacrificed to the weak in a form of compensatory social justice; if you think the strong, smart, powerful and the rich have been using their positions of power to damage the interests of the weaker for several years, it is a noble cause to immolate them (Hicks, 2017). When identity politics is coupled with social justice, it leads to ideas no longer being evaluated on their merit but “on the identity of the speaker and [this is] multifaceted, incorporating sex, gender identity, race religion, sexuality and physical ability. The value of an identity in social justice terms is dependent on its degree of marginalization, and these stack up and vie for primacy” (Pluckrose, 2017).
The latter group of oppressed are especially inspired to do so when the identities of marginalized groups are part of overlapping magisteria that create independent systems of advantage or discrimination, which are also known as intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991), where having power and privilege are seen as profane and victimhood - in the intersectional way of seeing the world - is akin to sainthood.
Lastly, it would stand to reason that if all narratives are equally important, then voices from the political left and right would both see equal representation on campus. The validity of this notion will either be falsified or verified from the results in the qualitative and quantitative
21 data. We could expect to find teachers among the sociology faculty that advocate equal space on campus for all narratives, seeing as all narratives are equal; or at least not better than others.
3. Methodology
The teacher interviews
This master thesis has a mixed methods approach, where in-depth, semi-structured interviews were first conducted with 7 teachers from the sociology department and were done between April 10 and April 20, 2017. A qualitative approach was chosen to answer the part of the research question concerning the teaching staff – viz., whether the teaching philosophy of the professoriate is in line with the political views of students – because a large amount of personal information was needed from a relatively small number of individuals. The topics covered in the interviews included their personal and political identities, their own philosophy about teaching, their opinion on political diversity quotas and their answers to several statements. The qualitative interviews have been used to cross-reference the political viewpoints later on, even though the former were done at an earlier point in chronological time. Some details were altered to guarantee the anonymity of the interviewees. The transcripts of the interviews can be read in Appendix 3.
The student surveys
The teacher interviews were followed up chronologically by surveys that were distributed among many graduate and undergraduate students of the six departments from the Faculty of Social- and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) – Anthropology, Communication, Psychology, Political Science, Sociology and Human Geography, Planning and International Development - and 250 respondents have since participated, aged 18 to 26 and over. The students were of national and international background and were randomly approached through social media and on the university campus – both individually and in seminar groups. The response rate via social media was low; only 2% of respondents that were approached took the time to fill in a survey. That is why students were also informed they could win small prizes as an incentive to bolster their participation. These prizes included gift vouchers between 15 and 20 euros, agendas and notebooks. The (sub) questions and topics that were covered in these interviews are: the distribution of left and right-leaning students at the social science faculty, the politicization of teachers, the general and political identities of students, their past voting behavior, their own political values, the nature of their political views during their studies at the University of Amsterdam, what factors influence or form their political opinions, the free expression of their
22 own (political) views during seminar groups, the representation of (other) political views on campus, their own living situation, the role of the city in the politicization process and some demographic information. Most of the questions had multiple choice answers and the resulting demographics were weighed to correct for unequal selection probability and nonresponse, so that a sample size that is representative of gender, educational level and all educational departments within the social science faculty was achieved. For results based on this sample of college students, the margin of sampling error is ±6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The surveys can be read in Appendix 4.
4. Qualitative results
This chapter will examine the interviews with academics from the social science faculty (FMG) and will cover (1) their own political identities; (2) their own philosophy about teaching; (3) the interdependency between political affiliation and education; and (4) their opinion on the use of quotas to make the sociology faculty of the University of Amsterdam more equitable on a political level.
4.1 The political identities of teachers
The political identity of a teacher was determined through the following questions: (1)”What label would you use to describe yourself politically?”, (2) “How would you describe your political affiliation?”, (3) “How left or right-leaning would you consider yourself?”, (4) “What party did you vote for in the last Dutch elections?”, (5) “What party did you vote for in the second to last elections?” and (6) “How important – if at all – would you say your political identity is when deciding which political party to vote for?”
Six out of seven teachers described themselves as left-leaning. This ranged from two teachers saying they were on the center-left to two other teachers describing themselves as a left-wing liberal. One teacher said he/she was a left-wing progressive and one teacher was the odd one out in the sense that he/she labelled him/herself as a centrist. Unsurprisingly, the political affiliation of teachers was (mostly) in line with their political labels3 and this was also applicable to the question about how left or right-leaning they considered themselves. The lack of political diversity and the possible resulting absence of institutionalized disconfirmation was somewhat expected, as these findings underline the results of a study concerning the ideological distribution of sociology professors (Klein and Stern, 2009); indicating that although the
3 One teacher, for example, said his own political label was “liberal” and his own political affiliation was “leftist”.
23 political affiliation of teachers is not monolithic, it is still overwhelmingly liberal and left-leaning on college campuses.
Five out of the seven interviewed teachers of the sociology faculty were eligible to vote in the last Dutch national elections and 3 out of those 5 said they voted for GreenLeft. The two other teachers voted for the Party for the Animals and the self-styled moderate or ‘centrist’ voted for the Christian Democratic Appeal, respectively.
4.2 Teachers’ philosophy about teaching
This paragraph reviews the qualitative answers of the professoriate in regards to how they would describe their personal attitude towards teaching and what they think the (ideal) goal of the curriculum should be. This was done to check if the teachers are more open towards having colleagues (or students) that hold opposite political preferences.
The first teacher started out by saying that his/her philosophy about teaching was that students should be shown what the most promising tools and ideas in their own field are. He argued that teachers should be open about their own biases and inclinations, and said:
"Look, these are my own biases [as a teacher], these are more or less my subjective elements I want to emphasize, but this is something you can't get around and is essential to the field, so it would be crazy not to mention it. […] The fact that many of us [sociologists] are thinking a lot about inequality, for example, is a value statement. Teachers are out on that podium and should watch out for their own blind spots and be open to arguments from the other side or another perspective that they might not even be open to because of their own socialization or position that they are currently a part of.”
He/she continued by giving a neutral rating to the statement about educating students about injustice in the world as an important part of his/her way of teaching (see Crosstabulation 1 on page 25), because it was very class-dependent. An interesting finding came up when the teacher was asked about the principle of separating the activity of teaching from political views in class: “We know that is impossible, but we should aim for reflexivity with regards to our own biases whether they be political or speaking from the privilege of male-ness or whatever power basis.” The reference the teacher made on the discourse around power, privilege and male identity was very telling, seeing how these concepts were covered in the theoretical framework. Lastly, the teacher argued it is impossible to detach your personal teaching style from your political views whenever possible as “trying would imply consciousness and I would argue that
24 it is part of your habitus and it happens in the heat of the moment. So although I don’t think it is possible, in an ideal world I would really hope to do so.”
The second teacher made the same argument as the first teacher regarding the separation of political views and the classroom, as he/she agreed with the statement in principle, but it’s very difficult to do in practice. He/she continued by saying that he/she hoped his/her political views did not influence his/her teaching style and tried to do so, but was fairly certain they did influence each other on an unconscious level.
The third teacher stated that, relatively speaking, the transmission of knowledge is an important part of the teaching process but not extremely important. Educating students about injustice in the world was an important part of his/her way of teaching, because “For sociologists, equality is a value in itself, but that is rather self-evident.” The professor had a neutral opinions towards the process of students deciding to become more politically involved after his/her classes and seeing this as a good outcome, for “on the one hand, I do encourage students/colleagues to be public sociologists and it that sense I would agree, but this sounds more like politically active and I'm not totally sure about that.” The statement pertaining to the activity of teaching staying separated from political views in class did not warrant an answer from the professor. He/she did have the following to say about it:
“I'm not teaching in order to influence their political ideas, but obviously, these aren't two totally separated worlds either. [At least] to the extent that it might be common that being a sociologist influences your political views. That can be [seen] in various ways, there could be right-wing liberals that we train in sociology so there's not one way that is thinking in totally individualized terms, for instance. So, it should not and it is not my intention to influence it, but I'm aware of the consequences of my teaching.”
This lecturer was the only interviewee that agreed with the statement about how his/her teaching style is completely detached from his/her political views, however. His reason for arguing in favor of this was as follows: “I hope my style is dialogical and non-hierarchical that is not motivated by my political style. But it might be that [way] if you have very hierarchical political ideas. [So] you won't teach in that way. I would say that [my teaching style] is detached from my political views [in that way].” He concluded that trying to detach your teaching style from your political views whenever possible is not about those two per se, but it’s about being explicit about it towards your students.
4 The answer options were: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) neither agree or disagree, (4) agree and (5) strongly agree. The asterisk implies a small caveat is needed to
somewhat nuance the position of the teacher in question.
Crosstabulation 1
Teachers’ answers to various statements about their philosophy about teaching4
Statements
Teaching staff
Teacher #1 Teacher #2 Teacher #3 Teacher #4 Teacher #5 Teacher #6 Teacher #7 The transmission of knowledge is an
important part of the teaching process
5 5 4* 5 4 4 3
Educating students about injustice in the world is an important part of my way of teaching
3* 4 3* 3 4* 2 4
There is nothing wrong with promoting one political view or ideology over another when teaching
1 1 1 2 2 1 2
Students deciding to become more politically involved after my classes should be seen as a good outcome
2 4 3* 3 4* 4 5*
The activity of teaching should stay separated from political views in class
3* 4* -* 3* 2* 3* 3*
My teaching style is completely detached from my political views
3 2* 4* 3 2 3 -
I try to detach my personal teaching style from my political views whenever possible
The fourth teacher made a small comment about being neutral towards influencing the teaching process with your own political views in class. He said: “They [political views and the educational process] should be separated. I don't think you should really try your best to make sure they don't influence each other because you bring your own preferences into the teaching process, but you should be aware of that fact.” Furthermore, he/she disagreed with the statement about detaching your personal teaching style from your political views whenever possible, but argued it was also related to the way the question was phrased:
“I think that's a weird question because the two are not linked to each other. I don't understand how the way I vote once every four years could influence my personal teaching style. But I don't try to separate my political preferences that are related to the teaching process because that's just the way I am. So it's not related to my voting behavior but more to my awareness that there's is always an aspect of power involved.”
Just like most of the other members of the sociology faculty, the fifth teacher underlined the relative importance of educating students about injustice in the world in this teacher’s way of teaching: “I [teach students about injustice in the world] on the sidelines because the course I am currently teaching is not about the development of poverty for example”. He added that it could be seen as a good outcome if students decide to become more politically involved after his/her classes: “Yes and it doesn't matter so much in what direction they eventually go, although I do hope that they don't get racist.” Great methodological or ontological discussions could be had from taking political views into account when in class, so this teacher disagreed with the statement about the activity of teaching staying separated from political views, although he/she did do so in the past.
The penultimate teacher was the only one that disagreed with the notion of educating students about injustice in the world. This person also disagreed severely with the statement “there is nothing wrong with promoting one political view or ideology over another when teaching” and keeping education and politics separated is not possible, because “everything is political”.
The seventh and last teacher was the only one who said educating students about injustice in the world is more important than the transmission of knowledge. In regards to students deciding to become more politically involved after his/her classes should be seen as a good outcome, he/she had this to say:
27 “My job is to give students the skill sets or capacity to think about what is going on around them. It's not because I'm going to lecture them on Marxism and would hypothetically say that Marxism is great and they should vote for an extreme left-wing party. If through teaching the critical thinking skills students decide to be more interested in politics and then vote or rally then that would be a great outcome, but I think it's mostly about citizenship and facilitating it.”
Other useful answers the professoriate gave concerning the link between higher education and possible politicization include: (1) “Having [certain political convictions] is fine, but that is not very pertinent when you’re a sociologist – you have to try and contradict yourself.”, (2) “As a teacher, I want to be clear about my own political preferences from the onset. The sociology faculty does not want to indoctrinate the students with all kinds of leftist material; at least that is something I personally would not find to be a healthy attitude from an institution of higher learning. Universities are shaping students in their younger years, so teaching them something about reflexivity and distance in regards to their biases is very useful.”
All of the lecturers have stated several times over that they are not actively trying to shape the (political) viewpoints of their students, for various reasons.
However, although all teachers said they did not actively tried to shape the political views of their students (in any way), it cannot always be kept separated. When these two different domains do eventually collide, it can sometimes lead to conflict in groups settings, as is exemplified by the following quote from one of the teachers:
“I have had one student who explicitly said he voted for the VVD and I've had another student who openly stated he voted for the PVV. That was pretty awkward, to put it mildly. It was someone who expressed some very right-wing viewpoints during a seminar group and I thought it was difficult to lead the discussion from that point on because that person instantly becomes a focal point for the entire group. The last thing you want to have as a teacher is a fierce political discussion. A lot of the subjects we discuss [in sociology] are topics that very relevant to a lot of people on a daily basis, and that's what make them political.”
This teacher also gave an explanation for why these situations do not occur often:
“I am sure that there is a self-selection process going on among sociology students that selects young adults who are mostly on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum and they will most likely not bring up those sentiments.”
28 His/her answer underlines one of the previously mentioned explanations for why the social sciences (like sociology) tend to be overwhelmingly left-leaning: the self-selection of both conservative and liberal students when choosing a discipline to study and the subsequent silence of bringing up sentiments that go against those of their fellow students when they do end up having opinions that are no widely supported.
4.3 The interdependency between the political affiliation of lecturers and education The previous quote showed how one teacher put forwards the concept of students possibly self-selecting out of certain academic disciplines (in advance) in order to prevent having confrontations during their studies or study seminars. On the other hand, the qualitative
interviews also showed one example of a teacher (who was left-leaning himself) saying he felt uneasy to publicly declare his criticism of the European Union:
“I am also quite skeptical about the European Union and that is something you should watch out with expressing in left-leaning circles because the left is usually quite Europhilic. And you often get labelled as a Wilders (PVV) or Forum for Democracy-supporter and that's not my sort of Euroscepticism. I know there are also Eurosceptic sentiments coming from the Socialist Party and the Party for the Animals, but you often get associated with the aforementioned right-leaning parties if you are Eurosceptic. [Do you feel you can you freely express those sentiments here among your fellow faculty members?] I have never done so before, so I don't know how they would react, but when I do bring it up during seminar groups I always mention that it is my own opinion and might not necessarily reflect the opinion of most teachers.”
Here we can see some evidence that teachers sometimes do not speak their mind when it comes to critiquing topics that are generally held in high regard in left-leaning circles. His/her exact reason(s) for not doing so any further were not asked and therefore unknown.
Research shows that the social sciences contain courses in which the overwhelmingly left-wing politics of the faculty members are most likely to interfere (Woessner & Kelly-Woessner, 2009b), so teachers of the sociology department were asked exactly how much they think the educational process is shaped by their own political affiliation. One teacher had this to say:
“I think [the question of political affiliation shaping education] is a pertinent but highly sensitive one. I think you are aware that the [Dutch] Parliament recently accepted a
29 notion of researching how scientific disciplines are influenced by the political views of scientists. Now, I am [a member of a well-known social science association] and we recently had the March for Science where we had this huge debate within [the association] where all [social science] departments where present, because there obviously is this idea that some departments are more political [than others], which I would argue is nonsensical and not necessarily true but there are some people who say that the social sciences are overly politicized. I object to that and I don't think it is overly politicized, but as I already emphasized there is always a risk that your own political views color the interpretation of the data. Obviously, the types of questions you ask and the topics you think that are interesting, like nationalism, are topics I think about a lot myself and do research on. I am not a positivist5, so I will never say that my political views do not influence what I am studying at all. My claim would be that what I am studying and the results of my study - and therefore also what I teach - is barely influenced by my political views and as far as it is influenced I try to be as open and reflexive as possible. I also often say to my students "Listen, this is a normative discussion. That is not what we do here, we are going to discuss this on a more empirical basis." Obviously, that sounds overly positivist as if 'facts are just facts', but these days it is important to say that there are at least degrees of factuality and that there are not things like 'alternative facts'. It's not just about your political opinion and that you can, therefore, say whatever you want because that's not what science is about.”6
The answer this teacher gave shows that he actively tries to prevent active (conscious) politicization in the classroom by “trying to be as open and reflexive as possible”, but that the inactive (unconscious) influence of political views in research topics and the types of questions social scientists ask can’t always be abated. The distinction between active (conscious) and inactive (unconscious) political bias and how these are counteracted in class was also mentioned by another one of the faculty members:
”I am sure the texts we decide to put on the reading list are partly influenced – be it conscious or unconscious – by our political leanings. I also think the subjects we find interesting in the field of sociology are also subjects that are on the agenda of several
5 Positivism is the philosophical and epistemological notion that all information that is gathered through the five
senses – once interpreted through logic and reason – is a valid form of knowledge (Macionis & Gerber, 2013).
30 left-leaning political parties. Topics like social inequality, discrimination, being part of a (social) group or not are all related to important questions, so that begs the questions if we can cover those topics objectively of course.”
This answer demonstrates the validity of the Liberal Progress narrative in the academic field of sociology and how this relates to politics; topics that are frequently discussed in the classroom are also often found on the agendas of socially progressive/left-leaning political parties.
Identity politics, postmodernism and the curriculum
The concept of identity politics also came back several times in the interviews. These three quotes shows the importance several professors put on (parts of) the race and gender of the theorists covered in the curriculum:
“I do believe there are too few female sociologists in our courses. The canon is pretty classical, western and dominated by white males. However, many of the important sociologists happen to be Jewish white male thinkers who were from the upper-middle class.”
And:
“[Does your political preferences influence the curriculum?] Yes, it does. In the sense that some years ago I thought I was only discussing male methodologists and I tried to work on that. Although I am sympathetic to claims about southern or African methodologies, I am not very often convinced of the validity of their content. I think I do put a lot of stress on feminist methodology in my teaching and the importance of feminist methodologists for qualitative research.”
Feminist methodology, according to the teacher, was about “talking about taking your methodology as serious as your theory, or at least that's how it works for me. Because how can you do research among the oppressed when you use methodologies that tend to have oppressive backgrounds in it?” The focus on being responsive towards or wanting to research the oppressed is also noticeable from this short excerpt. The marginalized were also mentioned in an interview with another teacher:
“I especially think the topics of identity, the self and how to think about marginalized groups should be infused into the course material more.”
31 Several notable postmodern thinkers or thinkers that have influenced postmodernism were mentioned multiple times by the teaching staff:
“[Michel] Foucault and [Pierre] Bourdieu should also be part of the curriculum. More feminist literature should also be included in the curriculum, because the bulk of the course material seems to revolve around Women's Studies, and that is more of a way of thinking that I think is very useful and goes very well together with Foucault and Marx' earlier work that is not connected to his communist or political work, but his philosophical and theoretical work. […] Judith Butler should also be discussed more.”
Michel Foucault thought knowledge was an expression of social power and that “power could be seen everywhere” (Foucault, 1991). He also used the concept of ‘power/knowledge’ to represent how this it created through science and other narratives that make truth claims and urges the actors in the social world to question institutional power or hierarchies in order to expose the ways they legitimize power. However, it should be noted that Foucault – who was gay himself - was staunchly opposed to identity politics (Downing 2008: 114).
Pierre Bourdieu is well-known for popularizing the concepts of field and habitus. The latter notion displays how individual agency is dependent upon the field (part of the social world) that person occupies, where there is a special role for practices (Bourdieu, 1984). Another concept, symbolic power (and its accompanying symbolic violence) can be described as relating to an individual’s place in an institution of social hierarchy and how this is validated through the (mis-)recognition of power politics (Bourdieu 1991: 168). Judith Butler is a postmodern feminist that emphasizes the performative aspect of gender that has been very influential in the fields of third-wave feminism and queer theory (Butler, 1990).
A teacher had this to say when the interviewer asked what he/she thought of the relevance of the theorists’ identity in relation to being selected in the curriculum:
“[Identity politics] is a dominant thought process I often encounter and where courses are based on and we would like to get away from that perspective in the Sociological Perspectives course. You just can’t get seem to escape from the fact that the ‘granddaddies’ of Sociology are all white males. But then again, it shouldn’t be the starting point that we are only going to select white males who were born in the 19th century.”
