In the “Politics of Professional Advancement Among College Faculty” Stanley Rothman, S. Robert Lichter and Neil Nevitte argue that there is ideological discrimination in higher education that relegates Republican, women, and praciticing Christian professors to “lower quality schools than their professional accomplishments would predict.” Their conclusions are based upon a national survey of over 1,500 faculty members from 183 four-year colleges and univerities.
The Forum: The Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics has just published a paper by University of Pittsburgh researchers that shows Rothman, Lichter, and Nevitte’s work is “plagued by theoretical and methodological problems that render their conclusions unsustainable by the available evidence.” In Hide the Republicans, the Christians, and the Women: A Response to “Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty” authors Barry Ames, David C. Barker, Chris W. Bonneau, and Christopher J. Carman offer an alternative hypothesis theoretically consistent with Rothman et al.’s findings. Unfortunately, the authors were unable to subject their alternative hypothesis to empirical assessment (or even to replicate the initial results of Rothman et al.) since they have refused to make their data available to the scientific community.
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