This also has some obvious implications for academic and intellectual freedom. Faculty might be weary of pursuing some areas of research if they are worried that it could affect future career advancement. Institutions like Marquette which strive to be competitive academic research centers may lose some top talent. Their future candidate pools could be adversely affected if academics and researches feel that their research will be used against them in hiring and advancement decisions.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Post #3
Marquette University in Wisconsin recently rescinded a job offer to a candidate because of her academic research dealing with lesbian issues. Jodi O'Brien, an openly gay professor at Seattle University, was appointed dean of the college arts and sciences, but the school discovered that some of her academic writings didn't exactly mesh with church teachings. There are couple things that strike me as odd about this decision. First, shouldn't part of the hiring process for a dean involve becoming familiar with their research? I was on a search and screen committee for an open librarian position, and we definitely looked at scholarly publications of the candidates to help us make our decisions. It is possible that the hiring committee and deans were fine with her research, but there could have been angry donors or trustees that didn't agree with the situation. Another odd thing is that both Marquette and Seattle University are Jesuit institutions. That means that her research at Seattle University was probably supported by the university.
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If, as I suspect, her research is scientifically founded and published in recognized, peer-reviewed journals and the school rescinded the offer because the research runs counter to church belief, wouldn't that mean the science itself runs counter to church belief? I ask this without looking up any of O'Brien's published work, or even knowing her discipline of study, but it seems logical that any university hiring a dean for their college arts & science would only consider individuals verified as well known and well published in their discipline, who follows the guidelines of academic research and publication, and who is above reproach in academia. I spoke to several professors during my undergrad years, and it's actually well-known in the publish-or-perish culture of academia that some lines of research will lose you promotions if not completely laugh you out of academia as a whole--it really is not anything new--, but it seems to me like Marquette just didn't want to deal with the science vs. religion debate down the road, possibly because they knew their constrained views of religion would lose. With this decision made public, Marquette just gave itself a black mark in academia.
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I found it interesting that she was a tenured professor at a Jesuit institution already, and I would imagine that a list of publications on her vitae is one of the first things the search and screen committee for a dean position would look at.
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