- RL on Anti-Latter-day Saint Stigma in Academia: “I went to Columbia in Social Work in the early 00s and felt thoroughly respected by my peers and Teachers when discussing my religiosity. Many of my professors were the kids of holocaust survivors and this was right after 9/11 so it was a vibrant time of learning for me. It likely would have been a different experience during the Prop 8 era. For the kids there now I feel like they are being let down by their university leaders. I thought about Howard or Yeshiva but O generally like being a Fish out of water to learn in district environments. A decade later I got a MBA at a Baptist school and felt tolerated. I knew what I was getting into and was a bit of a stranger in a strange land but but don’t hold any grudges. Not to thread jack as I only went to grad school a couple times so not an academic, but was academia worth it? The pettiness of tenure, the sacrifice vs the salary output was it worth it as a career path? Seems likes many of your talents would be appreciated more in the non profit or for profit arena elsewhere.” Jun 9, 21:21
- on Anti-Latter-day Saint Stigma in Academia: “Several of the comments – Blair’s and ATNMack’s and MDKI’s – have mentioned that they didn’t experience any issues because they made clear that they weren’t that kind of Mormon, and Ivan also mentioned getting inquiries in that direction. Reinforcing the inquirer’s belief in common stereotypes while distancing oneself from one’s community may be an effective personal strategy for avoiding negative consequences of bias, but isn’t really evidence that the bias doesn’t exist – more the opposite, actually. It just shifts the burden of dealing with bias off of one’s own shoulders onto other community members. I don’t think it’s accurate to treat Latter-day Saints as somehow unusually beholden to religious beliefs. We understand that most adults face multiple competing ideological pressures and usually do a reasonably good job of balancing them. LDS beliefs are not any different in that respect than the beliefs of Catholics or Muslims or Democrats, where we recognize that subjecting their beliefs to extra scrutiny is inappropriate in academia. MDKI: Note that I wasn’t comparing LDS academics to Palestinians, but instead making a comparison to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite the lethal violence, a department of geography in the U.S. can reasonably expect an Israeli professor to treat Palestinian students fairly, and reject the idea that the presence of an Israeli student represents an acute threat to Palestinian students, and expect everyone to review each other’s papers and applications fairly. If academia can deal with that level of tension, it should be able to co-exist with LDS colleagues and grad students. Blair, all the things you identify as essential human rights continue to be subject to legal and political debate about their definition and implementation in a changing society. Pluralism – the ability to accept that other people have reasonable opinions, even about things you feel strongly about – is the only way to peacefully co-exist and, more to the point, the only way you are going to protect the rights you care about. If you see these rights as beyond the limits of pluralism and beyond debate, you will fail to reach the people who might be convinced to help you protect those rights, although it might require some compromise.” Jun 9, 20:38
- on My Take on Masonry and the Temple: “Seeing nothing to rebut my thesis here. The question “what was Joseph Smith’s biggest revelation” is pretty easy to answer if you just look at the Brigham Young quote, he literally names it. You are a combo of bad faith and brain-outsourcing. Do better.” Jun 9, 20:35
- on My Take on Masonry and the Temple: “Joseph’s single biggest revelation? What would that be, pray tell? Surely not copying or borrowing from the inspired Masonic tropes?” Jun 9, 19:24
- on Anti-Latter-day Saint Stigma in Academia: “In theory I get the young earth creationist/geology tension, but that sort of raises the question as to what the appropriate analogue is for Latter-day Saints, and I think the flat-earther/geography is to Mormon religious studies comparison is a bit strained. There’s an extremely small handful of empirical questions where there might be some perceived tension with LDS beliefs. For example, if you are very specifically going into the population genetics of the Americas then I get that; it might be worth getting the message across that you’re not trying to overthrow the consensus for religious reasons (although I’d still be skittish about the precedent of demanding such a disclaimer, ideas should live and die in the free exchange of ideas, not by choking off credential channels for your perceived enemies). But again those are a very small handful of issues, and I’d push back against trying to expand that to ideological tests that, frankly, most of the non-wealthy world would fail. Also, as an aside somebody has directed me to an actual survey of this. Small, non-probabilistic sample with all the usual caveats of course, but among philosophers at least it looks like we’re around NRA level (and we get beaten by communists, speaking of answering for destructive ideologies): https://dailynous.com/2018/04/10/philosophers-less-willing-hire/” Jun 9, 16:39
- on My Take on Masonry and the Temple: “That smacks of LLM pseudo-reading, especially the part about “relying heavily on the Kinderhook plates” when he mentions them only as an illustration. Also, it’s kind of rich to argue that Brigham Young wasn’t talking about the nature of Joseph Smith’s revelation when he specifically uses Joseph’s single biggest revelation as an example. I wouldn’t expect a literate human to make these kind of mistakes, or even a well-promoted LLM. Did you just copy-paste the OP into ChatGPT and ask it to come up with a critique for you?” Jun 9, 14:20
- on Anti-Latter-day Saint Stigma in Academia: “//Should every Catholic politician be required to address the idea that they aren’t a closet political papist? …should we expect [a Palestinian] to clearly address their views on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Holocaust denialism in their cover letter?// Two responses, in reverse order: Not in the cover letter, and in most cases it is not relevant. If I’m hiring for a position in math, the sciences, art, etc. it’s not relevant. If I’m hiring in Middle Eastern studies or religious studies, it may be relevant; but the criteria would be the same for everyone–is this person critical yet charitable in their research and teaching? And this would be demonstrated in their application materials (FWIW, this is the kind of thing that diversity statements, which are now banned at most institutions, were doing). Would Palestinians have a higher bar to clear? Not necessarily. Being Palestinian is different from being LDS in that one chooses to maintain affiliation with an institution that makes numerous exclusive truth claims that are not empirically verifiable (i.e., are beliefs) in the latter case. If a Palestinian identified as a member of Hamas, you better bet that the bar would be higher because that is a voluntary association, and membership in said association complicates one’s ability in the case under discussion. LDS are not equivalent with Hamas, but hey, I’m not the one that came up with this analogy. As for Catholic politicians, we’re talking about academia here, not politics, but there is enough of an overlap to say that identifying as Catholic in 2025 could have a wide variety of meanings, of which being a papist is probably in the minority. Perhaps this is because of the paths carved out by folks such as Kennedy, but there are far fewer paths for LDSs in 2025. Publicly saying that one believes the prophet is wrong on important issue x is not really tolerated in LDS communities. So I did think it was a relevant question for Romney in 2012, and I do think it or related questions are relevant in a narrow subset of academic contexts. We don’t have to only talk about papists or iron-roders here; we can talk about Christians or any religious group that teaches that their god is the only true god. The question to ask is what precedents do we have for these people doing good scholarship/teaching in fields where their worldviews might conflict with their research and teaching? There are many people that identify as Christian that have demonstrated their ability to do good work in these fields, but there are some who fail. Some, but certainly not all, perceived anti-Christian sentiment comes from these failures. In these cases, it is not anti-Christian discrimination, but the rightful intolerance for exclusive beliefs that do not allow for critical inquiry. I wouldn’t want most flat-Earther becoming geography professors, but I wouldn’t care if they taught French. I wouldn’t want most LDSs positioning themselves as experts in religion, but I wouldn’t care if they were finance professors or bishops.” Jun 9, 13:57
- on Anti-Latter-day Saint Stigma in Academia: “ I have nothing much add, since adding more anecdotes doesn’t seem helpful (but I did experience many incidents of outright bias, but nothing big and out in the open. mostly just offhand comments here and there), but I will add one thing that happened a few times in graduate school and in the academic workforce (so much so, it might as well have been a leitmotif). Upon finding out I was LDS, several times it was followed up by “but you’re not one of *those* kinds of Mormons, right?” I usually responded I had no idea what “*those* Mormons” even meant, and changed the subject. But, it seems to me the experience you have in academia really depends on whether you are one of *those* Mormons or not.” Jun 9, 13:50
- on Anti-Latter-day Saint Stigma in Academia: “///Blair, the LDS grad students you describe don’t match my experience of the several hundred I met during grad school,/// I don’t really trust your radar on this. That being said, in GRAD SCHOOL in particular, especially in the humanities, from my anecdotal experience, Mormon students are far more likely to face opprobrium from fellow members than from nons. ///I think your characterization of the Church’s attitude towards LGBTQ people is untrue/// The church’s theology is thoroughly queerphobic. One hundred percent, full stop. I would venture to say Mormonism has a quintessentially queerphobic theology more so than most other religions. Here it is: There are absolutely no queer people living as queer people in the Celestial eternities. Exaltation as the church understands it today is eternal heterosexual reproduction. I think there are alternate theologies the Restoration could put forth that aren’t queerphobic at all. But I don’t think that will happen. ///more importantly, the ethic of suspicion you recommend seems entirely incompatible with the university as a pluralistic environment./// When it comes to essential human rights, like the ability to marry, the legality of sexual intimacies, the right to use the correct bathroom, a commitment to pluralism clearly has limits. Since the church’s objections to LGBTQ equal access are primarily matters of faith and not rooted in actual data about possible harms (despite pathetic attempts to make secular arguments for the church’s stance), I favor equality for the people most directly impacted: queer people. Also, I’m not saying there ought to be litmus tests which screen out people with different views about LGBTQ matters especially in areas where it’s less immediately relevant to the field of study. I’m saying it’s completely rational to treat such people with caution. And this seems enormously hypocritical: “it seems ridiculous to suggest that gay academics are justified in treating students or peers from BYU as inherently suspect.” BYU and the church itself openly and proudly treats gay academics as inherently suspect.” Jun 9, 12:44
- on Anti-Latter-day Saint Stigma in Academia: “MDKI: That’s fair enough, but as Jonathan has alluded to, if in practice we break the assumption of good faith because of group membership that has much larger implications than just for Latter-day Saints. The classic case of course being Kennedy having to go out of his way to establish that he wasn’t taking orders from Rome. Should every Catholic politician be required to address the idea that they aren’t a closet political papist? And sure, empirically speaking a Palestinian professor, to borrow from Jonathan’s example, is probably more likely to hold antisemitic views than an Israeli professor, but should we expect them to clearly address their views on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Holocaust denialism in their cover letter? Of course different religious views empirically correlate with different values, but this can get messy fast, especially if our Overton Window is limited to the relatively niche, left-most quartile of the developed-world. It’s a big world.” Jun 9, 12:38
