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Belmont University Philosophy Department Says Its Hiring Practices Have Been Wrongly Characterized

Brian Leiter

I have received the following letter, regarding the earlier petition about the APA and discrimination against gay men and women:

I write to correct some serious misinformation that Charles Hermes’s post of February 12, 2009 contained about Belmont University.   I am Chair of Belmont University’s Department of Philosophy, I placed its most recent ad in JFP, and together with one of my colleagues, I interviewed 28 fine young scholars at the 2007 APA meeting in Baltimore.   I have no idea what the sexual preference of any of them is.  I’m quite sure that all those candidates, even though only one of them was hired, would readily testify that the interview was completely about philosophical scholarship and classroom excellence.  Charles’s post implies that Belmont is grouped with schools such as Wheaton that require prospective faculty to sign a statement of faith, dogma, or creed.  Belmont does not have any such requirement and never has.   Moreover, by quoting the Wheaton statement containing a comment disapproving of homosexuality, and then associating Belmont and other schools with it, Charles does all of the Leiter Report readers a disservice.  Belmont has no statement of this sort about homosexuality.  Consideration of sexual preference is not a part of the process of hiring philosophers (or other faculty) at Belmont University.  Based on my almost 25 years of service at Belmont as a faculty member, administrator, and chair of committees concerned with promotion, tenure, salary increases and the like, I’m quite sure that the university has never discharged a faculty member for his or her sexual preference, denied any promotion, tenure, or salary increase on such grounds, and even that this aspect of a faculty member’s life is never a target of interest for any university decision.  Belmont is concerned with the advancing scholarship of its faculty, and the highest quality of undergraduate education of its students, not with anyone’s sexual preference.  Belmont is in total compliance with the APA Nondiscrimination statement (as Charles quotes it), and  I happily affirmed this when I placed the ad in JFP.   

Ronnie Littlejohn, Chair

Ginger Osborn

Mark Anderson

UPDATE:  Professor Hermes comments below. 

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18 responses to “Belmont University Philosophy Department Says Its Hiring Practices Have Been Wrongly Characterized”

  1. AnonymousGradStudent

    The Belmont University Faculty Handbook is long, and I did not have the time to search all of it, but I did find this in Section 2, "the contents of [which] are made an express part of the contracts of employment between each faculty member and the university.":

    "In order to assure that faculty continue to function in support of the mission, vision and values of the institution, faculty are, as a condition of ongoing appointment, expected to show strength of character, as well as exemplary professional and moral conduct. They are expected to show a personal Christian commitment in both precept and example, evidenced in part by active involvement in a local church committed to the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord. While this commitment is not subject to annual review or evaluation, it should be understood by the faculty member that a personal alignment with the institutional mission is an important condition of ongoing employment."

    To the extent that one thinks that homosexual activity is inconsistent with Christianity, it would seem that Belmont University is still requiring its faculty to not engage in such activity (though, of course, that should probably also include any other extra-marital sexual activity, as I'm pretty sure that Christian morality dictates that only married men and women are permitted sexual intercourse). Perhaps Professor Littlejohn was not fully aware of these requirements set for the faculty, or perhaps I am misunderstanding something.

    If anyone wants to read the handbook for themselves and make an informed claim, it is here:

    http://www.belmont.edu/hr/pdf/fhb_2008.pdf

    Reply
  2. Alastair Norcross

    AnonymousGradStudent says:
    "To the extent that one thinks that homosexual activity is inconsistent with Christianity, it would seem that Belmont University is still requiring its faculty to not engage in such activity".
    Well, that's the crucial point, isn't it? I know nothing about Belmont University's interpretation of Christianity, but I do know plenty of Christians who think that homosexual activity is not inconsistent with Christianity. To the extent that I have views of what is consistent with Christianity (I was brought up in a country with no separation of church and state, and so I actually know what is in the Bible, and am consequently an atheist), I agree with them. Perhaps Belmont has a similarly enlightened view of what is consistent with Christianity. Perhaps it doesn't. Anyone care to speak to this point?

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    I've sent Facebook messages to the four presenters of “The Silencing of Homosexuality at Belmont University” (Mark Dusing, Jeremy Fetzer, Amanda Laubinger, & Andrew Spikes), who I believe are studying sociology at Belmont. (Abstract below.) I've asked them if any of them might have something to say about this discussion.

    Abstract:

    Our goal is to investigate the attitudes and feelings regarding homosexuality, specifically on Belmont's campus, in the following ways: the faculty/administration and Belmont's policy toward homosexuality, heterosexual students feelings toward interacting with homosexuals in various environments (classroom, dorm, etc.), and homosexual students feelings of acceptance and openness in their sexuality at Belmont. Further areas of investigation also include the Christian/Biblical views on homosexuality and its influence on the opinions of individual students, as well what this means for Belmont's supposed Christian ethic and environment.

    Our hope is for this investigation to challenge the hatred and fear perpetuated by Belmont's "Christian" policy condemning homosexuality, to spark awareness, and more importantly bring the topic of homosexuality at Belmont out in the open to be discussed further. Ideally, we would like Belmont in the future to be more open to sexual diversity with the possibility of campus sponsored support groups, advocacy groups, convocation events, etc.

    Reply
  4. Chris Swoyer

    Alastair is quite right. In fact I know a number of people who signed the petition who are Christians, and the institutional affiliations of a good many others suggest that they may well be. And I'm sure the are still others I don't know at secular universities who signed it who are.

    There are Christians and there are Christians. Unfortunately, where I live (Oklahoma) and (more depressingly still) where I teach (University of Oklahoma, Norman), there are a fair number of them who regard homosexuality as a sin (which I gather means they believe it to be morally wrong, though since sin isn't a concept I operate with much, I couldn't vouch for that). I suspect the demographics are a bit less bleak in other parts of the country

    Reply
  5. Andrew Homan

    Belmont University's non-discrimination statement is not the same as the APA's. Compare

    "The American Philosophical Association rejects as unethical all forms of discrimination based on race, color, religion, political convictions, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identification or age…"

    with

    "Belmont University does not illegally discriminate in employment on the basis of race, sex, color, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, or military service"

    You'll notice there are a couple categories left out by the Belmont statement. Even if Dr. Littlejohn's (unprovable) assertion that Belmont has no statement prohibiting homosexuality is correct, we can at least say that Belmont's non-discrimination policy does not protect the same set of people that the APA's non-discrimination policy protects, even if one ignores the religious toleration clause.

    Therefore, Belmont is not "in total compliance" with the APA.

    Reply
  6. dtlocke

    I'm fairly certain that there is no determinate answer to the question 'Is homosexuality consistent with Christianity?'

    Reply
  7. Charles Hermes

    Unlike many of the offenders of the APA’s anti-discrimination policy, Belmont University does not violate the letter of the APA’s policy. The following policy appears in their student handbook. No similar policy appears in their faculty handbook. Since Belmont University only requires that its students are not practicing homosexual behavior, should this be a concern of the APA?
    Their policy can be found at http://www.belmont.edu/studentaffairs/bruinguide/conduct_code/sexual_conduct.html

    Sexual Conduct
    Specific behaviors of sexual misconduct are those which occur on campus or at a university sponsored activity (on or off campus) and include, but are not limited to: sexual relations outside of marriage, sexual harassment, rape (date, acquaintance and stranger rape), other non-consensual sex offenses, homosexual behavior and possession or distribution of pornographic materials.

    Reply
  8. Charles Hermes

    A note has been added to the top of the petition stating that "Belmont University's policy only forbids students from engaging in homosexual activities." I have also been assured in conversation with faculty from Belmont that the policy is not enforced. Since it is an unenforced policy that has unfortunately remained in the student handbook by clerical oversight, I am certain that the faculty of Belmont will have little trouble getting the offensive language removed. I hope other offending universities will follow Belmont's good example in (1) not enforcing these policies and (2) removing the offensive language (I am certain the good people at Belmont who are now aware of their policy are already taking this step). We should all congratulate the faculty at Belmont for being offended by the language of their student handbook.

    Reply
  9. AnonymousGradStudent

    I realize that some Christians are certainly permissive with respect to homosexual activity. All one need do is disregard certain passages in the Bible as irrelevant, outdated, or morally inaccurate, which many Christians do. But I thought that extra-marital sex was pretty universally seen as forbidden by Christian doctrine with only a few marginal sects (I don't know the word for them, but I think they are sects) dissenting on this point, none of which I would imagine have much of an influence on the outlook of Belmont. And homosexual activity would almost always be a form of extra-marital sex, again a few sects excepted.

    Obviously, there is typically a double standard placed on homosexuals by the Christian community as they tend to be far more outspoken against homosexual activity than any other form of extra-marital sex, but I really don't see much wiggle room for Belmont on this point. The criteria for being a Christian are quite vague (to me, at least), but it would seem to me that, in order to be consistent with its own conception of Christianity, the administration of Belmont would have to agree that they are asking people to sign contracts agreeing that they will not engage in extra-marital sexual activity, which would, I imagine, include homosexual activity.

    In any case, if the policy is very much not enforced, I might still consider signing such a contract with the hope of challenging the policy later at the right time. Hence my anonymity.

    Reply
  10. Jon Cogburn

    AnonymousGradStudent's sentence "All one need do is disregard certain passages in the Bible as irrelevant, outdated, or morally inaccurate, which many Christians do" is in pretty clear violation of Gricean maxims (since "many" implicates that it is not the case that all Christians do this).

    Are there any Christians who think the absolute prohibitions against wearing different kinds of cloth, touching pig skin, and seeing a naked menstruating woman are anything but some combination of irrelevant, outdated, and morally inaccurate? Or that we should stone disobedient children and kill witches and adulterers? Certainly *all* of those bigoted Christians under consideration here regard many of the things commanded by various authors if Biblical books to be time-bound in a merely ceremonial or social manner and not transcendentally moral.

    Moreover, one of the major theological challenges that Saint Paul faced is just the issue of trying to balance the extent to which Jesus overturned and the extent to which he fulfilled the law. And, he never resolved this issue in a consistent manner.

    I'm sorry for harping on this again, but I'm sick of the pretense that those who actually have Christian love for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people (that is trying to love them as much as you love yourself, which involves being sympathetic as possible to what it would be like to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered) are somehow more out of line with the Bible than the bigots responsible for the policies under discussion.

    dtlocke's point about there being no determinant answer about what is consistent with Christianity is of course true if you identify "Christianity" with some fuzzy set of beliefs that is a function of what all the people who call themselves Christians believe. But if you take a consensus view of people who are actual experts (masters of the same kind of scientific method that works elsewhere) in the relevant historical and textual matters (The Jesus Institute actually had people vote in this manner) and who self-identify as Christian, then you'll find overwhelmingly that these people are not bigots towards gay people and that their Christianity overwhelmingly provides them impetus to oppose injustice such as discrimination. Jesus himself contrasted the spirit and letter of the law and said that it all comes down to honoring God (and of course (assuming God exists) many atheists do a much better job of this than many theists) and loving your neighbor as yourself. And the early Jesus communities from where the canonical and non-canonical gospels come involved Jews and non-Jews eating with one another in contradiction to the very law to which contemporary Christian bigots appeal.

    Reply
  11. Clayton Littlejohn

    AGS,

    Can you please help me understand this:
    "I thought that extra-marital sex was pretty universally seen as forbidden by Christian doctrine with only a few marginal sects (I don't know the word for them, but I think they are sects) dissenting on this point, none of which I would imagine have much of an influence on the outlook of Belmont. And homosexual activity would almost always be a form of extra-marital sex, again a few sects excepted."

    It seems pretty dumb for someone to say that homosexual sex is properly criticized on grounds of being extra-marital sex when arguably (er, obviously) the reasons that homosexuals cannot marry is that a less than perfectly just set of marriage laws prevent homosexuals from marrying. (The point came up in the other thread on the topic, but if someone said this sort of thing about members of an interracial couple in the 60's it would come across as either an imbecilic thing for a good person to say or a predictable thing for a bad person to say.) Working from the charitable assumption that this isn't what you're trying to say, what is it that you're trying to say here? Are you working with some fancy concept of marriage and notion of extra-marital sex on which only those who marry in some Christian church count as properly married? That's better but not better enough since on that view legally married Jews and Muslims cannot avoid having extra-marital sex. Are you working with some fancy concept of marriage and notion of extra-marital sex on which only those who marry in some church or other count as properly married? That's better but still not good enough since on that view my godless but happily married friends are somehow obliged not to have sex. Are you working with some fancy concept of marriage that basically just excludes homosexuals? We're back to square one. A little help? I'm just not seeing how that remark was the slightest bit helpful. On the reading I take to be the natural reading, it makes Christians look real bad.

    Reply
  12. Alastair Norcross

    It may be that "extra-marital"sex is forbidden by Christian doctrine, but then the crucial question becomes what is marriage? What we would recognize as marriage in the time of Christ was pretty much exclusively an economic arrangement decided by the parents of the "married" couple. Does this mean that Christian doctrine forbids all sex outside of such an arrangement? In which case, it forbids most sex that takes place within what we, in the West, call "marriage". This would be silly, of course, but that doesn't help us determine what counts as marriage from a Christian perspective. Why not count all committed sexual (and some non-sexual) relationships as marriage? That most states and religions don't officially sanction homosexual marriage doesn't entail that homosexuals in a committed relationship aren't really married, at least not in the sense that is relevant to determining what Christian doctrine forbids or allows.

    The best argument for the claim that Christian doctrine really allows homosexual sex employs the principle of charity. Christ is presumably the main determiner (the decider) of what Christian doctrine allows. Christ is also, presumably, good. Homosexual sex is clearly morally permissible. A good being, divine or otherwise, wouldn't prohibit clearly permissible behavior. Ergo…

    Reply
  13. AnonymousGradStudent

    Dr. Cogburn: I meant for the sentence you cited and the one before it to be very much connected. Perhaps it would have been clearer to say something like this: "All a Christian who wants to deem extra-marital sex not fundamentally immoral need do to maintain a consistent Christian position is regard the passages in the Bible which seem to forbid such practices as irrelevant, outdated, or morally inaccurate, which many Christians do." I realize there are *some* passages that *all* Christian deem as irrelevant, outdated, or morally inaccurate, but it seems clear (just look at the Catholics!) that the passages which imply that extra-marital sex is forbidden are not among these universally ignored passages. As for which definition of Christian is relevant, I think we can only consult the administration at Belmont, which, having been until only very recently run by the Tennessee Baptist Convention, I doubt takes the more progressive view. Though I could very easily be wrong on that; I'll admit I'm just guessing.

    Dr. Littlejohn: I don't know what definition of marriage is relevant. I am not a theist of any stripe, least of all a Christian. I am not certain how contemporary Christians think of marriage, but I'm pretty sure they consider extra-marital sex to be immoral. I do think an important aspect they use now is that the partnership must be intended to produce children (hence the concept of justified annulment due to inability to impregnate or be impregnated), which would allow for a great many sorts of marriage even outside one's own faith, but I'm not sure. I do not purport to be an expert on Christian beliefs. I'm simply making the claim that I think that Christians believe that extra-marital sex is immoral and they frequently advise against it. If it so happens that they are unfairly defining marriage, or being inconsistent in their actions, then so be it. I'm by no means an apologist.

    Dr. Norcross: If I were a Christian, I think I would agree with your understanding of what ought to be the Christian position. But if the question is "What is Bethel University expecting out of its faculty?", then I'm not sure that our understanding is the one that is relevant in deciding how discriminatory the contracts are.

    Reply
  14. Jon Cogburn

    Yes, only people who can reproduce with one another are allowed to get married and to have sex. That's the deep reason that permits discrimination against GLBT people.

    It also explains why heterosexual couples where one of them is infertile or where the two are genetically incompatible (this actually happens a lot at least with regard to having a second child) are refused the sacrament of marriage, and also why post-menopausal women are prohibited from having sex (and why sexually active post-menopausal women are not hired in any of the offending institutions).

    Wait a minute, no Christian church on Earth does the above. None of the offending institutions prohibit hiring sexually active infertile people.

    Jeez. As Joe Bob Briggs is fond of saying, "I shouldn't have to explain this."

    Reply
  15. Harry Brighouse

    AGS — For myself, I would take a different attitude to a Christian university that systematically enforced the position of discrimination against people who have engaged in non-marital sex, compared with one that just enforced that discrimination against homosexual sex but not other non-marital sex. I'm curious whether there is such a University. Just to be clear, the extent to which self-described conservative Christians live in sin, for example, is remarkably high, and their divorce rate is the same as that of the population as a whole. I'd be surprised (but not unimpressed) if Wheaton, for example, refuses to hire divorced faculty, and fires those of them that do divorce, and staggered if it polices the extent to which its faculty members commit adultery or other forms of non-marital sex.

    Reply
  16. John

    Harry Brighouse: Actually, as was noted in the comments to an earlier post, Wheaton did recently cut ties with a professor because of his divorce.

    Reply
  17. AnonymousGradStudent

    Dr. Cogburn: I don't think you're being entirely fair with me. I doubt that you've never heard anyone say anything like what I'm echoing, and I made it very clear that I was simply making a suggestion related to other things I've heard, not giving an authoritative answer. You can call such Christians wacky (in fact, I think Alan Keyes has said something like what I was recalling, so you'd probably be on the right track), but certainly such interpretations can be relevant in this context.

    My main motivation was that, as I cited, I thought that the Roman Catholic Church did not recognize a marriage where one of the parties was infertile, that this was grounds for annulment. However, after looking up a few things, I think what I was thinking of is that you can have an annulment declared if one of the parties was lying about their infertility (i.e., the marriage contract was reached under misinformation, thus it is null and void). That's probably the only systematic thing I had heard of, and so I, too, have never heard of a Christian church that denies a couple the sacrament of marriage on the grounds of infertility alone. I am clearly not an expert on the facts of Christian doctrine.

    But that's really the point, isn't it? If I am thinking about signing a contract with Belmont, it seems that it can be rather unclear to people without a sophisticated theological position what it means to "show a personal Christian commitment in both precept and example". So if the department wants to hire me, and I say "Oh, I don't know if I can sign this contract, because I don't want to violate an agreement, but I also want to have extra-marital sex", would the administration at Belmont add the provision that some extra-marital sex is not in violation of the contract? Would they be including homosexual sex in that provision? Or would they tell me that they will ask the department to go down to the next person on their list? That seems to be all that's really at stake here.

    Dr. Brighouse: You remind me of a very relevant point, namely that one can be a model Christian, and thus fulfill the contract, while occasionally sinning (Christians, after all, are not Kantians). At worst I would need to express regret for public acts that are distinctly non-Christian. One other thing that could be said in defense of Belmont: the condition does seem to be about setting an example, not necessarily about being a perfect Christian. The private life of a faculty member at Belmont is her own, but perhaps she is expected to conform only when she is representing the University. The distinction between the public and private life of a professor is, I'm sure, a large part of why none of these schools would police one's private life extensively. The condition would probably only get brought up after something very public or controversial happened.

    Reply
  18. Philosophy Grad Student

    To step away from the theoretical debate for a moment, last time I checked (i.e., last time I was living in Nashville), Belmont had an openly gay faculty member in the English department. The way the policy was explained to me, Belmont accepted his membership in the MCC, a gay-friendly denomination, as "sufficiently Christian," even if their views do run counter to the views of the group with which the school is officially affiliated. Now, as I understand it (and I may well be wrong about this), there is somewhat stricter scrutiny for Bible faculty.

    Reply

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