Michigan Law Hates Teh Gay Professor

The BM has been reduced to near incoherency of profanity in response to Uncertain Chad’s take on a denial-of-tenure case at U. Michigan Law School. [Update 12/21/07: DeanDad has a good take on this] In short the denied professor of law is suing because he feels that some of the voting members of the department may have voted against granting him tenure because of teh gay:

For example, one professor is a member of a church that will not admit gay people unless they promise to “reform their ways,” according to court documents. Yet the professor, according to depositions and statements provided by Hammer’s lawyer, denied knowing his church’s views on gay people, even though they are identifiable from links on the church’s Web site, and the professor teaches Sunday school there. In another case, a professor’s opposition to same-sex marriage is cited. Another faculty member wrote of gay people as a “pariah group.”

In discovery, Hammer’s lawyers asked these and other professors questions about hot-button social issues (not only on gay rights, but abortion in some cases) to document what Hammer considers to be a pattern of people with conservative social values misrepresenting their own views. (In all of these cases, the professors have said that they voted against Hammer because they didn’t think his scholarship rose to the necessary level of excellence and not because Hammer is gay, and the university backs these professors.)

There’s some interesting legal mumblety here having to do with a UMich faculty policy which seems to provide protection against discrimination against teh gay whereas Michigan state law provides no such protection. So it has been wrangled about in the courts for a few years. Chad, of Uncertain Principles, for some reasons has reservations:

This makes me really uncomfortable. I don’t have any sympathy for the anti-gay views attributed to these professors (which may or may not be accurate– the IHE article doesn’t give enough detail to say whether they’ve been quote-mined unfairly, and I don’t have the time to research it myself), but I don’t like this approach, either.

What Hammer is doing here seems to be claiming that since these people have conservative social views, they are automatially incapable of making any objective decision about the scholarship of someone who happens to be gay. At least, not when that decision happens to be negative– presumably, he’d be happy to take “Yes” votes from these same people.

That creeps me out. For academic institutions to function the way they’re supposed to, there needs to be a sort of presumption of professionalism, a base assumption that people will make a good-faith effort to put aside personal biases and make decisions on as objective a basis as possible. What Hammer is arguing is precisely the opposite– he’s arguing for a presumption of bias, that people will not be able to put aside whatever political beliefs they have when it comes time to make decisions.

In case one might think he didn’t consider all the ramifications, there’s additional in the comments:

that’s really the part that I object to– the presumption that because they’re members of conservative churches or have taken conservative political positions in the past, they must automatically be lying when they say they considered his scholarship objectively.

But I’m just not comfortable with the idea of this sort of fishing expedition to see why people “really” voted the way they did. At some point, you need to take people at their word that they’re acting like civilized human beings, or we sink into a Hobbesian state of nature.

Okay, here’s the newsflash for Chad. People are biased. Prior biased acts or statements are a good indicator of current belief. Bias in belief causes biased actions. This is why we have rules to counteract bias. In jury selection, peer review of papers and grants, hiring decisions and yes, tenure and promotions. Married to the candidate or otherwise related? You are presumed biased in most cases I can think of. Statements to the effect of “I hate that guy and always will”? Ditto. Getting paid off by the company you are supposed to be hiring to provide service to your company? Clear. Does anyone really debate this?

What Chad seems to be objecting to is the presumption that these particular individuals are biased in this particular evaluation. But this is the whole point of conflict rules. We are not really all that interested in deciding if this particular individual is actually biased in this particular decision. We recognize that in general, on average this will be the case and take steps accordingly to minimize the potential for bias.

There is a second point here which has to do with, I suppose, what the “reasonable person” of legal phraseology would conclude was sufficient evidence of bias. Chad clearly feels that teaching Sunday School at a church that openly professes anti-gay beliefs and teachings is not reasonable evidence that a person is biased against gays. Ditto calling gays a “pariah group”. On this I call bullshit.

BM tried to make an analogy to racial bigotry here in the comments and then started to lose it a bit. Still, it is a decent point. Take your favorite suspect class, whether it be racial minority, women, sexual orientation, national origin, political spectrum and imagine a few faculty who are known to hold “anti” positions. Not just suspected of the odd off-color joke but real, ready-for-discovery evidence. And really. Imagine that said bigot can just set this aside and make an uncontaminated judgment on a tenure decision? Please.