Tuesday, January 25, 2011

There's Discrimination, and Then there's Discrimination

Interesting article.  I don't agree with all of it, but it makes an interesting argument that should be a topic of open discussion.

 

 

Posted via email from reannon's posterous

2 comments:

Anna O'Connell said...

This hit BoingBoing as well. My opinion is that private belief reflected only in private behavior, like sexual orientation or marital status, should not be a factor in hiring and promotion decisions for anyone at any time, except perhaps clergy who do not follow the teachings of their faith in their private life.

However, I do actually inhabit the real world, where people are frequently promoted or rejected for exactly these reasons, and where we have laws that prohibit many kinds of discrimination, including discrimination based on non-standard religious belief or the absence of religious belief.

To be consistent, if we expect Brigham Young University to hire a Hindu or Russian Orthodox engineering professor if he or she is the best qualified, then a completely secular university should hire this clearly-professionally-qualified creationist as an astronomy prof. Though neither of these two should be discussing their personal religious beliefs in any detail in their respective classrooms.

Mary Amanda Axford said...

Oh, good job... this is the kind of comment I was hoping for.

I agree with you on one level, but start arguing with myself on the topic. It seems wrong that a scientist should hold beliefs that go against all scientific evidence... yet if he doesn't push those beliefs in the classroom... on the other hand, if