Help Yourself: How the Helping Professions Hurt Dissenters

04/11/2008

Authors: Ashley Thorne

When it comes to schools of social work, open inquiry is under severe pressure, and the actual limits of inquiry have shrunk so far as to exclude many legitimate ideas. But social work may not be an isolated case.

In “The ‘I-Revel-in-My-Biases’ School of Social Work,” we saw how Rhode Island College made life a nightmare for William Felkner because of his political views. And the NAS report, The Scandal of Social Work Education, gave additional accounts of bias against students. Schools of social work are in the midst of an epidemic of illiberal learning, in which policies are issued that declare, “We believe this, and so must you.” Their faculty members and staff don’t know how to handle those who challenge their PC agenda other than to silence dissident voices. And they remain curiously blind to the irony that that while they insist on the importance of “diversity,” they do their best to enforce homogeneity. 

When it comes to schools of social work, open inquiry is under severe pressure, and the actual limits of inquiry have shrunk so far as to exclude many legitimate ideas.  But social work may not be an isolated case.  

The following account is based on information and statements provided by Reverend David Code. His evidence included emails, meeting minutes, and letters written both by himself and by the University.

Breaking Code

A 42-year-old father of two children, Reverend David Code enrolled at Pennsylvania State University in 2006 in the counseling psychology Ph.D. program, which is accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA). Rev. Code holds some unorthodox views for an Episcopal minister – chief among them his belief that primate research and modern neuroscience are the basis for family values. He has a website ministry that includes an audio clip coaching, “How to Stay Married and Raise Great Kids.” Rev. Code sought his doctorate as a means to extend his ministry to counsel non-religious clients.

But he soon found out that this was exactly what Penn State wanted to prevent.
 
While studying at Penn State, Code was heaped with opposition. Namely, the faculty ordered Rev. Code to take down his website, claiming it was an ethical violation; they accused him of homophobia; and they placed him on academic probation, despite his high grades. Code believes that since he is a Christian minister, the University's judgment was based on stereotype rather than on legitimate causes.

In October of Code's first semester, one of his professors, Dr. Susan Woodhouse, alleged that Code’s website ministry was practicing psychology without a license. She asked that he remove it from the internet. Code complied, although under Pennsylvania law members of the clergy are permitted to do “work of a psychological nature consistent with the training and the code of ethics of their respective professions.”

Another professor distorted comments Code made about pro-gay Christians, and the misconstruction produced the accusation of homophobia. Code, in fact, is not homophobic; he supports gay rights and has volunteered extensively with AIDS patients. The faculty’s readiness to blame here looks like a stereotype on Code as an evangelical minister.
 
Finally, in December 2006, the faculty placed Code on academic probation, the last stop before expulsion, and gave him an extra year of remediation. Up to that point, Code had straight A’s in his courses. Penn State later said that “his grades in these courses were irrelevant to the decision to place him on academic probation which was based on his inadequate performance in practicum.”

Code appealed the decision in a process that was, as he wrote in his formal complaint, “so time-consuming and contentious that I could not sustain my studies.” He asked for a leave of absence, but the university said it would take away Code’s family’s campus housing, their health insurance, and his stipend. In the appeal hearing, which took place April 16, 2007, the faculty’s decision for Code’s probation was upheld.  Rev. Code had both appealed the punishment through University procedures, and filed formal complaints with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. The University responded to his formal complaint, saying that it “denies that it discriminated against Rev. Code on any basis, including religious harassment or retaliation.”

On May 7, 2007, the counseling psychology faculty held their annual meeting to discuss first-year students in the program. They voted 5-0 to expel Reverend Code.

Code wrote in his complaint that he believes his expulsion and the faculty’s preceding actions were taken against him in discrimination based on his religion. He wrote, “If I were an atheist who didn’t espouse family values, I am confident that I would still be a student in good standing at Penn State’s Counseling Psychology program.”

As indicated above, we report this version of events largely as Code presented it to us. We have also read Pennsylvania State's response (and Code's response to the response) to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission complaint served on Penn State in January. Clearly Pennsylvania State University disputes his account, and it will be up to the Pennsylvania courts to decide who is telling the truth. We have not conducted our own investigation.  We do, however, find Code’s account sufficiently well documented to believe that it deserves a full and public hearing.
 
Keep the Saints from Marching In

Code’s story is not isolated. Jeffrey Ford, a Mormon, received similar treatment in the family and marriage therapy program at Purdue University Calumet. During his interview for admission, he was asked what one of his professors in an unguarded moment of candor called the “Mormon screening question” about his attitude toward homosexual clients. Despite Ford’s continual assurances, “I would treat them with dignity and respect, much like I would treat any other client,” when he entered classes, his professors warned that he should not be in the program, nor should he pursue his thesis topic of choice: same-sex parenting.

At Purdue’s freshman orientation in 2004, after Ford had been a student there for one year, the faculty explained that Purdue’s family and marriage therapy program endorsed the American Psychological Association’s position in favor of same-sex marriage. In one article in his seven-part series Of Mice and Mormons, Mike Adams wrote that during the orientation,

"The faculty also indicated that they would not write letters of recommendation for any student who did not approve of same-sex marriage' or same-sex parenting. The faculty further indicated that anyone who was found to be 'discriminatory' toward “LGBT” individuals had no place in the program. According to them, 'healers' could not take positions contrary to the political allies of the homosexual movement."

Ford’s time at Purdue was marked by continual discrimination against him for his faith-based beliefs about same-sex marriage. And though he did indeed treat homosexual clients with remarkable sensitivity and care, Ford’s professors repeatedly stigmatized him and undermined his work.

While in his final year at Purdue, Ford applied to doctoral programs at Kansas University and Brigham Young University, and asked Professors Wetchler and Trepper to write recommendations for him to these schools. His requests were timely and both professors indicated that they would write letters for Ford. Yet Professor Trepper submitted his recommendation late, and Professor Wetchler never sent a letter at all. As a result, both programs rejected Ford’s applications as incomplete.

Misguided Gardening

How open should open inquiry be?  Where are the limits to legitimate inquiry? 
These questions seem to form the backdrop to both the Code and Ford controversies.

Clearly universities are not obligated to teach theories that are largely discredited, even if a few diehards continue to espouse them.  Nor are universities obligated to welcome new theories that have so far gained no significant academic approval, though such theories may indeed come to prove valid over time.  Generally, ideas must pass some preliminary tests before they are welcomed into the curriculum or the university research agenda. 

That said, universities in the United States tend to pride themselves on their open-mindedness and principled commitment to considering all points of view that are grounded in serious thought and properly attentive to the available facts.  The “whole” or “aggregate” evoked in the word universitas isn’t a pledge to welcome every idea, no matter how disproven or nutty, but it does in principle embrace contending points of view.

That’s a hard principle to maintain.   Scholars, being human, face strong temptations to recruit as new faculty members people whose opinions agree with their own.   The advantages of having a cluster of like-minded colleagues can loom large in faculty appointments, and the advantages of building a department around intellectual disagreements can be overlooked.  Pluralism, being a frail sort of flower, needs constant attention. 

Unfortunately, there are some parts of the academy where pluralism no longer appears welcome at all and if something resembling that flower should appear, the hoe is hoisted and the Weed-B-Gon™ pumped vigorously. 

David Code and Jeff Ford’s stories tell of a trend, coinciding with that in social work education, in which university programs take a particular position for seemingly ideological reasons.  The positions in question are not compelled by the facts; they are inconsistent with intellectual freedom; and they violate the freedom of conscience of at least some students.  Inappropriate restrictions on what students are allowed to believe, express, or study are a powerful infringement of academic freedom.  Furthermore, that these programs are accredited by the APA resembles the story of the biased CSWE, the monopoly-holder in social work accreditation.

Penn State’s decision to dismiss David Code from its doctoral program has a certain quality of the revolution eating its own.  Code professes liberal views; advocates gay rights; and grounds his view of human nature in primate research.  He is a clergy member in a liberal denomination.  Yet his liberal bona fides could not protect him from an illiberal stereotype.  If his account is accurate, his teachers doubted that a Christian minister could be sufficiently enthusiastic about the APA’s positions on homosexuality to pass muster as a counseling psychologist.

The National Association of Scholars is a secular organization. We do not take positions on whether Code or Ford’s substantive views are accurate, and we rely in the case of Code on an admittedly incomplete record.  We do, however, believe that Code’s and Ford’s views fall within the zone of what should be seen as legitimate debate within psychology.  What they profess is consistent with what individuals can believe while upholding the principles of rational and disciplined intellectual inquiry.

At NAS, we stand for freedom in higher education. That freedom is under attack in academic programs for some of the so-called “helping professions,” which increasingly help themselves to the license to decide which opinions will be tolerated among their students.   

*Recommended Reading: Destructive Trends in Mental Health, by Rogers Wright and Richard Cummings.