Ytdyklly

There seem to be professors who hold beliefs such as:

• Women students pose a special risk to male supervisors


• Certain ethnic groups are smarter/lazier/harder-working than others


• Older students are worse investments than younger students


• Students with disabilities are less capable/more trouble than nondisabled students

No student should be saddled with negative prejudices from their supervisor. But how can this be prevented?

The big problem is that bigots are often hard to identify early on. They think of themselves as just being honest and realistic. Asking their current students might not help, because if they don't belong to a marginalized group, they will often only notice other characteristics, such as that the supervisor is nice and explains things well. Unfortunately, it's possible to be a very nice guy and also a horrible bigot.

There's also a corrosive secondary bigotry where the bigot insists that they themselves aren't bigots, but other people are, so good opportunities would be wasted on the marginalized student.

How can a prospective student identify these people and avoid them?

I will sound snarky with this answer, but have you tried talking to them?

Your question may ask well be asked as "How do I determine the values of another human being before I meet them?" And I would say that is not something you can truly learn and understand until you talk with them.

You may respond with, 'What if they lie?' And that's a very valid point. But I would tell you that all of human social interaction is this very problem, and that you will not gain the wisdom of how to interact with humans without interacting with them!

I recently heard that a good question to ask is “What do you think that others [perhaps other scientists] think about ...” The idea is that most bigots think their bigotry is pretty normal and their beliefs are widely held in secret. So they might tell you that “other people” think X and you can update your beliefs accordingly, unless they follow this up with a convincing argument about why they think most people are wrong. This method is certainly not conclusive, but it can provide a way to start a conversation or a give a bit of extra evidence one way or the other.

I think that in all but the most blatant cases it is very hard to do. But there are a few suggestions that might get you started.

First, note that some of the offenders don't leave tracks that can be followed. A person could, for example, be anti-Semitic and not advertise it, but just find subtle ways to disadvantage Jewish students. There is probably much more of that sort of under the radar sort of bigotry than the more open kind in academia, since it is generally sanctioned when found out.

But, students know, or suspect, at least, that they aren't being treated fairly, even if they have no effective way to complain about it or correct it. So, talking to other students in an informal setting is a good way to learn the scuttlebutt. "What do you think about Prof Buffy? Is he just goofy or a real problem?" If you have a specific concern talk to students who might share that concern.

But, there may also be some record of past misbehavior, either official or otherwise. Disciplinary action may be in the public record (or not). Even a web site like RateMyProfessor is a source of (not well vetted) information that might make you think again about an individual.

It is very difficult, of course, to expel bigots from the profession. Often the actions don't rise to the level that permits a tenured person to be fired. While the difficulty of forcing expulsion is intended, it has some bad side effects. The blatant cases, such as Robert Moore and William Shockley are well known and instructive. Brilliant in their fields, castigated for their social views, but never expelled from their professions. These are the easy cases, since they are very public. But most bigotry thrives in darkness.

How can a prospective student identify these people and avoid them?

You are playing a very dangerous game here. Are you going to make your little ideological purity test public? If yes, won't the so-called bigots quickly learn how to game it and intentionally avoid detection (as they apparently are doing now according to the premise of your question)? But I am actually more concerned about the opposite option, that you will apply a secret purity test and brand people as bigots or not according to your own private criteria. This can lead to two sorts of problems:

• 
  

  False negatives. Some people (maybe the more clever or sophisticated among the bigots) will still figure out what your game is and manage to avoid being "caught". You're back to where you are now, except with more of an (incorrect) expectation that you know who's a bigot and who's not. Not so good.

  
  
  

  ... and then there's the MUCH MUCH worse:

  
  



• False positives: your private test (that I assume you intend to share with a select group of people who will be the "users" of the test's results) will invariably "flag" some people as bigots who are just... normal people.^* Of course, those people will not know that they have been flagged or why, and will have no means to defend themselves. You will damage their careers, probably their reputations, and at the end of the day, what will you achieve? You have denied someone who is likely a perfectly good advisor and mentor to the students who need one, who are exactly the people you are trying to benefit.

^{* I personally know two well-respected male academics who were recently accused of sexist behavior by women at their universities, leading to both men suffering a great amount of anxiety and fear of career damage before having their name cleared after pointless (and very stupidly handled) investigations by their university administrations. I have heard firsthand descriptions of both incidents (which occurred independently to two people who don't even know each other) and am 99% confident that they were blown completely out of proportion. So if you think these sorts of mistakes don't happen, think again.}

To summarize: the idea that you can somehow figure out a way to look deep into people's hearts and decide if they are "good" or "bad" according to some ideological value system is appealing in its simplicity. But we've been there before. For your own and others' sake, my suggestion is: don't.