It’s hard to untangle exactly what the objections are to a course on “Application of Biblical Insight into the Management of Business/Organization.” Or perhaps not.
If the issue is quality, then an ordinary faculty course-vetting process should take care of that. Such a process is intended to make certain that all courses a department or institution offer conform to professional standards of rigor.
If the issue is advocacy, I agree that a “Sunday School” class has no place in a university. But then neither does any other course that substitutes advocacy for inquiry. Are we certain that the Iowa State University curriculum contains no other classes that exhort to a certain moralistic point of view or encourage a kind of activism? I’m not. Are any the professors who objected to this course similarly interested in protecting the integrity of the academic vocation from similar threats in other quarters? I doubt it.
Opponents of the course constantly cite the First Amendment. But merely permitting a course to be offered as an elective hardly amounts to “endorsement,” a problematical test of constitutionality in any event. The university permits inquiry into a variety of points of view without thereby “endorsing” any of them. No reasonable person thinks that because an elective is offered a department or university is thereby promoting that point of view at the expense of or to the exclusion of others.
Perhaps the objectors haven’t examined the finer points of First Amendment jurisprudence or theory. But they should before they invoke it.
UPDATE: Here is the professor’s explanation of the course, which strikes me as unobjectionable, indeed as perfectly within the ambit of a college class.
January 18th, 2012 | 10:38 am
Joe,
Great piece. As you know, “Women’s Studies”, “African-American Studies,” and many sociology programs are simply advocacy programs, not serious scholarly endeavors. Beyond generating activism and tapping into how it “feels” to be oppressed, there’s no there there.
January 18th, 2012 | 11:52 am
I agree that opposing the course on the grounds of 1st ammendment is silly. On the other side…”Religious inquiry?” That sounds like an oxymoron…
January 18th, 2012 | 12:32 pm
Just from the title, the course sounds to me like a lot of fluff….like those books with titles like “Management Secrets From Jesus/Ceasar/Attila the Hun/Genghis Kahn/Cleopatra/Yoda”. Going deeper the course could end up being just denominational advocacy….but I think a college could actually do such a course that is secular, interesting and worthwhile. It would have to approach it more philosophically, though, and would have to address the stance of those who would say something along the lines “the Bible isn’t true to begin with so trying to apply it to business is about as sensible as apply principles of the Star Wars movies to business”.
January 18th, 2012 | 12:37 pm
From the link:
”
Stover, who declined to comment for this story, wrote in his course description that the one-credit independent study would have shown how Biblical concepts can be applied in the business world. When challenged by other professors, he maintained that the pass-fail course, which was to use How to Run Your Business by THE BOOK: A Biblical Blueprint to Bless Your Business by Christian leadership speaker Dave Anderson as its sole textbook, was academically relevant.”
Sunday School. I would have objected if I was an Iowa taxpayer. Should have offered a more rigorous course.
January 18th, 2012 | 1:14 pm
Joe,
Yea I concur. After reading the story here and posting my comment, I went to read the actual article. It sounds like the professor has some pretty serious academic credentials:
OK so the primary text used for this course is written by a “leadership guru”? That reminds me of Donald Trump declaring that The Apprentice was being used in business schools. Hmphf.
Kind of a shame because it sounds like this could be turned into a very serious, very interesting course. He could explore the history of how Biblical injunctions were applied to business (usury laws and injunctions, for example), the legal issues with trying to run a business on Biblical principles (i.e. discrimination in hiring/firing/promoting), the dynamics of how a ‘Biblical business’ interacts in a world of secular as well as other types of businesses (for example, businesses trying to follow Jewish or Islamic laws). Perhaps he will go back to the drawing board and actually produce something along these lines, if he did it could be a very valuable contribution to the field that would appeal to both Christians and non-Christians.
Instead this sounds like a bunch of fluff thrown together in a hurry……add that to the fact that the course is an ‘independent study’ and I wonder exactly how does compensation work for professors at this university? Do they get paid extra for kids taking ‘independent studies’ under them? If so it sounds like this is less of a course than an exercise in cow milking. Kids pay $1,000 for a one credit course, you get $200 for giving them what is basically a BS book to breeze thru and you ‘read’ their 5 page paper they write for the credit.
January 18th, 2012 | 1:19 pm
BTW, Publius, I wouldn’t be so impresssed with a defense of the course whose premise is that “other people have managed to con a university into adding courses of equal or greater stupidity to the roster”. One would hope that a defense aspired to something better than “it’s not the worse thing ever done”.
I think the First Amendment issues are actually slight here. Since the course seems to have no actual substance to begin with, it’s reasonable for people to suspect it’s little more than a pretext for religious advocacy. That may not have been the case, it could have just as easily been vapid.
January 18th, 2012 | 1:47 pm
Boonton,
No defense offered. I was simply saying all advocacy courses should be eliminated on academic grounds.
January 18th, 2012 | 2:03 pm
None taken and I hope none offered. I agree a course that is nothing but advocacy should be eliminated. I don’t think that courses should never be taught by professors that are advocates. An advocate is fine, provided he or she is open and fair to students who use that to create credible counter arguments. Some of my most productive classes were with teachers I disagreed with intensely.
January 18th, 2012 | 3:16 pm
I checked out Iowa Stayes curriculum. This school seems remakably short on “advocacy courses” and long on military classes for ROTC and “practical” subects for immediate professional use.
Iowa State also has a religous studies major that requires courses in ethics, so they already appear aware that the First Amendment does not prevent study of religion or the practical application of ethics to business.
January 19th, 2012 | 12:27 am
The problem is one of phrasing. Humanism likes to phrase itself as “the truth”, and everything that deviates from it is “religion”. And no religion is allowed. Only humanist beliefs, because they’re only “religious” when they want the tax break (at which point the same beliefs magically become Unitarian Universalism – a religion).
There is no way to solve the problem without challenging this framing. The correct framing is to recognize the zero-sum nature of the problem. There is only one correct belief system, and nobody can prove or disprove this belief system – the humanists could, IF they were allowed to define the assumptions, but then again, any religion could, IF that religion were allowed to define the assumptions.
Until we learn how to distinguish between what is genuinely objective (fact) vs. what is subjective (belief) – and thus rightfully lump most humanist belief into the same category as religious thought, instead of allowing it to stand as if it were “objective” and “fact” – we are going to have a government that frames humanist belief as the government-enforced norm, and all other beliefs treated as second-best or banned altogether.
January 19th, 2012 | 10:55 am
UPDATE: Here is the professor’s explanation of the course, which strikes me as unobjectionable, indeed as perfectly within the ambit of a college class.
He basically says half of the only book he wanted to put on the assigned reading is basically fluff and the actual chapters he thinks worth teaching from this ‘popular book’ are essentially about non-religious issues like ‘time management’.
OK granted it’s only a one credit course but this IMO makes the leaping to this guys defense even more silly. A course that seriously examined the relationship of business and religion, even one that focused on the Christian religions specifically would be perfectly fine and would appear to be in line with other courses the college already offers. There is absolutely no reason why a course focused on a rather non-religious topic like ‘time management’ should be given to students in the form of a sectarian Sunday school class. At this point I’d be wondering just what the relationship is between this professor and this book. Is the author his brother-in-law or something?
This might be excuseable if the professor was a below average one but clearly he is not. The college has every right and a duty to demand that he actually work up to his level and produce actual value for his students, who last time I checked are actually paying serious money for this. I think this guy can do better than charge these kids $1000+ to learn ‘business management’ from a $20 book by a used car saleman turned ‘motivational speaker’ who likes wearing black-tshirts with a pseudo-batman logo on them and charging the gullible hundreds to thousands of dollars for his “power classes”.
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