The University and Research

Most of us grew up being taught the tenets of the scientific method. One of those tenets - at least an implicit one - is that good research is simply good research. There are objective standards to what constitutes proper methods of inquiry and research that is properly conducted can and indeed must be free of bias. Good research presents the truth - not perhaps the whole truth, for research rarely even attempts to provide the final answer, but rather merely the next step - but at least a portion of the truth. But new methodologies in the social sciences and humanities have made us question the assumed neutrality of traditional research methods. Indeed, our readings for this class suggest that not only traditions of research design and methods are essentially non-neutral, are in fact fundamentally biased, but the entire academic structure within which the research apparatus is centered is biased.

This claim should not in fact surprise us, for universities, and academic research, do not exist in isolation. They are a part of - which is to say that they both reflect and create - the larger culture in which they are embedded. And so universities reflect a world view that was commonplace when the modern university system was founded and that remains common today, a world view that finds the experiences of white males to be the norm and the experiences, beliefs and expectations of all groups of "others" to be at best different and more likely deviant and dangerous.

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