Do gay and lesbian professors face discrimination from students? A new study -- just published in The Journal of Applied Social Psychology -- suggests that they do, with regard to perceptions of political bias.
The study notes the difficulty of judging the legitimacy of professors' claims that students don't treat them the same as they do straight professors.
For the study, researchers presented an ethnically diverse group of 545 undergraduates at the University of Houston-Downtown with a course syllabus for a class called "Psychology of Human Sexuality." The only difference in the syllabus presented to different students was that one version featured a professor whose brief autobiographical statement indicated being gay, and the other version featured an autobiographical statement identifying the professor as straight.
The students were then asked to evaluate the professors (based only on the syllabus review) on various factors, one of which was political bias. On average, the students found the syllabus to suggest a political agenda when the instructor was gay, but no agenda when the instructor was straight.
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Complete article at USA Today : http://usat.ly/lDGQH0
