Mission

To improve the quality of research and education in universities by increasing open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.

Vision

We aspire to create college classrooms and campuses that welcome diverse people with diverse viewpoints and that equip learners with the habits of heart and mind to engage that diversity in open inquiry and constructive disagreement.

We see an academy eager to welcome professors, students, and speakers who approach problems and questions from different points of view, explicitly valuing the role such diversity plays in advancing the pursuit of knowledge, discovery, growth, innovation, and the exposure of falsehoods.

Who we are

Heterodox Academy (HxA) is a nonpartisan nonprofit that works to improve the quality of research and education by promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in institutions of higher learning. Our community is made up of more than 5,000 professors, educators, administrators, and students who come from a range of institutions — from large research universities to community colleges. They represent nearly every discipline and are distributed throughout 49 states and across the globe.

All our members have embraced the following statement:

“I support open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in research and education.”

What we do

In order to address society’s most intractable problems, learners must weave together the best ideas from a range of perspectives. Yet, colleges — the intended training ground for the sort of creative and integrative thinking such problem-solving requires — have become increasingly characterized by orthodoxy in what types of questions can be asked and what sort of comments can be shared in the classroom and around campus. Professors and students alike describe the toll self-censoring and threat of social censure have taken on learning, discovery, and growth. For the sake of higher ed and all the enterprises of life that await students after graduation, now is the time to dig in and fix what’s broken.

Heterodox Academy has the expertise, tools, and profile necessary to make change happen. We increase public awareness to elevate the importance of these issues on campus; develop tools that professors, administrators, and others can deploy to assess and then improve their campus and disciplinary cultures; publicly recognize model institutions; and cultivate communities of practice among teachers, researchers, and administrators.

History

Heterodox Academy was founded in 2015 by Jonathan Haidt, Chris Martin, and Nicholas Rosenkranz, in reaction to their observations about the negative impact a lack of ideological diversity has had on the quality of research within their disciplines. What began as a website and a blog in September of 2015 — a venue for social researchers to talk about their work and the challenges facing their disciplines and institutions — soon grew into an international network of peers dedicated to advancing  the values of constructive disagreement and viewpoint diversity as cornerstones of academic and intellectual life.

Explore our full history below: