One of the best developments of the year in higher education is the movement to increase the range of intellectual diversity in disciplines that have become dreary lands of orthodoxy. The site Heterodox Academy has been crucial in that regard.

In today’s Pope Center Clarion Call, a sociology professor dares to point out that his field is also one where more intellectual diversity is needed. Professor James Wright of the University of Central Florida laments that “right-wing” sociological thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and E.A. Ross are almost never read any more because they were critics of state power. Their ideas, Wright maintains, “run very much against the political grain of most modern sociologists and so they have been effectively expunged from the classical canon. Meanwhile, Karl Marx continues to be revered as an essential social thinker.”

One of the self-induced blind spots in sociology, according to Wright, is the dogma that the victim can never be blamed. No one in a group holding “victimhood status” can ever be held accountable for his condition. That dogma shuts off a lot of questions and possible answers.

Wright recounts some personal experiences. He was the editor of a scholarly journal, Social Science Research, for many years. Back in 2010, the journal published a piece by a professor arguing that Christian Fundamentalists are relatively stupid. That paper elicited no comment or protest because Christian Fundamentalists are not “a legitimate identity grouping” according to bien pensant sociologists. On the other hand, a paper published shortly after that one, the study by Mark Regnerus finding that children raised by same-sex couples are at a disadvantage later in life, led to a vast protest because it challenged a consensus view among sociologists.

Also interesting is Wright’s decision to assign a book arguing that “systematically dismantled the entire violence against women narrative.” The result? “My feminist colleagues were aghast — they were unsure that students should even be allowed to read this heresy, much less be required to do so.”

Serious scholars should always avoid groupthink and oppose any and all “don’t go there” orthodoxies. Alas, quite a few fields in the humanities and social sciences have fallen into that trap. It’s good to have scholars like Jim Wright speaking out.