My academic expertise is lipid metabolism. I am a Fellow of the American Heart Association, the Chair of the Integrative and Biomedical Physiology graduate program, and a member of the Social Sciences Research Institute at Penn State. I am also a conservative and a Christian who loves academia. Not marginally conservative or kinda Christian... very much so. So, I have a lifelong experience of advocating the viewpoint of a decidedly minority position in our community.
I love the viewpoints I encounter in Heterodox Academy - that alone is intriguing - but the viewpoint of the advocate also matters. It matters when colleagues on 'opposing' sides stand up and defend our common values. Thanks in large part to heterodox oriented colleagues, I am encouraged and helped when colleagues defend conservative speech on campus, especially when doing so opposes their natural interests. I find they are able to speak to their allies in a manner I cannot, because they are speaking against their presumed interests. This adds credibility in an age where agendas matter.
Unfortunately, the opposite seldom occurs. Since the conservative and Christian viewpoints are practically banished in academia, there are few voices to provide such benefits:
a) There is no one to explain to Florida legislators why, from a conservative viewpoint, tenure matters. There is no one to defend the speech rights of anti-war protestors from a conservative viewpoint with conservative credibility. And campus secularists are left to defend their own self interests in obviously self-serving ways that only further undermines trust.
b) There is also no one to explain to Christians from a Christian perspective why they should not abandon the academy .
c) Finally, academics are blind to their own religious conduct and cults, and hence they lack insights into how and why they contribute to division and distrust.
I can talk about these themes broadly, but especially in the form of:
1) An insider's take on the deteriorating trust in science among conservative Christians
2) The experience of being a Christian academic, and
3) The limitations of secularism (academic secularism in particular) to understanding the Christian viewpoint