Posted by anderc8 on Tuesday, October 17, 2017 in News, TIPs 2017.

The Vanderbilt LGBT Policy Lab will host a seminar series featuring Vanderbilt faculty presenting research related to LGBT policies. The series kicks off this fall with two talks in Buttrick Hall. These events are free and open the university community.

Wednesday November 15 | 2 – 3:30 p.m. | Buttrick 123
Kitt Carpenter (Professor of Economics) will present “Same-Sex Marriage and Attitudes Toward Sexual Minorities: Evidence from Europe.” The abstract for Professor Carpenter’s talk appears below.

Wednesday December 6 | 2 – 3:30 p.m. | Buttrick 123
Matt Shaw (Assistant Professor of Leadership, Policy and Organizations) will present “Safety by Inclusion as Curriculum.” The abstract for Professor Shaw’s talk appears below.

Please join us for these LGBT Policy Lab events!

Same-Sex Marriage and Attitudes Toward Sexual Minorities: Evidence from Europe (Kitt Carpenter)
Legal same-sex marriage has expanded throughout Europe and North America, yet little is known about its effects. Using 2005-2016 Gallup World Poll data, and by exploiting variation in the timing of policy adoptions across European countries, we demonstrate that the availability of legal same-sex marriage is associated with statistically significant improvements in attitudes toward sexual minorities. These effects emerge only after the policies are adopted, suggesting that policies cause improved attitudes.  Moreover, the effects are unique to LGBT-related attitudes: there are no systematic relationships with attitudes toward other minority groups or views on various other social issues. Finally, although significant improvements in attitudes are observed across nearly every demographic group, we find notably larger effects among poorer people, a group that had significantly more negative LGBT-attitudes at the beginning of the sample. We estimate that legal same-sex marriage explains a substantial share of the overall improvement in attitudes toward sexual minorities between 2009 and 2016.

Safety by Inclusion as Curriculum (Matt Shaw)
In an article that I am writing for the Kansas Law Review, I show how, beginning with Justice Frankfurter’s seminal concurrence in Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957), the evolution of academic freedom occurred alongside the decline of support for in loco parentis, which had allowed, and in some cases obligated, colleges and universities to secure their students’ safety. I explain how this shift initially resulted in less institutional control over the entirety of the student learning experience, with adverse consequences for student physical and psychological safety. As academic freedom focused less on scholarly freedoms and more on institutional management endorsed by the courts, I argue that institutions were enabled, in the absence of in loco parentis, to cite curricular freedom in justifying policies and procedures enacted in pursuit of student safety. Using hot-button topics such as on-campus sexual assault, membership practices of single-sex fraternity and sororities, and religious student groups as case studies, I show how the rise of safety curriculum best explains how colleges and universities developed their current role in student affairs management. I argue that inclusion of sexual minority students evolved into a moderating mechanism by which student affairs offices exercise rights to academic freedom in ways that, until now, have been believed to be reserved uniquely to academic components of the university. My observations challenge the popular opinion that increased enforcement of Title IX is the intervention mechanism which avails greater institutional engagement with student associational life. This article raises implications for institutional actions currently justified under Title IX, other actions challenged as beyond the scope of the statute, national organizations which operate on campuses at the pleasure of institutions and students who must navigate campus life within these parameters.