| JHS,
I know mini is far from the OP in political bent and from his post calling most US academics conservative compared with internationals, I am simply questioning what his definition of internationals is.
Yes, while typically most university environments are more liberal than the culture surrounding them, the cultures of the Islamic world are far more traditional (read that in most views conservative) than our most conservative areas. And in those areas, the concepts of free speech are not as well developed nor defended as they are in the west, so the degree of departure from the political center of their culture is much more limited than western departure from the political center of western cultures.
And I spend my days on a campus as well, in one of the more "conservative" regions of the country. The academics here are considerably more liberal than the students they instruct. Yes, there probably is more diversity of thought (read that more conservative views) in the faculty here than where I went to school on the west coast, but the bulk of the faculty here that I've met would not qualify as conservative at all. Plenty of John Kerry bumper stickers in faculty lots and not as many W stickers as you would think. Now the small privates in my region are quite different, but they are smaller and command a smaller share of college market share than the publics.
Mini has his view of the world, what is big and small, conservative and liberal. I have seen different and how I measure the outside world is different from mini.
To say my view looks silly does not take into account our different views of the world. |