backybig

Is claremont very very liberal like oberlin, or just slightly liberal? I don't want anything to liberal, but I still want a liberal environment.
Help me!

dntw8up

Pitzer is the more liberal school. CMC is well-balanced.

caitylin

cmc is nothing like oberlin lol. the kids are MUCH more conservative. if youre looking for liberal at claremont try pomona or pitzer

kaliyama

CMC is the biggest movement conservative college west of hilsdale. Unfortunately, as SAT and GPA requirements have gone up, the campus has gotten more liberal (but no less privileged), as there are insufficient conservative students who qualify at CMC's new level of selectivity. The gov't faculty are ultra-conservative. The IR faculty are center to slightly-left-of-center. While there are a few profs i'd stay clear of, the vast majority of them are dedicated to teaching and don't impose political litmus tests on students. This is strongly true for Pitney. I'd say less so for Kesler or Blitz, who are more philosophers than political scientists.

I liked CMC as a liberal, though. Pomona and Pitzer both have more liberal students, but CMC, even if kids don't usually know what the real world is like, tend to be new deal progressives that have a practical focus on 1) winning elections, and 2) making redistributive social programs work in practice. Pitzer is more about grassroots social mobilizating and finding more sustainable ways to conduct ourselves. They have a lot more local community involvement, maintain their own garden plot and animal coop, run their own cafe (and the grove house easily has the best food as a result). Pomona has some people who are into politics, but it's a lot of critical race studies/liberal pieties combined with east-coast-elite approaches to things.

CMC is James Carville, Pomona is Michael Dukakis, and Pitzer is Caesar Chavez.

singleparent2005

You wrote:

Unfortunately, as SAT and GPA requirements have gone up, the campus has gotten more liberal (but no less privileged), as there are insufficient conservative students who qualify at CMC's new level of selectivity.

Wow.

politica18

CMC admissions officers have told me that they strive for a good balance among the political spectrum - "approximately 1/3 liberal, 1/3 conservative, and 1/3 who are in the middle somewhere" is what they told me (several times) when I visited. The goal is to promote intelligent debate among individuals with a diverse range of ideas and belief systems. From what I have seen, this works. The two times I visited CMC, there was no rigid doctrine of political correctness structuring curriculum and discussion as I had seen waaay too many times at other LACs I had visited. Students were willing to ask and contest the most loaded questions. I really liked that, but if you don't like your belief systems to be challenged it's probably not for you.

Pomona, on the other hand, is more like your traditional LAC. It's fairly liberal but not /completely/ chain-yourself-to-trees-crazy (/that/ would be more like Pitzer). Two guys from CMC actually got banned from Pomona's campus for unethically video-taping/grilling a pro-choice speaker who came there. I don't remember the story completely but I'm sure if you ask any current CMC student they'll be able to tell you. It was pretty funny.