<p>“You profess to being broad-minded and fair about colleges, but so often your postings appear to me that you are so only to the extent that the new ideas don’t threaten the position of your alma mater.”</p>
<p>I’ll vouch for Alexandre here. Of all the posts of his I’ve seen, he’s mostly very evenhanded and logical (why else would he be chosen as a mod?), and oftentimes he isn’t playing up Michigan’s rep but accepting that it isn’t the “best” school. In a ranking that placed Michigan #2 or so in the nation, he even conceded that it shouldn’t be nearly that high. So I think this perception of yours is a little off. One honestly doesn’t have to be a huge supporter of a given school to argue for it in a discussion, and such is often the case of me and Berkeley. It isn’t my alma mater (in fact, I’m aiming more toward Stanford), but I’ll still argue for it when I see fit, just as I will for other schools such as Michigan, UVa, UCLA, JHU, Cornell, etc. It seems Alexandre does the same.</p>
<p>(I say this in part because I too have been called out – or attacked even – before for supposedly attempting to glorify Berkeley, when that’s usually far from my intention.)</p>