LAC mistake for a conservative kid?

Senior_s_Dad · March 9, 2009, 9:24pm

hamsterparent:

“I want my daughter to have excellent and challenging professors who encourage her to develop her own understanding of the subject matter and its relationship to the world around her.”

So do I for my daughters and sons.

There’s no risk, however, that any of our kids will be exposed solely to a conservative point-of-view. My concern is the only proselytization to which most college and university students are exposed is of the left.

morandi · March 9, 2009, 9:30pm

“This is a politically charged issue, guys,” says Solomon, looking around the table. “My value to society is quite a bit higher if I tell you what the science is and I tell you that we, as a society have to decide how we’re going to solve it than if I get up on my podium and start preaching my values to you.

“I mean, how are you going to believe me on science if I’m trying to impose my personal will? What you know is different from what you believe. My values are no better than anybody else’s. Obviously I have an opinion, but … my best function is to make sure that everyone gets the facts so we can all use our collective values to solve what is a social problem and not a science problem.”

this was from Susan Solomon speaking to Bowdoin students last month. . .

[Renowned</a> Scientist Heats Up Climate Debate on Campus, Academic Spotlight (Bowdoin)](<a href=“News | Bowdoin College”>News | Bowdoin College)

Senior_s_Dad · March 9, 2009, 9:39pm

Interesting comments from Susan Solomon.

She still has to make the case that she knows what the facts are. That she is a “Renowned Scientist” doesn’t confer in her complete knowledge of the “facts.”

It should give anyone with an inquiring mind the heebee-jeebees that anyone should assert complete possession of the facts.

afadad · March 9, 2009, 10:22pm

That is my biggest concern. In the hard sciences and math; the facts are pretty obvious. Even a far left professor can’t change those. In the soft sciences; e.g. psych, socio, anthro, etc. as well as history, philosophy, etc… there is a lot of room for opinions to alter facts. We’ve already seen our history books in primary and secondary schools “Changed” throughout the last 3 decades. We’ve also seen our culture go from holding people personally responsible to being able to blame society and their family for their failures. So, while there are many professors who probably honestly believe that they are neutral and are teaching the facts; the truth is they aren’t. They teach what they BELIEVE to be facts. And while interpretation is indeed allowed, it is common for the professor/teacher to retaliate directly or indirectly toward any student who disagrees. To many teachers think that they know all the facts and that they always know more than the students. College professors aren’t suppose to be there to teach; (You can do that yourself from a book). Professors are suppose to be mediators, arbitrators, and collaborators for the truth. They are suppose to bring ignorance and knowledge together so that educational evolution can exist. It is up to the student to actually learn. No different than a judge in a court room. Most judges don’t try the cases. They maintain order. They arbitrate, mediate, and collaborate for the truth. They bring the defense, prosecution, and jury together to discover the truth. Sometimes the judge is the jury, but staying impartial is difficult.

hellojan · March 10, 2009, 10:37am

Senior’s Dad:

I was just playing devil’s advocate. I think the Swattie Professor’s remarks are, to say the least, heavy-handed. I’m a realist, a political moderate, and a twenty-something WORKING my own way through college. So, I have both life and academic experience.

I can honestly say that I think college’s are more less idea incubators. The students themselves, in most cases, haven’t yet been independent in the “real world” and the professors haven’t been in anything but the academic world for a very long time. The opinions of both exist in a sort of vacuum that’s rarely tested in outside environs.

To answer the question that started this post, I’ll give the same reply I gave to a Christian friend attending a secular university:

“If you believe in yourself, you can be a beacon of what’s right and good in the world in a pace that needs it - not in a place that already has it.”

Maybe your boy can do the same?

JHS · March 10, 2009, 10:42am

Senior’s Dad: I didn’t accuse you of blindness because I disagree with you. I did it because you were internally contradictory and exhibited exactly the same willful ignorance that you attributed to liberal professors. I can assure you that few if any liberal professors are ignorant about what conservatives think and why, so it’s pretty easy to conclude that YOU don’t know any of them. Maybe you ought to meet some and find out what they are about and why before you are so certain that you understand their flaws.

afadad: Judges are a terrible analogy for teachers. The idea about judges is that they know nothing about anything except procedure before advocates start talking to them. Judges are students, not teachers. They try to discover the truth by listening to teachers from opposing camps trying to make their best case.

Personally, I think the adversary system is not a good model for scholarship. There really has to be some bedrock of shared values about what constitutes truth and valid argument for universities to work, and professors should stay true to those values regardless of their personal politics. I think lots do, but some don’t, too. Both on the right and on the left, but because the professorate IS disproportionately leftish more of the culprits are going to err leftwards rather than rightwards.

mazatl · March 10, 2009, 11:25am

afadad, do you think children would be better educated using textbooks written like the ones that were written thirty years ago?

afadad · March 10, 2009, 11:32am

There’s a difference between newer text books that include more recent information; such as history, science, literature, etc…; and having history books that have CHANGED HISTORY. Or at least the meaning of history. I think that is wrong.

MarathonMan88 · March 10, 2009, 11:56am

At nearly any LAC, a kid will learn that seemingly common-sense notions like “scientfic facts are obvious,” “history is primarily a fact-based endeavor,” “establishing even seemingly low-level facts does not require personal interpretation” or “reasonable scholars will generally agree on the interpretation given the same data,” don’t hold up to scrutiny. I sure hope that’s what my kid is learning; if that’s not the way you want your kid to learn to think, most LACS are not the place to go.

Senior_s_Dad · March 10, 2009, 12:18pm

It is no secret that many professors operate within a close social milieu. It’s called the “Ivory Tower” for a reason.

I criticized the Swarthmore professor’s reported gross generalizations about and mis-characterizations of conservatives based on my own experience and my own personal knowledge. I guess you cannot refute what I know to be the case about conservatives because all you can do is charge me with blindness. You stated not one single fact in opposition to my points.

You charge me with internal inconsistency because I (correctly and properly, I might add) stated that SOME within the conservative movement oppose illegal immigration and are not keen on legal immigration either.

Let me acquaint you with rank and file union members, clearly part of the left’s coalition. No one is more adamant in opposition to immigration than are ordinary union members who see immigrants as competition for jobs and status. Union leaders may see things otherwise, and, why not, union leaders perceive immigrants as the pawns on which they can rebuild their crumbling empires.

You really do not want to get into an argument with me about who I know, who I need to meet, and who I should find out about. Besides, it would bore everyone else on this thread.

Cardinal_Fang · March 10, 2009, 12:37pm

When you say recent history books “changed history,” afadad, you obviously don’t mean “changed what happened in the past;” nobody’s got a time machine. So then, perhaps you mean, “changed how historians talk about past events.”

But this is how historians do history. That’s what they do. That’s the enterprise.

Let’s consider two historians who looked at the fall of the Roman Empire. In Edward Gibbon’s monumental work of scholarship, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he wrote that Rome declined because of the advent of Christianity. Gibbon was frank in his opinion that the Romans’ moral decay led to the collapse of the empire; they were weak, and they couldn’t fight off the barbarians from the north.

A more recent scholar, Henri Pirenne, disputes this. In his view, the Roman Empire and Roman civilization stuck around until the 7th century, when the Muslims swarmed across North Africa and Spain, destroying the economy of Christian Europe by isolating it.

Perhaps you might say that this foofy Pirenne is an example of these politically correct liberals trying to take over academe. Certainly Pirenne offers a new interpretation and his work is hugely influential, but he died in 1935, way too early for political correctness. He was just doing what historians do, looking at what we know, finding new facts and coming up with a new interpretation.

History isn’t just a listing of facts. It can’t be; there are too many facts. It has to involve selection and interpretation of facts. There is bad history and good history, and certainly there are plenty of bad textbooks, but there is no history without interpretation.

winchester · March 10, 2009, 12:49pm

In post #824 afadad said So, while there are many professors who probably honestly believe that they are neutral and are teaching the facts; the truth is they aren’t.

A great example of that is the Michael Berube article previously linked to in this thread. In that article Berube repeatedly and consistently states things as obvious, or true, that are neither.

In post # 826, JHS said, few if any liberal professors are ignorant about what conservatives think and why.

Well, that may be true, it’s difficult to refute “few.” But we do know of one, at least, who really is ignorant. Again, that is Michael Berube. He claims to know the real motivations of conservatives when it is painfully obvious that he is so completely off-the-wall out of touch with conservative ideology that it would be laughable if he werent a professor who is teaching our kids.

And lest anyone mistake my agreement with one of Michael Berubes statements in a couple of previous posts as an endorsement in any way, shape, or form of his overall beliefs, heres my assessment of his article:

Ive read the whole article carefully. Some passages multiple times. The article is quite long. Longer even, than some of my posts. Time does not permit me to respond to it as thoroughly as Id like. I dont pretend to know enough to talk on behalf of all conservatives, or any other group. All I can offer is my own personal views and observations:

Berube makes some valid points but then throws the baby out with the bathwater by turning into a liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, only worse, and by a wide margin. Rush is part entertainer, part bombast, part baiter, and part truth, all rolled up into one jolly, pudgy, package. Berube, too, is all of those things. (Well, maybe not the pudgy part. I dont know what he looks like.) The reason hes worse is that hes a professor. Hes actually teaching our kids. One can only wonder goes on in his classrooms; what passes for truth.

The reasonable points Berube makes in the article are far outweighed by his use of typical liberal inflammatory language, a false premise (that conservatives are attacking academic freedom), and a supporting argument (that conservatives are cooking the data) that fails the test of reason. As if that werent bad enough, he says that the supposed attack is only a part of a larger effort on the part of conservatives to control not only all three branches of government (as they did at the time he wrote the article) but also to gain control of the few areas of American cultural life they do not dominate. He says, What animates the radical right…[is] the very existence of areas of political and intellectual independence that do not answer directly and favorably to the state.

Um, say what? Conservatives advocating statism? I mean, really, I try to be fair and all; to give the benefit of the doubt. And when I do get in my digs against liberals I try to provide an honest rationale to back them up, but Im sorry, thats just nuts. Theres just no other way to look at that. Hes living in some pretend, fantasy world that the rest of us are not in.

Its too bad, too, because some of his positions seem reasonable. But as Berube himself points out (see my most recent previous post of a Berube excerpt), some positions are so ludicrous that they dont even deserve to be dignified with a response. Some of his claims put him squarely into that category.

Detailed discussion of specific passages:

===

Reasonable

Berube says, In January 2005, Ohio state senator Larry Mumper introduced a bill one of whose clauses read, Faculty and instructors shall not infringe the academic freedom and quality of education of their students by persistently introducing controversial matter into the classroom or coursework that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose. The language is drawn directly from the American Association of University Professors 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which says, Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. I want to stress the relevance criterion here: were not supposed to steer away from controversial issues; on the contrary, it is part of our job to bring up controversial issues. What the AAUP insists is that we not introduce controversial matter that has no relation to our subject. That qualifier makes all the difference in the world; but Senator Mumper gave no indication that he understood it."

Fair enough. Valid, interesting points. Good discussion. Lets debate.

And you know what? I might take Berubes point even further. My suggestion would be to keep government out of the equation altogether. But since state schools are funded by the states, that creates another conundrum worthy of honest debate.

He says theres a confusion that has to do with ‘accountability.’ The argument goes like this, and I have heard it innumerable times in recent years, here at Penn State and at public universities across the country: We pay the bills for these proselytizing faculty liberalswe should have some say over what they teach and how they teach it. Public universities should be accountable to the public.

But that does not mean that legislators and taxpayers have the right, or the ability, to determine the direction of academic fields of research. And I say this with all due respect to my fellow citizens: you have every right to know that your money is not being wasted. But you do not have the right to suggest that the biology department should make room for promoters of Intelligent Design; or that the astronomy department should take stock of the fact that many people believe more in astrology than in cosmology;"

Again. Fair enough.

===

Inflammatory language:

Early in the article Berube sets the stage, the mood, for what hes about to say:

many forms of mainstream liberalism have been denounced as anti-American. There is, as you know, a cottage industry of popular right-wing books in which liberalism is equated with treason (that would be Ann Coulter), with mental disorders (Michael Savage), and with fascism (Jonah Goldberg).

And also,

In that kind of climate, it should come as no surprise that we would be seeing attacks on one of the few remaining institutions in American life that is oftenthough not completelydominated by liberals.

This is disingenuous (a kind word, in my view) because it depicts the climate as being completely one sided. By using a list of books by conservatives to characterize the current political climate its as if hes pointing to the half of the earth where it is currently night time and using that as proof that the entire world is dark. His argument proves absolutely nothing. Its only purpose, in my view, is to fire up the troops; to get those who already agree with him nodding and thinking Right on! A conservative might do the same thing, thus:

As you know, theres a cottage industry of popular left-wing books in which conservatism is equated with stupidity (Is Our Children Learning? and Its Still the Economy Stupid by Paul Begala, and The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder by Mark Crispin Miller), lying (Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, by Al Franken, and Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How it Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason), abuse of power (Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 by Alan Dershowitz), injustice ( The War on the Poor by Randy Albelda,), out of touch ( Were Right, Theyre Wrong by James Carville), and the difficulty of life in general (Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bushs America by Molly Ivins).

In that kind of climate, it should come as no surprise that we would be seeing attacks on one of the few remaining institutions in American life that is often though not completely, dominated by conservatives.

Heres another example Berubes inflammatory language:

He says:
Now, about all those liberals in the universities. You know, all those hemp-wearing, pony-tailed aging hippies at the podium, still haranguing their students about the Vietnam War. Well, you might ask, so what? So college faculties are full of liberalsisnt this like saying dog bites man? Francisco Franco still dead? Many people, it seems, arent surprised or outraged by this at all; they expect college faculties to be full of liberals the way they expect country clubs or corporate boardrooms to be full of conservatives; its just the way the world is divvied up.

"They get the money and the power and the finely manicured golf courses, and we get the survey classes on the American novel. Personally, I dont see why conservatives would be complaining about this arrangement.

In these passages Berube uses loaded words, code words, if you will, that liberals typically use to fit conservatives neatly into liberal stereotypes of them. Specifically, the depiction of conservatives as getting the money and the power and the finely manicured golf courses fits them into the liberal stereotype of conservatives as fat cats of privilege and power.

A conservative writer might replace board room with Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, as examples of places that are full of conservatives, and if the polls that Military Times regularly performs are any indication, he or she would be correct.

Heres the same argument, but from a conservative perspective:

They get the protected enclave of the college campus, and we get the front lines of Iraq. Personally, I dont see why liberals would be complaining about this arrangement.
That paints a whole different picture, doesnt it?

(And in fact, Berube is not complaining about the arrangement is he? Hes defending it. Go figure.)

=====

False premise:

At various points throughout his essay, including the opening paragraph, Berube refers to a supposed attack on academic freedom. For example:

Im going to start off by saying a terribly obvious thingbut I hope that over the next half hour or so, it will come to seem less and less obvious as we go along.
The obvious thing is this: the title of todays presentation, Recent Attacks on Academic Freedom: Whats Going On? can be answered in a single sentence. Academic freedom is under attack for pretty much the same reasons that liberalism itself is under attack.

Berube also says, Whenever liberalism is under attack, its a fair bet that academic freedom will be under attack too.

Look at my earlier long post in which I provide excerpts from surveys, and links to the complete texts. Theres nothing in any of it that would lead a fair minded person to conclude that academic freedom is being attacked. The evidence simply does not support it. Or if you like, take a step back and look at the broader picture. Theres no denying the fact that it is much more common for college campuses to be intimidating and uncomfortable places for conservatives than it is for liberals.

If anything, the position that the facts do support is the opposite of what Berube claims. The goal of conservatives is to defend academic freedom.

Berubes premise, that academic freedom is under attack is false.

=====

Failed argument:

A large section in the middle of Berubes article is dedicated to discrediting the surveys and statistics on which the supposed attack on academic freedom is based, saying that they cook the data. Heres an excerpt that is representative of his argument:

One recent, comprehensive survey of the political leanings of professors, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute and covering more than 55,000 faculty members from 416 institutions, showed that from 1989 to 2001-02, the percentage of faculty members identifying themselves as either liberal or far left grew from 42 to 48 percent; the percentage describing themselves as conservative or far right held steady at 18 percent; and the group identifying itself as middle of the road shrank from 40 to 34 percent. The survey noted that movement toward liberal or far left political identification over the last 12 years has been especially strong among women faculty: from 45 percent to 54 percent. . . . In 2001, 21 percent of male professors and 14 percent of female professors defined their political views as either conservative or far right. In the general population, by contrast, a 2005 Harris poll showed that 18 percent of Americans describe themselves as liberal, 36 percent call themselves conservative, and 41 percent are middle of the road. Interestingly, those data have held firm for decades: moderates have remained at 40 or 41 percent, conservatives have varied between 32 and 38 percent, and liberals have remained at 18 percent since the Vietnam War.

Berube continues, "So theres really no question that campuses are teeming with liberal faculty, at least when campuses are compared with the rest of the country. That 48-18 differential is pretty significant, and the contrast with the general population is especially vivid in rural campus towns like State College. Curiously, however, those numbers are just not exciting or dramatic enough for right-wing culture warriors like Horowitz, so theyve gone and made up some new numbers more to their liking, in order to portray campuses as places where decent hardworking conservatives cant so much as get their feet in the door.

This part of his argument is like saying Yeah, your football team beat mine 48-18, but your kick return man plays rough; This type of argument, it seems to me, is nothing more than a ruse which attempts to change the terms of the debate. Such a tactic takes the discussion away from the fact that his team lost the game and replaces it with a discussion about the relative merits of one particular player on the other team, as if that somehow might diminish or even invalidate the fact that he still lost.

If thats all hes got then he doesnt have much at all.

=====

Off The Wall:

It seems that many things have to be spelled out for some people on this thread, so Ill say this: One of the key tenets of conservatism is that the less government intervention into our lives the better. Where Berube came up with this last bit is beyond me. Its positively Owellian, the opposite of what true conservative principles strive for.

Im not sure even the most strident of liberals on this thread would subscribe to the notions Berube describes below. Im not sure any person with even a passing understanding of conservatives see them as totalitarian as Berube describes.

For one of the things at stake here is the very ideal of independent intellectual inquiry, the kind of inquiry whose outcomes cannot be known in advance and cannot be measured in terms of efficiency or productivity. There is no mystery why some of our critics loathe liberal campuses: it is not simply that conservatives control all three branches of government and are striking out at the few areas of American cultural life they do not dominate. That much is true, but it fails to capture the truly radical nature of these attacks on academe: for these are attacks not simply on the substance of liberalism (in the form of specific fiscal or social policies stemming from the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society) but on procedural liberalism itself, on the idea that no one political faction should control every facet of a society.

Berube also says:
What animates the radical right…[is] the very existence of areas of political and intellectual independence that do not answer directly and favorably to the state.

Say what? That’s just off-the-wall wrong. No further response is required to the kinds of outlandish statements Berube makes here.

Senior_s_Dad · March 10, 2009, 1:05pm

^^ Cardinal Fang is right about interpretation of history being essential.

Some interpretations of history have persisted for a few years, others for a few generations, and still others for centuries. Some interpretations, such as Economic Determinism that became popular in the United States in the 1930s, quickly lose broad favor while, at the same time, offering historians a set of tools useful to this day.

It helps if students understand that interpretations of history are always in flux; what is taught today will likely be rejected, if not tomorrow, then soon. One is never being taught “The Final Word” on anything.

winchester · March 10, 2009, 1:11pm

Seniors Dad

Don’t waste your breath on JHS. In my opinion he is a liberal apologist whos firmly held positions are unperturbed by facts, logic, common sense, or the lessons of history.

That said, Id love to hear more of what you have to say.

JHS

I’m sorry to be so blunt. In real life I’m sure you’re a good friend, neighbor, and parent. I meant what I said in a previous post when I congratulated you and your kids for your accomplishments, and I stand by that still. Your kids are high achievers, much more so than mine, and I’m sure you, likewise, are more intelligent and accomplished than I.

Further, Id like to offer some context for the remarks Im about to make. I see this thread and all of the discussion within it - without exception - as an academic exercise that is separate and apart from real life. Its sort of a safe, no harm, no foul, kind of place in the spirit of a college debate club, where friends can go to discuss the relative merits of their various positions on issues of the day, and then get back to the truly important things in life, like discussing the Bears over a beer, or the wretched gutter cleaning job that hangs over my head awaiting a weekend day with decent weather. So as such, I hope everyone here construes whatever I say to be aimed not at them personally, but rather in a dispassionate, detached, way at the ideas that are represented.

JHS, every once in a while, like Berube, you say something that I completely agree with, like this, because the professorate IS disproportionately leftish more of the culprits are going to err leftwards rather than rightwards.

But generally speaking, JHS, as for the overall tone and content of your posts here on this thread, I say enough! The reasonable tone you often adopt appears to be nothing more than pretense. Behind that façade your arguments are too often sprinkled with statements that are insulting, patronizing, arrogant, condescending, and preachy. The message that I infer from your notes and Id bet Im not the only one is that you honestly believe that you know the truth and the rest of us are but philistines. Youve done this kind of thing too many times in this thread for me to let it go on any longer without comment.

When a conservative offers ideas, you whittle away at the edges with semantics, as if that type of argument has actual merit. Internally contradictory? (Post #826) Give me a break. One of the more egregious examples of this tactic was your handling of our joke exchange earlier in this thread. I related a first-person experience of my daughters. Your response was to lecture me about the difference between a joke and a serious comment, and then with that definition you presumed to tell me that what actually happened was something different from what my daughter experienced. The disrespect and impertinence of your response was stunning.

When you do address somebody elses ideas, you misrepresent them. You twist them into something theyre not, and then you criticize the person as if your twisted interpretation were what the person originally said - as you did with your recent status quo comment in post #817 about another of my previous posts. I went to great lengths in that post (if Im remembering the right one) to describe the historical origins, philosophical foundations, and practical applications of what I see as a core element of conservatism. For you to brush that off as nothing more than a near-religious regard for the status quo is at once belittling and demeaning. It is at best disingenuous, and at worst an intellectually dishonest cheap shot.

And sometimes you forgo your usual pretense of rational discussion altogether, and just flat out insult people, as youve done multiple times with geeps most recently, again, in post #817 - telling him I don’t want any liberal professors teaching your kid, either. Please take him elsewhere.

I dont claim that my ideas are perfect; that theyre the final word on any topic. But I do make an honest effort to provide a solid rationale for my positions. I often include bibliographic style references to historical, statistical, or popular (e.g., op-ed pieces) sources to fortify my views.

I empathize with morandis heartfelt sadness at the sniping that seems to be part and parcel of political debates, and I admit to committing my share of digs against what I see as the hypocrisy of liberalism. But when I do that kind of thing it is usually, if not always, at the conclusion of a passage in which I defend why I feel the way I do.

When others make points that are in my personal opinion valid, for whatever that is worth, I say it. I give them credit. Ill admit to making smart-alec remarks, as I did in response to maztls claim of the use of logic. But I stated that right up front in my note. And later in a subsequent note I stated that a larger idea behind maztls comment was correct.

Look, we all say dumb things sometimes, and I know that it is literally impossible to discuss every nuance of every position in a thread like this. I think most of us here make allowances for that. I also recognize that in the heat of the moment anyone can go overboard and say something dumb. But for the most part reasonable people forgive each other trespasses like unfortunate sentence structure, or; ideas expressed for convenience in the shorthand of typical conservative or liberal platitudes, or; broad generalizations to make a point. In your case, however, your reliance on semantics, misrepresentation of others ideas, and insults (direct as well as backhanded) seems to be a consistent pattern that goes beyond any of that.

Fair, honest, debate among reasonable people can be enlightening, entertaining, and energizing. What you typically offer is not that; what you offer is cloying, tedious, and tiring. It leads one to think, Why bother? If all I get for my efforts is insults and condescension then why should I even afford such comments the dignity of a response?

So, about Da Bearsss…

winchester · March 10, 2009, 1:12pm

As far as this the original topic of this thread goes, what has been shown by innumerable studies and overwhelming anecdotal evidence - much of it quoted and hyperlinked - is this:

1) Liberalism claims tolerance and inclusiveness as two of its core beliefs.

2) Liberals overwhelmingly outnumber conservatives in the administrations and faculty of most American colleges and universities, and have for decades.

3) Generally speaking, the political climate on liberal-run college campuses nation wide is hostile to conservatives by varying degrees.

Therefore, given the decades long virtual free reign of control liberals have enjoyed over the nations campuses, and the opportunity that has afforded them to create an environment of tolerance and open mindedness and thus demonstrate true leadership in their core beliefs, what the evidence shows is that they have failed, and miserably so, because the result of their efforts is in fact the opposite.

Liberalism: The Audacity of False Hope.

winchester · March 10, 2009, 1:13pm

One can only imagine the high holy hell that would be raised on college campuses and in the media across the nation if the conservative/liberal tables were turned.

mazatl · March 10, 2009, 1:49pm

if you read what i wrote more carefully…i said written LIKE the ones 30 years go, meaning from the same perspective (but obviously including more recent events).

the new books do not change history…they change our perspective of/approach to history.

mazatl · March 10, 2009, 2:49pm

winchester:

As far as this the original topic of this thread goes, what has been shown by innumerable studies and overwhelming anecdotal evidence - much of it quoted and hyperlinked - is this: 

1) Liberalism claims tolerance and inclusiveness as two of its core beliefs.

2) Liberals overwhelmingly outnumber conservatives in the administrations and faculty of most American colleges and universities, and have for decades.

3) Generally speaking, the political climate on liberal-run college campuses nation wide is hostile to conservatives by varying degrees.

Therefore, given the decades long virtual free reign of control liberals have enjoyed over the nations campuses, and the opportunity that has afforded them to create an environment of tolerance and open mindedness and thus demonstrate true leadership in their core beliefs, what the evidence shows is that they have failed, and miserably so, because the result of their efforts is in fact the opposite. 

Liberalism: The Audacity of False Hope.

i really don’t think anyone is asserting that there is no liberal bias on college campuses. politics evoke emotion, so it is not surprising that socially conservative people feel some hostility on liberal campuses. i suppose we may disagree on the degree of this hostility.

my roommate (at harvard) is socially conservative and fairly outspoken about it (has written editorials in the newspaper, etc) and has received some moderately angry responses/e-mails, but this has been infrequent (maybe a couple times a year?) in debate, her opinions are entertained seriously, but she is generally very outnumbered. i guess what i’m saying overall is that there is a liberal bias on social issues, but i think that’s the way it should be as i explained earlier…in other words, it’s not a coincidence that the best universities in the united states are overwhelmingly socially liberal.

emeraldkity4 · March 10, 2009, 3:55pm

*the new books do not change history…they change our perspective of/approach to *history.

:::::::::Stamping foot::::::::::
We don’t wanna learn something new!
We want our old assumptions verified!
WAH!
Having a *Women in Antiquity *class at the flagship U, is just TOO feminist for me!

Everyone* knows there weren’t any women in antiquity!

:rolleyes:

JHS · March 10, 2009, 3:58pm

First of all, winchester, let me apologize for taking shots at geeps. I am really tired of him or her, and sometimes it gets the better of me. And I will admit to using slogans sometimes to characterize – and in the process, often belittle – someone else’s argument. I am prepared to defend why I think your earlier post can be described as “near-religious regard for the status quo”, but I am happy to admit that my phrase is a caricature of your position and divests it of many important nuances.

Second, if you think I am a liberal apologist who “honestly believes he knows the truth”, you couldn’t be more wrong. In terms of political slots, I am probably what used to be called a “New Democrat” (otherwise perhaps known as a “Rockefeller Republican”, which is what my parents were until the species became extinct) – I tend to believe in markets over government, and to be pragmatic on foreign policy issues. I am generally in favor of social justice, but often like to peek at the price tag before signing on. To the extent that, at the end of the day, I really AM a liberal, it is precisely because I tend to be very, very skeptical of ANY “truth” claims. I was born a relativist; it takes me forever to decide whether something is right or wrong, and most of the time, on most of the issues, I never get there.

At any given point, I am just as likely to be offended by liberal true-believers as by conservative true-believers, but my experience of the world is that more conservatives, more often than liberals, see the world in black-and-white, right-and-wrong terms, and I just can’t stomach that for long.

I spend much more time dissecting positions others have taken, or positing counter-positions of equal value, than I do saying what I believe. Because that’s how I think. If you ask me whether the glass is half empty or half full, I will describe the five theories on which emptiness or fullness can be determined, the strengths and weaknesses of each, and their ultimate contingency, and then, very tentatively, I may pick one and give you an answer, subject to later revision. And the theory I pick will be picked, not on the basis that it’s “true” or “right”, but that I think it works best in a society where people have to get along.

And, yes, I am snobby and elitist, and if there’s one institution I love it’s American universities, which are really one of the amazing marvels of Western civilization, mysterious Wonders of the World no less than the Pyramids or Macchu Picchu – how the heck did they build those things? – but amazingly productive in terms of producing research and people who are continuously improving the world despite itself. (Another reason I’m a liberal: I do believe in progress, and that the future is better than the past, even though there’s a lot of the past that I love.) So it gets my goat when people tee off on them in threads like this. The universities I know and love may be predominantly liberal, but they make plenty of room for conservative voices, and conservative voices there – intelligent ones, at least – are strong and often persuasive. They don’t enforce ideological purity at all. That’s really the province of the handful of truly conservative universities (e.g., Bob Jones). They do generally try to enforce some measure of politeness, with is not always easy with 18-22 year-olds, whatever their political affiliations.

LAC mistake for a conservative kid?

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