And yet it would be a terrible irony if as a result of the worst attack on Jewry since the Holocaust, the academic world decided it was best to go back into its shell. Reason: the world has just gotten too small; we actually suffer from a surfeit of information; Hanna Arendt’s observation about the banality of evil has become nearly universal in the space of a mere sixty years.
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Amen. Cannot agree more. And as the evil becomes more banal, social media amplifies false statistics and propaganda.
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If your filter for NESCAC alone, Wesleyan ranks #1. If you add in the Ivies, Wes ranks #2 after Brown. Roth has said in public interviews as far back as ten years ago he wants more conservative kids on campus. I am sure he shared that desire privately with the admissions office as well.
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Agreed – as a grad school professor myself and spouse of an undergrad humanities professor, we don’t know any faculty out to indoctrinate students. Help students develop critical thinking skills to challenge assumptions and evaluate arguments? Yes, but to my mind, that’s education, not indoctrination. Then, how a student uses those critical thinking skills depends on the student. Might a student explore perspectives at odds with what they’d grown up with? Sure, but that’s part of growing up and separating – and the pendulum often swings back.
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I think there are a lot more nuances to the debate.
A kid is taking an econ class and there is vigorous debate about the impact of increases in the minimum wage. The kid feels the professor is “indoctrinating” because the professor has written extensively (and testified in Congress) that increasing the minimum wage hurts low income families and the least educated.
Is that indoctrination- or a scholar who has crunched enormous amounts of data going back 25 years-- to demonstrate that increasing the minimum wage-- while a nice political soundbite-- hurts the people it’s supposed to help?
There are many more issues.
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I think it’s a question of balance and how the topic is framed. If the professor leads with his view and presents it as though that’s the only view without fostering an atmosphere friendly to debate and dissent then that is a problem.
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Yes but…
Econ (to use that example) is a discipline based on quantitative analysis, not “here’s how I feel”. So there can be debate and dissent- economists disagree all the time about what data shows. But to disregard the data for the sake of “this is what I believe” isn’t econ. It’s something else- and a university which allows its faculty to teach students “all viewpoints are equally valid” isn’t a place you’d want your kid studying. Dinosaurs and humans co-existed- No. Some religious institutions believe and teach that- but science has emphatically proven that this is not the case. Primates and humans share a high percentage of their genetic code- that’s a scientific fact, even though it may offend some people who don’t believe in evolution.
How “friendly” does a college need to be in welcoming alternative points of view? Must a professor of oceanography teach that floods and tsunamis are God’s punishment for human sins? In the presence of the data which shows precisely which atmospheric and geological phenomenon cause floods and tsunamis? Because there is a group of students on campus who object to a class being taught without a “friendly to debate and dissent” atmosphere?
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Temporarily closing for review.
As a reminder, there is one, and only one, thread where it is appropriate to discuss race. This is not it.
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To answer Blossom’s last post, applying common sense is the solution. But if we can’t all agree on what qualifies as common sense, then there is no hope!
Respectfully, as soon as “common sense” is the solution - there isn’t going to be a solution. “Indoctrination” is a subjective standard. “Common sense” equally, if not more so, a subjective standard.
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I’ve placed this thread in slow mode and will be monitoring for respectful discussion to ensure it remains on-topic and appropriate for the main forums (outside the Politics Forum).
Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others."
and
“College Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else… If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.”
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Agree with Beebee. To me, “common sense” means that a science class is going to be taught using the scientific method, data, and analysis. But for someone who doesn’t like X (the science on climate change, the realities of recycling plastics, the human cost of extracting rare metals to make cell phones, or whatever an issue might be) “common sense” means allowing political/social concerns to have equal footing with the data.
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What if the professor has devoted the past 20 years of his/her life to researching topic X. Would his/her perspective on topic X hold the same weight as that of a college freshman who has literally never researched topic X beyond seeing it talked about on a news program?
In some cases it is quite appropriate for a professor to teach their point of view when they are considered top experts in a certain topic - as many university professors are. That’s not to say that discussion is impossible - indeed students should always be allowed challenge and question as that is part of learning - but ultimately if the professor is totally wrong in what they are presenting, then they probably shouldn’t be in a position of authority on that topic. Teachers are able to teach when they know more about a topic than their students. If their students have the same amount of understanding of the topic, then the teacher-student relationship is undermined and perhaps the student should be teaching instead.
Discussion and debate are great and make class more lively and learning more meaningful, but ultimately, it is appropriate for a professor to profess his/her point of view on a topic of their expertise, in my opinion. Yes, some things are subjective. Some facts can have multiple interpretations. But many topics taught in undergraduate classrooms are based on facts and the vetted/reviewed conclusions of extensive research and some interpretations are indeed objectively correct and some are objectively wrong. And stating that is not indoctrination, it is intellectual honesty.
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People often assume professors are indoctrinating students when those professors are only teaching students to critically reexamine their own assumptions based on evidence and methodologies that might be new for those students. That’s not indoctrination. It’s education.
I’m in a discipline (history) that has been at the center of these accusations of “indoctrination.” Yes, many of my colleagues (certainly not all) hold personal views to the left of center. No, they don’t “indoctrinate.” Rather, we hope to challenge students to complicate their own preconceptions by looking at new evidence. But isn’t that what’s supposed to happen in college? Aren’t students supposed to broaden their intellectual horizons beyond what they learned in high school? Why do we assume evidence and inquiry are always politicized?
For many conservatives, “indoctrination” has become a coded accusation of what they imagine leftist professors hope to accomplish. As we often say, if we actually had the power to indoctrinate, we’d start by persuading students to do the reading and finish their assignments! For what it’s worth: in many, many years of my own schooling (primary, secondary, college, and two rounds of grad school), the only professor I ever had who came close to attempting “indoctrination” was a conservative economist who deducted points from any assignment that did not support his specific interpretation. Shockingly (not), I survived that class un-indoctrinated (though I did not earn as high a grade as I would have had I just parroted back his views).
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I attended a fascinating roundtable a few years ago at a university which had on the panel a professor from the med school, an economist, a political scientist, and a historian. The topic was health care access and reform and the discussion was eye-popping. No, they were not aligned politically, and they all came from different disciplines and were trained to look at facts and interpret them in a very different way.
But the actual conversation (no labels- just a discussion) was incredible. And a very powerful learning experience for the rest of us- who despite doing our own “research” are NOT distinguished professors of medicine, or historians, or political scientists, or economists. And to hear from people who interpret the available data for a living- wow.
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Well said!
The recent posts have focused a lot on claims/fears of supposed indoctrination in the classroom. And that is often the focus of politicians on the right. But there are other factors that belong in an evaluation of the free speech climate on campus. For example, administrative support for free speech, how disruptions are handled (e.g., blockading physical access to disfavored speakers, heckling and shouting down speakers, pulling fire alarms, etc). And whatever you think of the FIRE rankings, they focus heavily on surveys of currently enrolled students. They poll the students about their comfort level discussing difficult topics and their willingness to listen to alternative viewpoints – or at least to permit others to listen to a speaker with an alternative viewpoint.
