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I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

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Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#321

Post by linkregister »

drumdance wrote: post #317
linkregister wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to me that the top-rated comment in this thread broadly generalizes both "coastal intellectuals" and "Middle America" with insulting stereotypes. I'm embarrassed that the upvoters of this comment actually agreed with this comment. One trip to Houston or Minneapolis is enough to verify the presence of a thriving arts and culture scene. The anti-intellectual Middle America trope is not factual. One trip to…

> One trip to Houston or Minneapolis Uh, okay. How about rural Georgia where I grew up? Dollars to donuts that Houston and Minneapolis have much higher subscription rates to the New Yorker than zip codes from elsewhere in the state.

Are you implying that Houston and Minneapolis aren't in the midwest?

Are subscriptions to the New York Times the benchmark of intellectualism?

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#322

Post by daodedickinson »

striking wrote: post #103
daodedickinson wrote: post #87

Ideological homogeneity isn't the starting condition it's the ending condition, the achieved goal. How could you see that homogeneity and then say "this could be an issue only in an incredibly tribal ideological environment" and not realize that's exactly what academia is and has been for a long time? Have you not read your Saul Alinsky? There's a reason his devotee is the top prez nominee (Clinton). Climate conferen…

> Climate conferences, academia Are you sure the two are exactly alike? I realize there's a lot of soft science that's ridiculous, but it's generally accepted that global warming exists.

The point is the political goal is so important to the true believers that dissent must be silenced, mot accomodated, not that global warming is an ideological hallucination.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#323

Post by daodedickinson »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #163
daodedickinson wrote: post #87

Ideological homogeneity isn't the starting condition it's the ending condition, the achieved goal. How could you see that homogeneity and then say "this could be an issue only in an incredibly tribal ideological environment" and not realize that's exactly what academia is and has been for a long time? Have you not read your Saul Alinsky? There's a reason his devotee is the top prez nominee (Clinton). Climate conferen…

I'll raise you academic homogeneity with political autarchy. How influential is the Left - not the Democrats, but the popular Left - on Wall St, in corporate board rooms, in Congress, in the Senate, in the US military, in econ schools, on MBA courses, in US intelligence, in police management, and in foreign policy? If you want parity of influence, let's see it there first. Because I'm really not seeing anything that…

Diversity training? DHS not allowed to look at the social media of the San Bernardino shooters when they were entering, where they would have seen threats? Polls showing growing discord in the military between the right majority and the left leadership? Wall St. and corporate support for abortion? Clinton's explicit inspiration from Alinsky? US support for Hamas / Muslim Brotherhood / Hawai'ian Separatists? Nobody wins everything unless they treat their opponents like Melians.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#324

Post by BostonEnginerd »

merpnderp wrote: post #2

I once sat in on an academic research meeting where the PI of the group stated "If there are any Republicans in the room, leave, you are fired." They felt comfortable enough saying this even though there were obviously people there from outside the group and nothing like that could be kept secret.

I've seen similar situations at scientific conferences. To be fair, the Republican caucus was trying to significantly cut the budget for the field at the time.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#325

Post by robotresearcher »

rantanplan wrote: post #319
robotresearcher wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> finally know what the truth is. Not quite. The current substantiated hypothesis is always provisional until a better idea or contrary evidence turns up. That's not what most people call truth, and certainly not the kind of truth religious people have in mind.

You obviously didn't read about the comprehensive experiments I mentioned. Sometimes I wonder why I spend time to respond to people. No one reads anything. People just want to disagree to pass the time.

On the contrary, I mentioned 'substantiated hypothesis'. Comprehensive experiments are how a hypothesis becomes substantiated. There's no other way. And you rudely accuse me of not reading.

Even with an enormous and indefinite number of validating experiments, a theory is still provisional. There is no forever truth. For example consider Newtonian physics. For the 200 years until relativity and quantum mechanics were invented it was the best game in town. 200 years of experiment is pretty comprehensive. We can do experiments today that support Newtonian physics. But it was never 'true', because if you look very, very carefully you can find examples where it doesn't work.

You can not prove things true in science (unlike math), you can only disprove them. Things that resist disproof are held as provisionally true until we know better.

So: there is no moment when you "finally know what the truth is". Hence my disagreement with your post.

Scientists know what the truth isn't. There's a T-shirt slogan for you.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#326

Post by hackuser »

pfh wrote: post #169
hackuser wrote: post #106

Is there any evidence that someone rejected him on that basis? I didn't read the whole article in detail, but it seems like a suspicion with nothing to substantiate it, and a lot of hearsay about what some people told him about the risks.

This could be asked of any form of discrimination. That he was grilled on his political views by telephone is sufficiently damning.

> This could be asked of any form of discrimination.

I'm not sure what the objection is to that ?

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#327

Post by hackuser »

Yen wrote: post #147
hackuser wrote: post #106

Is there any evidence that someone rejected him on that basis? I didn't read the whole article in detail, but it seems like a suspicion with nothing to substantiate it, and a lot of hearsay about what some people told him about the risks.

At the end of the article, under the header "The original post from July, 2014", he describes his experience. In summary: 1. In 2007, 14 Jewish Members resign from the advisory board of the Carter Center, due to disagreements over statements in Carter's book. 2. OP blogged about this, apparently in support of their statement. (The original original blog post is not linked to) 3. Some undetermined amount of time later…

Thanks. Based on what you wrote, all we have his uncorroborated hearsay about one conversation (#4).

While discrimination certainly takes place in the world, I think we're blowing this article out of proportion; we don't know what happened here.

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#328

Post by cglace »

tangled_zans wrote: post #315
garrettgrimsley wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Simply teaching you some respect, as well as some factual accuracy. The author of the parent comment has established that they made a mistake. Maybe you weren't outraged before but now there is some readily apparent hostility.

Yes, that was indeed the case. Surely if I made a factual error on something that you were knowledgeable on - say, NodeJS - and you corrected me, you'd be slightly peeved - or at least see my behavior as odd - if I replied to you claiming that your friendly input was "outrage".

It wasn't that you pointed out a factual inaccuracy. It was how you did it. You assumed you needed to "teach me some respect" instead of just saying "It's actually Caitlyn Jenner".

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#329

Post by rdancer »

tbrownaw wrote: post #271
rdancer wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they brought it up in an interview at all, that means that it was part of their decision. The way he portraits the line of questioning, his having quite narrowly dissenting opinions (that is to say, any own opinions at all) was a dealbreaker.

If they brought it up in an interview at all, that means that it was part of their decision. Not necessarily. It could be something they thought might lead somewhere interesting ("Do you know about $foo? Cool, so what's your opinion on this detail?"; the first question is only useful to know if you can ask the second questions). It could be stalling for time while they try to come up with something useful to ask. It…

In general, you may be right, but is this really what could be happening here — how can the fact that future colleagues consider the interviewees political views reactionary be used to set up any licit line of questioning?

Re: I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views

#330

Post by fleitz »

jolux wrote: post #311
fleitz wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very hard to believe that 99% of scientists are credible experts on GW. Consensus is a political term not a scientific one, no one disproves the null consensus. In science we cite experts, papers and a refutable hypothesis, in politics we cite the opinions of non expert masses to questions that have no refutable hypothesis. I feel you on the trust though both sides feel like they are lying through their tee…

Yes however one side has science and evidence and the other side has lobbyists and oil companies. There's a wealth of independent research proving climate change. The question is not whether or not CO2 has an insulating effect, this is intuitively obvious with even a basic understanding of chemistry and physics. The question is whether we're emitting enough of it to cause environmental problems diverse from those nat…

Funny if you ask someone on the other side they say the exact same thing, science/God is on their side and the others are just a bunch of lobbyists / frauds making up data.
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