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Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

nytimes.com

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Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#21

Post by matchbok »

geofft wrote: post #11
matchbok wrote: post #2

Seems that the problem is the existence of departments like the "Office of Diversity and Campus Engagement". It's a school. Why are these needed? To pad tuition?

One cold, capitalist argument is to attract and retain black students, women students, and LGBTQIA students, have them do their best work, and have them graduate and succeed in life and donate back to the university.

I don't disagree. I just fail to see how it warrants an entire department with (I'm sure) 4+ highly paid admins.

Every dep at my college was horribly bloated.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#22

Post by monksy »

jchanimal wrote: post #5
mklarmann wrote: post #4

Tell me again. What is his issue?

I think it’s the old canard where conservatives don’t realize that the reason their viewpoints are not represented on campus is because they don’t hold up to intellectual scrutiny.

You've pointed out exactly the issue. It's a lack of diversity in thought and consideration of ideas that you disagree with. That should be the whole point of college. (An understanding of where the knowledge came from, how it's formed, and how to work with new ideas [even if they're wrong]

If someone's idea doesn't hold up to scrutiny, academically speaking, you should identify it as such.

The danger of labeling and avoiding ideas you don't like, in this case: conservatives, you're being intellectually dishonest and you're prone to basis.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#23

Post by creaghpatr »

dash2 wrote: post #6

Oh man, so true. Where I am it's like a permanent Pride parade. That said, is this really a big issue? Employees, often public employees, at traditionally liberal institutions, many of whom are humanities PhDs themselves are liberal... Popes are often Catholic and wear funny hats... I'm not clear this is a huge threat to Western civilization.

Quality of public school education in America continues to decrease every year.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#24

Post by weberc2 »

jchanimal wrote: post #5
mklarmann wrote: post #4

Tell me again. What is his issue?

I think it’s the old canard where conservatives don’t realize that the reason their viewpoints are not represented on campus is because they don’t hold up to intellectual scrutiny.

Is this true across the board? I can think of a handful of popular tropes where this is true, like climate change skepticism, but even this comes in degrees ranging from conservatives who agree that climate change is real and needs action to those who agree it's real but are skeptical about the long term consequences to those who think that climate change is real but not man-made to those who think it's not real at all. Other popular examples are just evangelical beliefs projected to conservatives en masse (e.g., creationism). I guess conservatives seem pretty ideologically diverse, so maybe it would be helpful to specify which ideas in particular are keeping conservatives out of the academy?

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#25

Post by johnday »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #9

It's unfortunate that HN only shows the domain name of a source. Sources like NYT and other newspapers have News and Opinion directories, which quote different reputations.

The links are direct on HN - you can always hover links to find out, if you'd rather not give the Opinion section any traffic.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#29

Post by Omnius »

jchanimal wrote: post #5
mklarmann wrote: post #4

Tell me again. What is his issue?

I think it’s the old canard where conservatives don’t realize that the reason their viewpoints are not represented on campus is because they don’t hold up to intellectual scrutiny.

Interesting blanket statement if not completely false. The only thing you can sort of assume is that those with liberal/left leanings are more likely to be teachers.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#30

Post by assblaster »

I contend that this is yet more evidence that college education needs radical reformation.

The best way to reform college: competition.

Why not have a "free", government funded post secondary education that is online only and is standardized across the entire country. The standardized course content is created by the leading experts in all relevant subjects. Testing of students is on standardized exams only.

The cost of this system would be miniscule compared to the redundancy of multiple institutions, and to the physical footprint/costs of traditional schools. Especially in light of this article which shows huge resources spent on pet issues of liberal administrators.

When colleges need to compete on price with this free system, then colleges will reduce costs and cut this unneeded waste.

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