Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators • Hacker News Board

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#61

Post by weberc2 » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

jchanimal wrote: post #41

weberc2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Ok I’ll bite. Another unsubstantiated conservative canard: taxes are bad. When in fact highly redistributive polices are correlated with all-boats-rising economic tides. “But who cares if we are all worse off, taxes are theft,” whines the conservative. Cry me a river, it was always already the government’s money.

> “But who cares if we are all worse off, taxes are theft,” whines the conservative

You're proving my point. This is a fringe conservative position (conservatives are okay with taxes for critical infrastructure, national defense, some minimal social safety net, etc), but you're using that brush to paint all conservatives. Sadly, portraying moderates as extremists has become a goto debate tactic for the left wing, and it's frankly _boring_ never mind morally repugnant.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#62

Post by jchanimal » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

warrenm wrote: post #51

jchanimal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I’ll bite. Another unsubstantiated conservative canard: taxes are bad. When in fact highly redistributive polices are correlated with all-boats-rising economic tides. “But who cares if we are all worse off, taxes are theft,” whines the conservative. Cry me a river, it was always already the government’s money.

> it was always already the government’s money Sounds like you went to the same fallacious economic school Elizabeth Warren did

I'm not the one choosing to fetishize some government's money.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#63

Post by iaosfgnionio » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

JoHawth31 wrote: post #59

iaosfgnionio wrote: post #47

I've never been sure whether or not this is a problem. Academics are not a representative cross-section of the American people, so there's no real reason to expect their political opinions to be representative. I would argue that professors should know better than the general public. In that case, we should want to see true beliefs over-represented and false ones under-represented. So-called liberal and conservative…

A couple things I think you’re missing: Your assumption that one of the positions, either liberal or conservative, must be correct, is wrong. Second, the assumption that professors know better than the general population in all cases is also incorrect. People in academia have a way of thinking that is sometimes divorced from reality and real world experience. Professors can be much more wrong than the general populat…

>Your assumption that one of the positions, either liberal or conservative, must be correct, is wrong.

I didn't say that. I said that at most one is right.

I would also say that, even if both are wrong, one is probably wronger than the other.

>Second, the assumption that professors know better than the general population in all cases is also incorrect.

I didn't assume they do know better. But I think we should want them to. Which would imply they should be "biased."

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#64

Post by geofft » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #19

geofft wrote: post #8

I have a few questions: 1. Why aren't there very many conservative administrators? Are they not interested in these sorts of jobs, or is there discrimination/bias in the hiring process? 2. Why does having such events threaten the free and open exchange of ideas? Shouldn't it be quite the opposite? Incoming conservative students are being exposed to viewpoints they haven't heard before; isn't that a good thing? 3. Why…

1. There may be biological reasons why people with conservative psychology are better suited for other jobs than University administrator. 4. By the literal meanings of the words, justice for women is progressive, not conservative. Giving women civil rights wss please.

1. I'd like to see the author explore that.

4. Ok, then, is it not a moral imperative for those of us who agree with progress to silence conservatives, and vice versa? Who is the author appealing to by extolling the virtues of an open and well-represented conversation?

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#65

Post by viggity » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

sebular wrote: post #49

viggity wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that the only diversity that administrators care about is diversity of (largely) indelible characteristics (skin color, sexual orientation, etc), instead of diversity of thought. I'd much rather go to a school where everyone looked the same but thought different, than a school where everyone looked different but thought the same.

You contradict yourself. You imagine a school where everyone looks the same but thinks "different", and yet by your own definition that school doesn't have any women, blacks, gays, etc. How would that work? Do you imagine an academy of straight white men, some of which serve as delegates for the types of thought that emerge from groups that aren't allowed to attend? Your line of reasoning is the perfect example of th…

in my hypothetical, I don't care what they look like, they could all be asian lesbians. There are conservative asian lesbians. There are liberal asian lesbians. Poor. Rich. Urban. Rural. From America. From Europe. ad infinitum. As long there is a good mix of backgrounds and ideologies. I will very much take that environment over a rainbow coalition will make attempts to ruin someone who dares disagree with the hivemind.

Regarding tolerance - you do not see conservatives trying to no-platform liberals, but I could get you 100 examples of college liberals trying to no-platform conservatives. Who exactly are the tolerant ones?

Did you see what happened to Bret Weinstein at Evergreen College? He is an ostensibly liberal guy, and what happened to him should send a shiver down the leg of anyone who is remotely interested in a free exchange of ideas.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#66

Post by LiterallyDoge » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

Why is this post flagged?

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#67

Post by true_religion » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #10

The topics discussed are about as political as “slavery is wrong.” Edit-Just to add a quote, the author describes the following as being liberally “lopsided.” “The conference would touch on such progressive topics as liberation spaces on campus, Black Lives Matter and justice for women as well as for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and allied people.” This has no place on HN, as it’s cle…

To be fair, no one ever describes their side in unfavorable terms so I cannot expect the conference’s self description to be poorly worded.

For example, a conference for hardcore racists will claim to talk about the importance of “european heritage”, and hardcore sexists merely claim to want “traditional family values”.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#68

Post by true_religion » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #57

jeffdavis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even among liberal-minded people, the politics and culture presented at colleges is exceedingly narrow. Regardless, colleges should deal with bad ideas by acknowledging and refuting them, not pretending they don't exist. I have a theory that people born after about 1980 don't really understand bigotry they just know there are certain things they can't say and certain things they should say. That leaves them ignorant…

"they just know there are certain things they can't say and certain things they should say" Ah the decades-old conservative "political correctness" culture war strategy (successful I might add). You'd have to be a complete idiot to make it through school and not realize why these "certain things" are offensive - OR you could be making a disingenuous argument because you support bigotry (my vote is on the latter). Wha…

Conservative groups are not evil, or even reactionary by definition. In my experience, conservative groups favor the staus quo, no matter what that may be.

Liberal groups on the other hand, favor some sort of change, but the actual specifics vary from group to group. On something as simple as environmentalism, you will see a range between people who want laws to ensure pets are well treated, and people who think all animal domestication is slavery and every pet ought to be freed into the wild.

A conservative group on the other hand will trend to defend whatever law existed when they grew up. Sure it is not a very clever policy, but thats the essense of it.

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#69

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #17

politically lopsided When the fuck did equal rights for minorities, women, and GLBTQ become "politically lopsided". We're talking about human rights here. There is no legitimate "other side" to this argument, just hate. This article is concern trolling 101.

[deleted]

Re: Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators

#70

Post by true_religion » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #42

creaghpatr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no legitimate "other side" to this argument, just hate. This is a perfect example of the problem, no intellectual capability to refute, resulting in a desperate resort to bigotry.

There's no intellectual argument to refute. Just the conservative trope "my opinions are being oppressed!" then when you ask about their conservative principles it basically boils down to justifying their racism/sexism or their own bigotry.

Oh, I can give you examples.

Here is one: the natural hair movement, good or bad?

A liberal view is on favor of it, as straightening ones hair can be seen as trying to ape European hair type, and popularizing it as glamarous demeans people with naturally kinky hair forcing them to change to an unnatural state.

A conservative view holds that hair straightening is ok, as that is the culture which we grew up in, and to throw it away turns our backs on the decades of tradition and shared culture around it.

A hostile liberal would say a conservative is an “uncle tom” at best, or at worst someone who was brainwashed by racists and is a danger to society.

The hostility prevents further discussion.

.........

I am sure this is not what you expected but I chose a light topic intentionally to show it is the hostility and not the base principles that are at fault.

Also I wanted to show that the conservative / liberal divide is not one of race. Many blacks have conservative views if you look outside of race issues (e.g. topics of religion trend conservative within the black community).