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A university president makes a case against cowardice

newyorker.com

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Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#251

Post by Duwensatzaj »

lmm wrote: post #221
jhbadger wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how society progresses though. Before 1865, slavery was mainstream and abolitionists were weird radical crazies. Before 1965, "Jim Crow" laws that said non-whites had to use different bathrooms and drinking fountains were mainstream, and people who opposed them were seen as unreasonable.

And back in the 1960s a planned economy was normal and reasonable, and many progressives openly called for normalisation of sex with teenagers. Sometimes shifts in attitudes are progress. Sometimes they're just a random walk. Sometimes the left is right, sometimes the right is.

Eugenics as in forcible sterilization of the “unfit” was similarly Progressive back in the early 20th.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#252

Post by SoftTalker »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #232
SoftTalker wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's political opinions definitely change, especially with age and wealth.

They do change to some degree, but I believe that age and wealth are not nearly as strong of factors as popular culture might have one think.

I guess it depends. 40 years later, I vote completely opposite to what I did when I was 18-20 years old.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#253

Post by xracy »

Georgelemental wrote: post #244

[flagged]

How has this happened? What are your concrete examples of this having happened?

I suspect all of the example(s) you might have are going to be overblown news storie(s) But if there are decades of this, I'd love to see the evidence.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#254

Post by xracy »

jart wrote: post #228
bobthepanda wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also to some degree there is anti-elitist backlash after being told you need to have a bachelor's, which is very expensive at these universities, but also it's basically impossible to get an entry-level white collar job without one these days; and for a while the economy bifurcated with different outcomes for white-collar knowledge vs. blue-collar workers.

60% of the US workforce these days is white collar, and it's one of the great illusions of our time. Most of these jobs only exist to keep busy the 60% of the US workforce that has a degree. In the 1940's about 30% of the US workforce was white collar and only 5% had degrees. What caused this change? It's probably because blue collar workers made so much money and had so much leverage that businesses shipped all thei…

great illusions of our time, like there's not data to back it up?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#256

Post by WalterBright »

sequoia wrote: post #49

A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?

They could try hiring some conservative professors.

https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/2/homogenous_the_p...

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#257

Post by karaterobot »

sequoia wrote: post #49

A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?

You're framing this in an odd way if you want neutral responses. Is withdrawing federal funding an attack? The government has always used the power of the purse as a lever to influence many institutions, including universities, and it often uses this mechanism to exert influence for ideological purposes. The most famous example is withholding funding for roads until states mandated a drinking age of 21. It's how the federal-state power asymmetry works. The disturbing thing is that Congress isn't really the one exerting it in this case, not that it's being used at all.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#258

Post by [deleted] »

e40 wrote: post #124
krapp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about this is new - the right has harbored a particular hatred for "academics" and "intellectuals" since at least the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. Today's fear of "wokism" is just the prior generation's fear of "cultural marxism" with a new coat of paint. But this kind of political talk is against the guidelines. Good hackers don't care about any of this. So Javascript is getting crazy, h…

When the politics get crazy enough it bleeds into everything, which is why it's now acceptable to discuss here.

[deleted]
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