Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 124 posts

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#31

Post by nasredin »

Helloworldboy wrote: post #19
stupidcar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are white supremacists a "fringe", when you have a US President who openly supports and defends them? Who spreads their propaganda to his 40 million Twitter followers? You can argue about to what extent his views are shared within the wider conservative movement, but when the conservative movement's democratically chosen leader supports an ideology like this, it is clearly not a "fringe".

Openly supports and defends? I'm no Trump fan but this seems blatantly false. He seems to have been disavowing racists since the start.

Have we discovered parallel alternate realities while I was asleep?

The ones were Trump quickly condemned people shouting Nazi slogans without qualifications? Not to mention the vehicular murder.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#32

Post by defen »

klank wrote: post #24
smallnamespace wrote: post #10

Just as an anecdote, met a recent state school grad who said he arrived on campus as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, tried to get into campus activism, and his fellow activists and teachers scared him so much that he's now not sure where he stands politically. Obviously I can't verify this, but for example he had a professor who actively taught that nations are a completely artificial social construct, and as such all im…

> nations are a completely artificial social construct But if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they? Is it the word "artificial" that is so surprising? Maybe I have more fringe beliefs than I thought I did.

> if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they?

A Schelling point for coordinated actions by large groups of people, organized around ethnic, cultural, and/or linguistic grounds?

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#33

Post by ZoeZoeBee »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #26
Helloworldboy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have riots over right-leaning moderates like Ben Shapiro, I think it's clear that there is a free-speech problem at universities in the US.

In which universe do you live in that Shapiro is a moderate?

Curious which views of Shapiro's do you believe are extreme? Are you a person who believes gender is merely a social construct whereby the genetics of a person hold no bearing on their attributes?

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#34

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nilkn wrote: post #7
lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #2

When "conservative speakers" has expanded to include literal white supremacists it's somehow hard to empathize with the plight of the conservative mindshare among the educated. The first amendment gives citizens the right to hold ideas free of government prosecution; it does not include any mandate for the population to buy into any of those ideas. Trying to sell a philosophy of "fuck you got mine" to young people mi…

I don't think this is really about free speech in the sense of the First Amendment. Universities are supposed to be about the pursuit of knowledge, and it's pretty unlikely that conservatives are wrong about everything and liberals are right about everything. Moreover, I don't think any reasonable person would say that any historical political party has ever been correct on every issue. So again it's quite unlikely t…

More: Thinking you're right about everything and your opponents are wrong about everything, and therefore not bothering to listen to your opponents, is a great way to become more and more wrong over time.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#35

Post by [deleted] »

klank wrote: post #24
smallnamespace wrote: post #10

Just as an anecdote, met a recent state school grad who said he arrived on campus as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, tried to get into campus activism, and his fellow activists and teachers scared him so much that he's now not sure where he stands politically. Obviously I can't verify this, but for example he had a professor who actively taught that nations are a completely artificial social construct, and as such all im…

> nations are a completely artificial social construct But if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they? Is it the word "artificial" that is so surprising? Maybe I have more fringe beliefs than I thought I did.

[deleted]

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#36

Post by NPV_Computers »

klank wrote: post #24
smallnamespace wrote: post #10

Just as an anecdote, met a recent state school grad who said he arrived on campus as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, tried to get into campus activism, and his fellow activists and teachers scared him so much that he's now not sure where he stands politically. Obviously I can't verify this, but for example he had a professor who actively taught that nations are a completely artificial social construct, and as such all im…

> nations are a completely artificial social construct But if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they? Is it the word "artificial" that is so surprising? Maybe I have more fringe beliefs than I thought I did.

Yes, the problem is with the "artificial" part. Lots of things are social constructs but that does not that mean that you can dismiss them as automatically illegitimate.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#37

Post by jseliger »

Helloworldboy wrote: post #16
PatientTrades wrote: post #4

> to tax large university endowments and make other tax and spending changes that might adversely affect universities Why shouldn't major universities pay their fair share to help society? Most of these elite universities literally pocket billions of dollars at the end of the fiscal year. Major universities have essentially evolved into corporations.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is absolutely the case. Just look at the exploding expenditure on "administration" rather than education at these universities. Universities exploit ridiculous student loan programs to make indentured servants out of their customers.

It's being downvoted because a sentence like this: "Most of these elite universities literally pocket billions of dollars at the end of the fiscal year" is so vague that it's hard to tell what exactly he meas.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#38

Post by juliangoldsmith »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #3

As the American right-wing moves further right and further way from participating in consensus reality, it should be no surprise they are increasingly less welcome in spaces dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. If you reject not only the politics of your opponents, but the value of fact itself, why should they listen to or accommodate you? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16588964/a...

>As the American right-wing moves further right and further way from participating in consensus reality, it should be no surprise they are increasingly less welcome in spaces dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge.

The problem is the gap between consensus reality and objective reality.

A lot of what the American left has been preaching recently (the Russia-Trump story, for instance) has no basis in objective reality, but people believe it because everyone else believes it. When a small number of large companies control almost the entirety of the media, it's not difficult to change consensus reality.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#39

Post by klank »

defen wrote: post #32
klank wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nations are a completely artificial social construct But if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they? Is it the word "artificial" that is so surprising? Maybe I have more fringe beliefs than I thought I did.

> if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they? A Schelling point for coordinated actions by large groups of people, organized around ethnic, cultural, and/or linguistic grounds?

Had to look up "Schelling point", so apologies if I'm not fully grasping what you mean by it.

However, "organized around ethnic, cultural, and/or linguistic grounds" seems like another way of saying "social construct".

If you were to compare and contrast what you suggest with a social construct how would they be different?

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#40

Post by ZoeZoeBee »

jseliger wrote: post #37
Helloworldboy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is absolutely the case. Just look at the exploding expenditure on "administration" rather than education at these universities. Universities exploit ridiculous student loan programs to make indentured servants out of their customers.

It's being downvoted because a sentence like this: "Most of these elite universities literally pocket billions of dollars at the end of the fiscal year" is so vague that it's hard to tell what exactly he meas.

I'd imagine he's discussing the endowments of said universities, which are earning billions of dollars a year
Post reply on HN