Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
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Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
1–10 of 124 posts
Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
#2When "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 might be an uphill battle.
Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
#3As 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...
Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
#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.
Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
#5I agree that the folks on “one side” get crazy at times, but without their presence to provide an anchor, the other is unrestricted and just as willing to go off the deep end.
Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
#6I'm in the UK, working at a university and I'm going to say, the conservatives do have something of a point, although they greatly exaggerate it.
Before the Brexit vote, I found it would offend many academics to even discuss that the vote might pass, and people might have legitimate greviences that would make them vote for Brexit.
Now, I'm personally against Brexit, but i think the main reason it passed was the "liberal elite" refused to even discuss with the people who wanted Brexit, so they they turned to the likes of UKIP, who would talk to them about the problems (and then lie to them, which is how we ended up in this Brexit mess).
Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
#7When "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 that the present-day left is the first ever exception to that pattern.
You mentioned white supremacists, but I think you're focusing on a fringe and extreme element of the right in an attempt to discredit all right-leaning speakers. There are similarly fringe left-leaning speakers, and a lot of interesting, well-spoken, articulate folks in between, so I don't find this argument very compelling.
Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
#8As 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...
> If you reject not only the politics of your opponents, but the value of fact itself, why should they listen to or accommodate you?
Because "you" (i.e. the right wing, in your analogy) can muster more votes from the political center than "they" can and can put into place governmental and economic policy that can disrupt or damage said "spaces dedicated dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge" greatly.
The ivory tower doesn't exist in a vacuum. Its gates can be besieged by the populace and it can fall to its besiegers.
Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
#9As 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...
I know. There's been an organized project on the right to undermine universities since the 60's. Any accommodation made to them is a small victory.
Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them
#10Just 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 immigration policies of any sort are illegitimate and harmful.
France was brought up as a particular example. Also, this view point was not up for classroom debate -- you would get a bad grade if you deviated from this in homework essays.
I think true liberalism is not just having a general set of 'progressive' values, but also being open to dissenting opinions and facing them honestly and openly. That doesn't mean agreeing with those opinions, but it does mean being exposed to them and debating them.
What we see on campuses today doesn't sound like liberalism to me, but a reactionary movement that aims to protect an orthodoxy composed of generally liberal viewpoints not by engaging in debate, but by preemptively shaming and denouncing anyone who disagrees.
Even if you believe liberal viewpoints are generally correct, nobody has a total monopoly on Truth.