
Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them - LeeHwang
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/elite-colleges-are-making-it-easy-for-conservatives-to-dislike-them/2017/11/30/0d2ef31a-d52a-11e7-a986-d0a9770d9a3e_story.html
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smallnamespace
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 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.

~~~
klank
> 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.

~~~
defen
> 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?

~~~
klank
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?

~~~
defen
Too often I see people argue "X is a social construct" as a way of arguing
that X "doesn't exist", or that people who believe in it have a kind of false
consciousness.

I'm trying to show why people believe in it. Yes, it's a social construct; but
that doesn't mean it's worthless - "money" is also a social construct: it only
has value because other people think it has value.

The nation appears to be the largest stable unit of organization humans are
capable of, at present at least. The history of the world has shown that
Empires don't last too long these days.

------
CJefferson
I'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).

------
TazeTSchnitzel
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...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2017/11/2/16588964/america-epistemic-crisis)

~~~
confuseddesi
Perhaps it is the American right-wing moving further right, but I am more
inclined to believe the American left is moving farther left:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/why-
ame...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/why-america-is-
moving-left/419112/)

Take for example this speech by Bill Clinton in 1995:
[https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4654597/bill-clinton-
illegal-...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4654597/bill-clinton-illegal-
immigration): "That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure
our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting
twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal
hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens."

To think that this was a speech by a Democrat president about 20 years ago is
unfathomable to the left today.

~~~
mikeash
In the 90s, the Democrats were trying to enact a single-payer health care
system, and the Republican response to it was similar to what we now know as
the ACA. Now, the Democrats fight for the Republican plan and the Republicans
want to do away with it altogether.

Democrats in the late 60s wanted a national gun registry and ban handguns for
anyone who can't demonstrate a need, with household self-protection not
considered sufficient need. Any existing guns that didn't qualify would be
confiscated. Republicans only wanted to ban things like assault weapons,
ownership by felons, and carrying loaded weapons in public. Now, Democrats
struggle to ban assault weapons, and Republicans oppose almost all forms of
gun control.

FDR enacted a top marginal income tax rate of 94%. Republicans wanted taxes
reduced, after the war, to a level that would pay for postwar government
spending. Now, the top marginal income tax rate is 39.6%, with Democrats
proposing little tweaks like increasing it a bit or increasing the payroll tax
cap, and Republicans wanting to slash tax rates (I saw one the other day
saying that we should aim for 1-2%) and not caring in the least about the
increased deficits this would bring.

Seems to me that the American left is moving sharply right, to the point where
the Democratic Party would be considered centrist or mildly right-wing by most
standards, while the American right is _also_ moving sharply right and is
teetering on the precipice of going all-in on racist nationalism.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> Republicans only wanted to ban things like assault weapons, ownership by
> felons, and carrying loaded weapons in public.

Citation needed.

~~~
mikeash
Check out the Gun Control Act of 1968 which was greatly shaped by the NRA (cut
down from a stricter version, but they were OK with banning gun ownership by
felons), the Mulford Act which prohibited carrying loaded weapons in public in
California and passed with bipartisan support (signed into law by none other
than Ronald Reagan), and the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban (which didn't
have Republican support in Congress but did have support from both Reagan and
Gerald Ford).

------
d3fr4gm3nt
I think the article makes good points about some craziness on college
campuses, particularly regarding actions restricting freedom of speech, but to
use that as a justification to hurt seemingly left tilted institutions is a
weak argument.

This kind of justification doesn't help the already partisan environment and
further encourages tribalism and defence of bad ideas.

The optics of the article makes it looks like "we don't like you, so we're
going to hit you where it hurts", something that the constitution seeks to
prevent(re: "tyranny of majority").

Freedom of speech suppression isn't exclusively a left problem as can be seen
in the link below, I'd agree that it's more of a left problem than right:
[https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-
database/](https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-database/)

What we need is more debate not less, and taxing endownments isn't going to
help that, I'm, not sure what will though either, people seemingly don't want
to debate anymore.

------
mixmastamyk
I 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.

------
j4ship
I thought we were going to stay away from politics on hacker news. especially
becuase of the liberal bias in the community and the mods.

------
PatientTrades
> 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.

~~~
Helloworldboy
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.

~~~
jseliger
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.

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
I'd imagine he's discussing the endowments of said universities, which are
earning billions of dollars a year

