

Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire - charzom
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/arts/03camp.html?em&ex=1215230400&en=277d97f191ea34f1&ei=5070

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hugh
As a non-leftist who moves in academic circles, I have to say it's still very
difficult. Even in the hard sciences, I find that every social gathering I go
to winds up turning into a classic left-wing whine-about-everything, and I
have to bite my tongue. More than once I've wanted to get out of academia,
just because the lack of intellectual diversity was getting too much for me.
And that's leaving aside the direct hostility which I have encountered when
I've actually made my views known (which I've avoided doing at the couple of
places I've worked most recently).

Of course, it's a vicious circle. If I'm thinking of leaving due to the
hostile environment, then surely other non-leftist academics are actually
leaving, keeping the environment hostile.

As is usually the case in a New York Times "let's collect a couple of
anecdotes and extrapolate a huge trend" articles, the data doesn't back up the
conclusions.

~~~
gaius
<http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html>

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notdarkyet
I think that activism not political is the keyword. As a current college
student, within most of the conversations that I have had with other students,
they seem to be heavily opinionated and "passionate" about politics and their
ideals but lack any real knowledge over the topics or positions they discuss.
In a half hour drunken conversation, you could turn a "hardcore democrat" into
someone who believes they are actually more libertarian leaning (which I do
believe most inherently gravitate towards when questioned over their
positions).

Nowadays (even thought I have no clue what it was like in the past), the youth
support politics as a fashion statement rather than a representation of their
ideals. They seem to fall in line with the parties and mindlessly support the
policy that they believe they should. Their knowledge of politics only goes to
the extent of what there five minute glance on the news says it should be,
which is quite saddening. I am not stereotyping, but the trend I see most is
that individuals fall in line with what ever there social groups expected
political stance would be, the "frat-boy" types all tend to support
republicans because they support the troops and are against gay marriage, the
"socially conscious intellectual" student strongly supports democratic
principals (or what ever the author of the book they are reading at the time
supports) and so on and so forth. Politics for many at the college level seems
to just be an extension of their fashion or lifestyle, or simply what they
think they should support because of the image they portray.

The truth is very few actually give a shit and will continue to not care until
there cushy lifestyle is taken away or they are oppressed in some way or
another. Most likely at that point it will be too late. I know I come off as a
cynic but sometimes it is just too easy in this world.

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ivankirigin
I wish people included intellectual diversity in their quest for universal
diversity on college campuses. There is a good movie about this:
<http://indoctrinate-u.com>

It's from the guy behind Brain Terminal, whose videos are hilarious:
<http://brain-terminal.com/posts/category/bt-video/>

Thank god engineering departments exist. If they didn't, I'd question the need
for most people to go to college. $200K to earn $25K/yr at a non-profit -
doing work you could have done in high school.

I went to a tour of Stanford recently. The tour guide mentioned the increases
in tuition. I asked what they went to. He didn't know. I know most research
labs are funded by a combination of government grants and undergrad tuition.
What about the rest?

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vaksel
I think the problem is you have liberals but not actual conservatives. The
conservatives we currently have, care more about gay marriage than keeping the
government small and having a balanced budget.

~~~
hugh
An overgeneralization, of course. It's just that those are the ones you hear
most about in the media. One could speculate that left-wing media sources are
more comfortable portraying the crazy conservatives than the sensible ones
(just as Fox News is more comfortable portraying the crazy leftists than the
sensible ones).

~~~
rkts
So, just to be clear: you're saying that anyone who cares more about gay
marriage than the government's budget is crazy?

~~~
gaius
You have to understand where we're coming from on this. The present-day law on
gay marriage was changed due to the wording of the original law, written in a
time when gay marriage wasn't even being considered, which happened to say
something like "two persons" rather than "a man and a woman".

The Republic will not fall because Adam marries Steve. What consenting adults
get up to on private property is no-one's business but their own, certainly
not the Governments. But it _is_ under threat when law is made through legal
chicanery rather than the democratic process. _That_ is why Conservatives are
up in arms about gay marriage.

~~~
rkts
Do you have any data to support that claim? The conservatives I know oppose
gay marriage because they consider it immoral, not because of some abstract
stuff about the democratic process.

~~~
gaius
Well, my "data" is the same as yours, people I know (including myself).

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Mystalic
Balance is a good thing. Challenging beliefs is a good thing. Variety in
political, social, economic, religious, and personal beliefs is a great thing.

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edw519
This article completely misses the point. Instead of citing outlying cases,
maybe it should have dealt with the elephant in the living room:

Vietnam

College students in the 60's weren't "playing politics". They were protesting
an illegal, immoral, and unwinnable war. Hell, half the men on campus were
there so they wouldn't have to go to Vietnam.

I imagine today's generation of professors would feel a little differently if
TV news showed maimed soldiers in Iraq every night, their classes were full of
young men who didn't want to be drafted, and their campuses were occupied by
armed National Guardsmen who shot unarmed students.

[Prediction: This will be voted up by those who actually experienced the
absurdity of the 60's and voted down by those who can't imagine it could have
been that bad. Since the average age in this community is probably below 40,
this post will end up negative.]

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Professors have always been more liberal and left-leaning than the general
population. This goes back further than a hundred years in my reckoning. For
instance in the 20s and 30s there was a large percentage of academics who
thought communism was the best choice for western civilization.

Vietnam has little to do with it.

Interesting (to me) is the tendency for left-leaning progressives to continue
to live and fight battles from the past. The recent Iraq war has caused some
to try to replay Vietnam. The coming nomination of Obama is very JFK-ish.
We're having a very 60-ish discussion on how man is immoral in his treatment
of the environment. I always thought the conservatives were the ones who lived
in the past, but I think that has changed over the last five years or so.

My opinion only. Do not operate heavy machinery after reading this comment.

~~~
davidw
> This goes back further than a hundred years in my reckoning.

Galileo apparently said that some of his best years were those at the
University of Padova:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Padua#History>

... which, as the article says, had more freedom and less influence from the
Catholic church.

However: this strikes me as not really being hacker news.

(PS, check out this guy, who came out of Padova:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin> )

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stcredzero
Human beings are political creatures. So politics suffuses everything.
Unfortunately, I've met many people who seem to believe that politics is the
foundation to everything. If it weren't widely known and ridiculed, I
sometimes wonder if these people think that the Indiana state legislature
attempt to make Pi = 3 would've worked!

I think the atmosphere of political contention on campuses sometimes
exacerbates this.

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MoeDrippins
Agree with Mystalic. I'm probably more conservative than liberal, but I want
people to HAVE choices and be able to think critically, even if they make
different choices than I do. This is saddening news.

~~~
jimbokun
I don't understand. The article seems to be about faculty becoming more
diverse in outlook as older professors retire, unless I am misunderstanding
something?

~~~
yummyfajitas
From the article: "The authors are not talking about a political realignment.
Democrats continue to overwhelmingly outnumber Republicans among faculty,
young and old."

I think they are just describing the younger faculty being less activist about
their political views. Take a look at the second graph they provide. There is
a small increase in conservatives in the social sciences (probably due to
increases in the percentage of economists), but little else to support the
claim that faculties are becoming more diverse.

Even that, I'll be very skeptical of. At every university I've been to, self
identified "liberals" are socialist and self identified "moderates" are merely
left wing democrats.

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jimbokun
"A seminar on great books at Princeton jointly taught by two philosophers, the
left-wing Cornel West and the right-wing Robert P. George."

I'd like to hear that.

~~~
hugh
Perhaps, but I'd prefer a seminar on great books taught my one really good
professor who knew how to keep his own political views from tainting his views
on literature.

~~~
edw519
_one really good professor who knew how to keep his own political views from
tainting his views_

You mean like a math or science professor?

~~~
hugh
Funnily enough, I was reading Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare last night, and
thinking how great it was to have literature explained by a man with a clear
scientific mind instead of a mushy literary one.

Unfortunately, the Asimovs of this world are few and far between.

