
No, Professors Aren't Discriminating Against Conservative Students - lnguyen
https://psmag.com/ideas/no-professors-arent-discriminating-against-conservative-students
======
istorical
Study results demonstrated that the grades after 4 years for conservative
students were not lower than for liberal students. There is a material
difference between proving the former and proving that conservative students
aren't discriminated against for espousing conservative ideas.

Their data did not capture whether these conservative students kept their
ideas to themselves and adopted the socially acceptable positions and beliefs
they would assume their professors were seeking in order to get the grades.
Why rock the boat when a college degree is an economic instrument and not some
kind of political debate?

"Over the phone, Woessner stresses that, in the end, he and his co-authors had
'to engage in speculation, trying to map our possible explanation ranging from
discrimination to skills to interests. [Conservative students] may be not as
engaged' when it comes to the humanities, whereas 'liberal students are much
less happy with their math classes.'"

Nonetheless interesting study, but headline writers once again drawing
conclusions beyond the scope of a study. Yay social science journalism. We'll
all continue on agreeing with headlines that conform to our echo chambers and
dismissing out of hand those that do not, regardless of what the actual study
truly demonstrated. Let's just infer explanations that makes sense to us and
interpret our findings the way that suits our agenda.

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mighty_bander
I'm prepared to believe that unconscious bias or systemic discrimination is
preferentially benefiting liberal students. What alarms me about this idea,
and the related one of group privilege, is not that they are necessarily wrong
(they quite possibly aren't), but that once you've convinced somebody that
they are subject to being unfair in a way that is invisible to them, it's not
hard to pull them around by the nose in whatever direction you like.

For that reason, if there's some activity or structure that discriminates
against someone who is acting in good faith, it should be addressed
specifically. In other words, it should be possible to clearly explain what a
problem is and how it functions, rather than tossing around vague accusations
of unfairness. By doing so, everybody benefits, and everybody has a fair
chance to be heard.

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listenallyall
Pacific Standard's headline is flat wrong: "when controlling for SAT scores
and demographics, differences between liberal and conservative students are
modest. For example, holding all else constant, the most liberal student would
enjoy a 0.16 point advantage over the most conservative student on a 7 point
scale. Given our large sample size, this difference is statistically
significant." (page 11 of the actual paper)

Modest. And statistically significant.

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geebee
I'm actually not terribly surprised to hear this. Bret Weinstein may have been
(and continue to be) a lifelong liberal, but from what I know about him, I
wouldn't expect him or professors like him to discriminate against
conservative students. Nor would I expect Nicolas Christakis to discriminate
against conservatives, I don't know him other than by what I've seen and heard
on the media, but this would seem very out of character. Yes, professors lean
left, but these are still, by and large, people who devoted their lives to
scholarly pursuits, and often show a very deep and principled adherence to the
pursuit of truth, where data and analysis takes you. Professors have long been
further to the left of mainstream society and their students, but until very
recently, conservatives and republicans, in polls, have viewed universities as
having a very positive effect on society. The collapse and political divide is
recent. It is driven, to an extent, by a effort to associate liberal
professors with the very worst attributes of "cancel" culture. Unfortunately,
while I continue to feel positively about universities, I can no longer agree
that this narrative is entirely fabricated, either.

My understanding is that college administrators tend to run more left wing
than college professors, and they may contribute more to the campus climate
than professors do - their ranks have swelled considerably in recent years. I
also suspect that professors self-censor, and that students do this as well -
not just conservatives, but moderates and liberals. I brought up Bret
Weinstein for a reason - liberal professors giving conservative students bad
grades simply to punish politics they don't like would be reprehensible, but I
don't think this is the elephant in the room.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> My understanding is that college administrators tend to run more left wing
> than college professors, and they may contribute more to the campus climate
> than professors do...

We have 15% women in STEM, and we're told that it's because of residues of the
oppressive patriarchy. Well, we have less than 15% conservatives among the
faculty of social science departments, and that's because... ?

~~~
caconym_
Well, since female is something you _are_ , while conservative is something
you _think_ , I imagine the reason for the latter discrepancy is probably
quite different from the reason for the former.

Is that what you were going to say? It looks like you forgot to conclude your
point.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
So you think it's wrong to not hire someone because they're female, but it's
fine to not hire them because they're conservative? That's where you draw your
lines? And if so, what is your justification for drawing them there?

~~~
caconym_
> So you think it's wrong to not hire someone because they're female, but it's
> fine to not hire them because they're conservative?

If you can show me where I said that or admit that you're putting words in my
mouth, I'd be more than happy to continue this conversation. Otherwise, (I'm
sorry but) I have a policy not to invest real effort in discussions with
people who are either incapable of or not interested in reading what I've
actually written, or are simply not arguing in good faith.

I'll say this much: I do think it's wrong to not hire somebody because they're
female, and I don't think it's _necessarily_ wrong to not hire somebody
because they express some arbitrary opinion that I think is bad. For instance,
if somebody told me in an interview that "women should be legally considered
property, without any rights of their own," I would not hire that person.

Is that a real conservative opinion held by a substantial number of people? In
some parts of the world, to a first approximation, I think the answer is yes!
"Conservative" and "liberal" are quite overloaded these days, wouldn't you
agree?

Anyway, just food for thought. Refer back to the first paragraph of this
comment if you want to continue this.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I thought the conclusion to my first post (which you complained was missing)
was quite obvious - that if we conclude, in the case of male/female imbalance,
that it's because of residual sexism (prejudice/discrimination), then in the
second case (liberal/conservative), it would be reasonable to conclude the
same. And (tying it back to geebee's comment that I was replying to), it's
probably discrimination on the part of college administrators, who lean even
more liberal.

I thought that inference was pretty obvious - so obvious that I assumed you
understood it when you made your comment, and that you therefore just didn't
want to admit the point. The alternatives were to assume the worst of your
honesty (the course I took), to assume the worst of your understanding, or to
assume the worst of the clarity of my post. In charity, I should have chosen
the last, but... I didn't.

At any rate, you said:

> Well, since female is something you are, while conservative is something you
> think, I imagine the reason for the latter discrepancy is probably quite
> different from the reason for the former.

The "discrepancy" we were talking about is differences in the rate of hiring.
My comment was (trying to say) that, if we suspect discrimination for the
male/female imbalance, shouldn't we suspect it for the liberal/conservative
imbalance? Suspecting bad faith on the part of your comment, then, you
certainly seemed to be saying that it was OK to not hire conservatives, but
not OK to not hire women.

But, presuming good faith on your part, then what _were_ you trying to say?

> Well, since female is something you are, while conservative is something you
> think, I imagine the reason for the latter discrepancy is probably quite
> different from the reason for the former.

So what _do_ you think the reasons are? How does what you are vs what you
think affect the situation? You complain that I didn't conclude my point, but
you left a lot to the imagination also.

> I'll say this much: I do think it's wrong to not hire somebody because
> they're female, and I don't think it's necessarily wrong to not hire
> somebody because they express some arbitrary opinion that I think is bad.
> For instance, if somebody told me in an interview that "women should be
> legally considered property, without any rights of their own," I would not
> hire that person.

I would hope you would not hire that person! But do you think that the
liberal/conservative imbalance in social science departments are because
almost all the conservative applicants are deplorable?

~~~
caconym_
> But, presuming good faith on your part, then what were you trying to say?

Nothing more or less than that the trait of being female is fundamentally
different from the trait of being conservative, so we shouldn't _necessarily_
expect the relative absences of these groups in certain positions (in the
general sense) to have similar root causes.

Frankly I think your conclusion is _too_ obvious to you, to the extent that
you aren't considering other (fairly obvious) possible mechanisms, like the
one another commenter mentioned
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20578689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20578689)).
I think he or she did a good job of articulating a similar point in a
different way.

Would you accept as a possibility that _neither_ of these imbalances is due
primarily to "hiring" bias? Or do you have some generally applicable evidence
of the "hiring" bias you're talking about in either case, i.e. identity,
physical or otherwise, being used to deny applicants access to a position? I'm
just saying the question is more complicated than you're making it out to be;
I don't claim to have the answer. It seems that you _are_ claiming that, and
IMO you're reading between a lot of lines to cast other commenters' words in
the form you're looking for.

("hiring" in quotes above because I think a lot of young women are put off
STEM while they're still in school, despite the fact that they would not have
had any trouble getting into the program(s))

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, no, I wasn't trying to claim that the STEM imbalance is because of
discrimination. (Or, as you mentioned, because of issues in school, which is
not the fault of hiring managers.) I was trying to poke at people who claim
discrimination for the STEM situation, but see no problem with the social
subjects being very one-sided on the liberal/conservative axis. I was
suggesting that, if they are so sure that it's discrimination in the gender
case, they should consider the same explanation in the conservative case.
(deogeo correctly stated my point.)

Do I think that the gender gap in STEM is because of discrimination? My guess
is no, or at least largely no, but I'm not sure I know enough to be dogmatic
on that subject.

Do I think that the gap in the social sciences is because of discrimination
(or at least bias)? Given the liberal/conservative gap in school
administrators, it seems to me that it would be almost a miracle if that
wasn't at least part of the reason... but I have no concrete information.

------
martin1b
Maybe not grades. However, I've seen and heard from others of their professors
routinely berating conservatives of their beliefs in front of the class.

