> I don't buy your distinction between Wheaton and MIT. Free speech pre-dates the scientific method and exists independently of scientific inquiry.
You can publish your research that challenges the status quo so long as Free Speech is respected. Do you think it's a coincidence that Socrates challenged the physicists in Athens? (Granted that was one of the reasons they executed him) Or Aristotle? I can't think of better examples of early science and those came up under the first place we know of that did direct democracy.
> Also, at places like Wheaton and Hillsdale, politics are part-and-parcel with religion. Demanding religious belief, while allow a broad spectrum in which to express that belief, is one thing. But the divide between politics and religion at these places is tenuous at best.
Again. They're evangelical colleges. What do you really expect?
> Humanities and social sciences vary by field. IDK a lot about most of them them. But the one person I know from purdue -- where Freddie is from -- is in the humanities and very conservative (and doesn't hide it or anything).
Maybe Freddie should've taken a leaf out of your book and talked to more people while at Purdue -- the unimaginable was right in front of him ;-)
Yes, one person is a preponderance of evidence. Not countless articles of students and professors being harassed and attacked for their conservative views in an environment that is supposed to be about higher truth. And some of those views that are becoming less and less conservative over time.
"For years and years I have denied the idea that campus is a space that’s antagonistic to conservative students. I thought Michael Berube’s book What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? was the last word on the subject. I still reject a lot of the David Horowitz narrative. But as a member of the higher education community I just have to be real with you: the vibe on campus really has changed. I spent years teaching at a university in a conservative state recently and I was kind of shocked at how openly fellow instructors would complain about the politics of their students, how personal they go when condemning their students who espoused conventional Republican politics. I encounter professors all the time who think that it’s fine for a student to say “I’m With Her” in class but not for a student to say “Make America Great Again” — that’s hate speech, see — despite the fact that both are simply the recent campaign slogans of the two major political parties. Yet those profs recoil at the idea that they’re not accepting of conservative students.
I hear people say that they won’t permit arguments against affirmative action in their classes — hate speech, again — despite the fact that depending on how the question is asked, a majority of Americans oppose race-based affirmative action in polling, including in some polls a majority of Hispanic Americans. The number of boilerplate conservative opinions that are taken to be too offensive to be voiced in the campus space just grows and grows, and yet progressive profs I know are so offended by the idea that they could be creating a hostile atmosphere, they won’t even discuss the subject in good faith."
"The idea that we need any intellectual diversity at all invites immediate incredulous statements like, “you’re saying we should debate eugenics?!?,” as though the only positions that exist are the obviously correct and the obviously horrible. The idea that you’re supposed to read the publications of the antagonistic viewpoint has been dismissed as a relic. People call for conservative books to be pulled from library shelves; they insist that the plays of conservative David Mamet have no place in the contemporary theater;"
> Sure, "more" is relative and being a minority always sucks.
Still, MIT might make you feel alone. Hillsdale will just expel you.
I don't think forced resignation and expulsion are much different.
I've already conceded that most universities are majority liberal and that being in a minority is always uncomfortable.
The rest of your anecdotes are just that. So one guy has some bad coworkers. BTW, my response is more than just any old anecdote -- It's a refutation of the single anecdote that you're offering. Same time, same place.
Do people get harassed and fired for political beliefs? Absolutely. And the fact that organizations like FIRE fight back when this happens is great.
But the "liberals attacking free speech on campus" thing is a bunch of politicized bullshit. At most non-religious universities, this isn't happening in any meaningful sense.
Let's put this in perspective. FIRE has less than 1000 cases over the past decade that I can find on their website. Literally millions -- probably tens of millions -- of controversial speech acts happen on American campuses every year.
Universities are still bastions of free speech. If you're conservative, you might find a lot of people who disagree with you. But the odds are extraordinarily small that you'll be silenced in any meaningful way. Like literally a one in a million+ shot.
I'm not saying that it's OK when it happens. I'm just saying the whole "liberals shut down free speech on campus thing" is over-dramatized echo chamber bullshit, that you only notice because there's an entire cottage industry generating outrage every time that 1/1000000 event happens.
this reply probably doesn't matter since this thread is a few days old, but here goes anyway:
> I encounter professors all the time who think that it’s fine for a student to say “I’m With Her” in class but not for a student to say “Make America Great Again” — that’s hate speech, see — despite the fact that both are simply the recent campaign slogans of the two major political parties.
here's the thing: "Make America Great Again" is a dog-whistle slogan, pining for a time that was racist. it is, to a lot of people (myself included), an inherently racist slogan. so, the problem is that a statement which was "simply the recent campaign [slogan]" of a major political party was, in fact, racist. i know it seems crazy to some people, but one of our major political parties ran an overtly racist candidate, on a (barely) covertly racist platform.
EDIT: sometimes the platform was overtly racist too. though it tried it's best to make it palatable for people who wouldn't want to identify as racist.
You can publish your research that challenges the status quo so long as Free Speech is respected. Do you think it's a coincidence that Socrates challenged the physicists in Athens? (Granted that was one of the reasons they executed him) Or Aristotle? I can't think of better examples of early science and those came up under the first place we know of that did direct democracy.
> Also, at places like Wheaton and Hillsdale, politics are part-and-parcel with religion. Demanding religious belief, while allow a broad spectrum in which to express that belief, is one thing. But the divide between politics and religion at these places is tenuous at best.
Again. They're evangelical colleges. What do you really expect?
> Humanities and social sciences vary by field. IDK a lot about most of them them. But the one person I know from purdue -- where Freddie is from -- is in the humanities and very conservative (and doesn't hide it or anything). Maybe Freddie should've taken a leaf out of your book and talked to more people while at Purdue -- the unimaginable was right in front of him ;-)
Yes, one person is a preponderance of evidence. Not countless articles of students and professors being harassed and attacked for their conservative views in an environment that is supposed to be about higher truth. And some of those views that are becoming less and less conservative over time.
"For years and years I have denied the idea that campus is a space that’s antagonistic to conservative students. I thought Michael Berube’s book What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? was the last word on the subject. I still reject a lot of the David Horowitz narrative. But as a member of the higher education community I just have to be real with you: the vibe on campus really has changed. I spent years teaching at a university in a conservative state recently and I was kind of shocked at how openly fellow instructors would complain about the politics of their students, how personal they go when condemning their students who espoused conventional Republican politics. I encounter professors all the time who think that it’s fine for a student to say “I’m With Her” in class but not for a student to say “Make America Great Again” — that’s hate speech, see — despite the fact that both are simply the recent campaign slogans of the two major political parties. Yet those profs recoil at the idea that they’re not accepting of conservative students.
I hear people say that they won’t permit arguments against affirmative action in their classes — hate speech, again — despite the fact that depending on how the question is asked, a majority of Americans oppose race-based affirmative action in polling, including in some polls a majority of Hispanic Americans. The number of boilerplate conservative opinions that are taken to be too offensive to be voiced in the campus space just grows and grows, and yet progressive profs I know are so offended by the idea that they could be creating a hostile atmosphere, they won’t even discuss the subject in good faith."
"The idea that we need any intellectual diversity at all invites immediate incredulous statements like, “you’re saying we should debate eugenics?!?,” as though the only positions that exist are the obviously correct and the obviously horrible. The idea that you’re supposed to read the publications of the antagonistic viewpoint has been dismissed as a relic. People call for conservative books to be pulled from library shelves; they insist that the plays of conservative David Mamet have no place in the contemporary theater;"
> Sure, "more" is relative and being a minority always sucks. Still, MIT might make you feel alone. Hillsdale will just expel you.
I don't think forced resignation and expulsion are much different.