Oh romani, don’t take it personally. It is just a reminder to check your privilege in assuming you know what your students think or feel. Of course I, too, sweetly met with professors secretly detested and asked for reference letters from them- it really isn’t safe to do otherwise on many campuses. So just smile and nod to get along, many students think. One never knows when in the future one will need a professor’s help. You must have realized the students can’t and won’t be candid with you by now.
@romanigypsyeyes Sometimes it amazes me that people just assume their uniformed opinions are more valid than one based upon actual experience. My father in law spent decades teaching and in administration at various LACs, and his experiences are absolutely consistent with yours. The faculty get to know their students very well - it’s not a coincidence but rather a goal.
@waitingmomla “write what they want to see and keep your real views to yourself” was the advice you gave to your D as she began her college experience in a top ranked school. That is such a troubling thought, I don’t know where to begin.
Our experiences are equally valid. Yes, I and many other college students I knew carefully modulated our opinions and written products to match the biases clearly expressed by professors, and sadly, there are campuses where that is still necessary. If that comes as a shock to any faculty member anywhere, I suggest that is conclusive evidence of their political insularity.
@RandyErika You bet it’s troubling. The troubling part is that’s often the reality for those with conservative views in the liberal world of college campuses. As I said, it is the world as it is, not as many of us wish it were, and we deal with it accordingly.
In response to the original post: my experience going to one of the most liberal schools on the West Coast was not uncomfortable at all. I grew up in a conservative household, and was myself very conservative at that time. I voted Republican in my first election (George Walker Bush) as a college sophomore. I participated in a weekly bible study group and went to church on Sundays, just as I did when I was at home. My roommate even hosted a small bible study group in our dorm room. I ate lunch with kids who prayed, with eyes closed and hands clasped on pubic display in dinning halls and campus eateries. No one made fun of us for it nor were my views disparaged in class. I was able to surround myself with people I related to - my inner circle friends were Christians (some were also very liberal despite their faith). I was a thriving philosophy and political science double-major despite my conservative views. How I voted on issues of guns, abortion (hot button then, too) and immigration only came up in conversation if I volunteered it.
That said, going to college did challenge me to reflect. Being around others who didn’t believe the same way made me question my own beliefs. I continued to vote conservatively and go to church for another decade. Eventually, on my own, my views became more liberal. However, if you fear this will happen to you (becoming a liberal) because of your college choice, then don’t go to a college where you think this will happen. It’s too much money to pay for something you don’t want. Do consider one more piece of advice from an older person: being socially outcast because of an unpopular opinion is going to happen a lot in adulthood. I work in a creative-ish field. I have to present and defend ideas all the time a room full of people who have different agendas. My ability to defend my proposals and ideas, honed in classes as well as hallway debates in college, is one of the reasons I’m good at what I do.
Good luck to you as you find the right fit! You will have a blast wherever you go.
I spent my high school and college years arguing with professors and writing contrarian papers, often just for the fun of it. On one occasion I had dinner with a famous prof and told him all the reasons I hated one of his favorite books. I think he enjoyed that I wasn’t a sycophant. As long as you can marshall up a case for your side, IME you will get graded fairly.
My son is a conservative on a liberal campus. His school received some press last year for some silliness on the left-leaning political spectrum. His experience has been that the professors are much more respectful and open-minded of other views, while being almost uniformly very liberal. He feels that he’s learned a lot from their different and respectful points of view. We consider that a wonderful benefit. However, the students are less respectful and much more dramatic. Part of being young, so no harm. There is one professor who is very aggressively, disrespectfully liberal. I know this to be true because part of the orientation process was for the parents to take a class with that professor, which happened on the day the results of the Brexit vote were announced. So I know from personal experience how he is. I’m not sure I would have been comfortable in his class, but my son went to office hours, tailored his work to the professor’s preferences, and never let it be known in that semester that he thought the professor was too much. His grade was excellent. He had the professor again for a different class and felt comfortable enough to be a bit more open. Big mistake. Most of the grade in that class was for a semester-long group project. The project was excellent. My son was the only out conservative in the group and his grade was lower than everyone else’s in the group, and he was absolutely aware that the professor spoke to him differently after making his different opinion known. This particular man is just rabidly opposed to the presence of people who don’t agree with him existing in the world. But in no way reflects upon the profession or anyone else. He’s just a jerk. There are such in the world and one must learn to deal.
“Yes, I and many other college students I knew carefully modulated our opinions and written products to match the biases clearly expressed by professors”
Can you give me an example of what class & positions this was necessary for?
Most of my classes in college had little room for my opinions, but plenty of room for citations and positions backed up by them.
I am genuinely curious.
Political science class. Some history classes (more current history, usually). I am genuinely amazed people don’t realize this occurs all the time. An earlier poster cited a Yale Daily News poll saying 75% of students believe conservatives would feel uncomfortable on campus. How do you expect those students to react in an uncomfortable environment?
My son’s class at issue was economics.
Some classes don’t have room for opinions in the context of the class, but often there will be casual conversation or membership in a group that will make someone’s affiliation known and there can be consequences to that.
My friend’s son is very conservative and had an African American history professor at UT-A. He got an A in the class despite their strong political differences. The professor pulled him aside and thanked him for his approach. He made sure to back up his arguments with source documents and actual accepted studies and not the ones from 50 years ago that have been disproved. Most students used references from heavily revisionist history texts and claimed they were being persecuted for their views. In his experience, there were 30 claiming anti-conservative bias and only one claiming that was not necessarily true. Bad writing and bad research deserves a poor grade.
It would be like claiming there is no such thing as global warming in an ecology class, then arguing anti-conservative bias for the low grade. There are currently zero accepted studies to support that but reams of published literature arguing that point on which to draw.
I was a Classics major. I haven’t a clue about the politics of my professors, advisers, Dean, or Chair of the department. Was never relevant and never came up. And I can’t believe that a student would have felt uncomfortable in class or a seminar due to their political beliefs. I had dinner a few times at the home of my favorite professor- we talked about music and travel and their kids. It really is possible to engage in a human interaction that does not involve politics.
Of course it is. But I can tell you as an adult who was not being graded, that the professor in question does not appear to have human interaction without involving politics. I used the word “rabid” in a prior post and meant it. But of course, this experience doesn’t extrapolate to any other person or situation.
I still remember my Econ 1 class to this day. The class was clearly Keynesian, as we were using Samuelson’s text. The prof seemed balanced, but TA was not. Of course, as an intro class at a big Uni, the TA did all the grading. TA was a European, who was from one of the Scandinavian countries (I forget which).
I did my research paper on public transportation, which at the time, was timely, as the feds were investing in hard rail systems, like BART in the Bay Area. The short answer was that my pricing analysis was all wrong, bcos it dared to charge commuters more during a time of high demand. Instead, the TA said that public transit should be near-free to encourage more use as that what it was in his country. When I asked how the new train system was supposed to support itself, his response was that the government must supply more taxes. Hmmm. Low B.
“I was a Classics major. I haven’t a clue about the politics of my professors, advisers, Dean, or Chair of the department”
You were very fortunate to have professional instructors and educators. Lucky you. I was a STEM major but had to take core courses in a variety of subjects. A couple of examples I vividly remember:
Writing seminar professor: Can you believe what that idiot [Presidential candidate] said about ______? It is amazing that anyone would be dumb enough to vote for that jerk. If he wins, I really will have to move to Canada. Idiots like that are ruining our country. (I still have no idea why that professor would even bring up politics since it was a course in writing development, but since our grades were fairly subjective of course people tended to just shut up and listen whenever one of the random political rants happened.)
A black Sociology professor would regularly inject his political views in his discussions of sociological issues. One example was when there was legislation proposing welfare reform, he gave a long, impassioned speech about how only fools and racists wanted to eliminate welfare. Many of his lectures were phrased such that any person who disagreed with a social program was labeled a racist.
"Political science class. Some history classes (more current history, usually). I am genuinely amazed people don’t realize this occurs all the time. "
What position in a political science class did you have to take that you did not believe?
What position in a history class? History class is about facts, right?
Please don’t be amazed I don’t realize it. I am not trying to be argumentative, it’s just hard for me to imagine it. It goes against my own experiences. But I will listen with an open mind if you can be specific.
Since when is History about facts?
It’s about the current interpretation of pieces of historical evidence.
In an age of the awareness of “fake news” (historically ubiquitous, and getting worse)
we now have a hopefully growing awareness of the probability of "Fake History’.
This is going to be fun.
I don’t think it is the professors so much who are the problem (although as noted above, there are no doubt exceptions).
It’s mainly the liberal students who are the problem (not all, for sure, but enough). Many conservatives would love the opportunity to engage in reasoned debate. It’s impossible to do that these days on an increasing number of topics.
Here is a contemporary liberal college student, a student at fairly elite Hampshire College. Do you think that she is going to engage in reasoned debate?
Many liberal students also would love to engage in fact-based, reasoned debate. Where is there any evidence that one side is more willing to debate reasonably than the other? Yes, you can pull out a youtube video or point to the very rare shouting matches, but there are just as many counter examples of arguments based on inaccurate information from the other side.
Very true. Absolutely. However, there aren’t nearly as many examples of conservatives shouting down speakers, forcing speakers to be disinvited, setting fires on campus, committing acts of violence against liberal speakers, so it does seem like there are more crazy outliers on campuses who aren’t willing to be respectful of other positions and views.