shoot wrong place. I will DM
A sound place of scholarship does not promote repression and discrimination.
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Again itās a matter of opinion. Your viewpoint highlights the issue so well. Youāre absolute in your opinion as to what is acceptable to be discussed on campus. Anything deemed āintolerant, discriminatory or repressiveā by your standards is not allowed. Those standards arenāt universal. Education should enable discussion of all viewpoints: point out the benefits, flaws, and so forth. If only the āproperā or āacceptableā viewpoint is discussed thatās more akin to propaganda or indoctrination.
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Purdue could be on the list of schools. They actively promotes tolerance for all view points and civil discussion. At my Dās convocation President Daniels specifically talked about not being a āsafe placeā from difficult conversations and challenged students to listen and learn from the āother sideā.
My D leans left and has found her tribe but so have her right leaning friends.
If anything sheās come home being probably the most level headed in the family to be able to discuss facts and data vs opinion and rumor.
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My attempt is to err on the heart-side of humanity @vpa2019 .
And all opinions should be welcome in an environment of civil discourse with people who have a proven track record of holding this intention.
Inflammatory-others on the menu of available speakers in the world can (instead) be used as case studies in classroom discussion and for talk amongst friends, in order to not hurt whole groups of people and potentially incite violence by inviting them into our academic & living communities.
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Iām all for difficult conversations and delving into various sides and theories. Itās how we learn. Doing what has always been done restricts advancement.
Iām 100% opposed to name calling and putting others down to try to make yourself or your side look better and I feel that way regardless of which side is doing it.
It may be why Iām in the middle about a lot of things.
But Iām also 100% against teaching falsehoods as truth when they are known to be false. If someone were on campus teaching the earth is flat, Iād be looking for another college. If students were looking at both sides in a class, Iād want them to use material from a flat earth believer to know what and why they believe what they do, but Iād draw the line at the prof teaching it as truth.
In finances, science, and many other areas where there are mostly theories Iāve seen both sides represented with some fun discussion. Most will also produce data to support various theories and when that data heads toward a direction with a strong correlation, so will most professors.
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It is not hard left. At all. I spent four years there and if anything, it surprised me how middle of the road the school was. After one year in the Hill dorms, I was surrounded by friends in the business school and my fraternity, not in East Quad and student government which definitely skews liberal. (compared to Hillsdale, Pepperdine is hard left) But to say it is a hard left school is uninformed. Itās a big university with all viewpoints.
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I tend to agree with your basic point that a big university like Michigan has a wide variety of viewpoints. But Iām not sure that your personal experience there in the past is the best evidence of what the school is like today, especially as seen by a conservative leaning high school kid. You do have ādadā in your username which suggests that itās been a while since you were an undergrad there. @NatInTheHatt is a high school senior who was admitted this season and visited, so I think the OP (on behalf of a conservative leaning HS junior) should also take her impression into consideration.
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Fair enough. But take a look at Niche dot com and you will find that 40% of students at Michigan are Republican or independent. Compare that to Berkeley, which is 19% or UCSB which is 23%. That doesnāt scream Michigan is hard left to me. (maybe vs Hillsdale which the high school senior compared it to). I got a pretty good feel when we toured more than a year ago and my daughter applied that the school really hadnāt changed much in the last 30 years, except that it was more international and more affluent. With all due respect to the high school senior, she has as much experience at Michigan over the last few years as I do, and even less considering I spent 4 years of my life there.
The state of Michigan is both urban and suburban (Detroit and its suburbs), as well as a lot of people from rural areas (the UP and Western Michigan). But you also have a lot of people from the East Coast and even a good amount from the South and other Midwestern states. You have a lot of engineers and business students at the school, which is hardly a witchesā brew of radical liberalism. Many people I met when I studied there were apolitical. Itās a mix of people and has been for at least 40 years. So is the politics. The loudest people tend to be left, but there is a very large group of people that arenāt political or are moderate.
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For those who may be interested, just found a site called
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For General Information: The Professor Watchlist site is not a unbiased source. It is an arm of Turning Point USA, which is a hard right organization that employs the use of conspiracy theories overall and as a matter of running the Professor Watchlist site. Several professors have been deemed unsuitable by this site based on unfounded conspiracy theories. TP-USA also has ties to white supremacy groups. The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Anti-Defamation League, among other institutions/groups, have issued warnings about the efforts of TP-USA to restrict the flow of free speech on campuses across the country.
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After four years in weed-friendly East Quad (with co-ed bathrooms in the '70s), imagine how appalled we diehard(-left) Wolverines were when our liberal East Coast boarding school kid announced he was applying to SERVICE ACADEMIES! Where the heck did THAT come from? Hair-on-fire didnāt begin to describe it. Our jaws are still partly on the floor but, guess what? Almost everything we thought and feared about that environment turned out to be wrong. WE were the ones who were āmis-informedā about military conservatism, and our son has emerged from that nowhere-near-as-rightwing-as-we-thought pool a much better educated-on-all-fronts person than when he entered. As I posted a long time ago on the Surprises at your childās college vs. expectations thread:
Both son and parents were surprised at the level of tolerance and respect for ALL opinions, genders, and beliefs. The academy was nowhere (and I mean nowhere) near as conservative as expected. The level of engagement with and honest debate of current issues is refreshing and not one-sided or pre-determined at all. Though trained to understand and follow orders, the Corp of Cadets is also trained to make executive decisions and give orders under pressure. This training means looking at issues and problems from ALL angles for best outcomes. No one is served in life-or-death situations by agendas. Though I canāt say the same for parents clubs and online forums, the academy culture is modern and refreshingly open to ideas and encourages strong, intelligent debate without tolerating platitudes. Almost four years in, and weāve been humbled by the recognition of our own prejudices concerning the military.
I have to admit, we were hoping heād choose Michigan but, if not, we assumed heād choose a school closer to our family values. That heād even consider attending a college that no one would label liberal was anathema, but when we saw what this āconservativeā education produced in him, I am thankful we were unable to stand in his way. (I am ashamed to say that we tried.) So, I totally get looking for colleges that lean toward your zone, but our experience with West Point showed us that what went in was not ruined, undone, or harmed in any way by that highly immersive experience. Instead, what came out was refined, thoughtful, and so well-informed.
If our liberal son was not scathed but rather enriched by his experience at a small service academy, I donāt think anyone coming from a conservative POV should be concerned about having their views challenged/expanded by the wide range of opinions that constitute large universities. That challenge is fundamental to education. Given what I know now, political leaning would be closer to the bottom of my list of criteria for selecting a college than it was when our son was going through the process. I guess weāve been educated.
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Pretty sure there is no such thing as an unbiased source. Take them all for what they are worth.
Choatiemom: I remember you from our boarding school times! You were always very helpful! Glad to hear a conservative setting was welcoming to all thinkers and all views. And happy your son is happy.
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Of course, there is no one definition of āconservativeā. Military officers and those aspiring to such careers may be ānational security conservativesā, but seem less likely to want to make āculture warsā against fellow Americans. āBusiness conservativesā may also see āculture warsā as being detrimental to business (as in, if a business is forced to choose a side, it will lose a lot of customers no matter what side it chooses).
Even universities that have a āconservativeā reputation may not want anything to do with āculture warsā (e.g. Texas A&M ādeplatformingā Richard Spencer).
However, those pushing āculture warsā tend to be very noisy and inflammatory.
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@ChoatieMom, awesome for you guys! That is exactly what college is about, challenging your beliefs, whether they be left, right, or center. IMHO, thatās what makes one a better person, not seeking out like minded people to validate your own opinions. Be careful, you might be in for a surprise, like you were.
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Go Blue! 
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@ChoatieMom Critical thinking and understanding of history, policy, and foreign affairs, etc, is deliberately taught and of central importance to training in which academy students are steeped, yes?
And a large focus on and goal for training is the molding of diplomacy.
Iām not so sure we can compare this experience to that of the large public university setting.
This again highlights, for me, the importance of the intention (goals) and design of the individual academic setting.
Not to mention it bussed hundreds of students to the Jan 6th DC rally.
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The experience Iām describing is assuming that the academy was an intolerant, right-wing propaganda mill not on par with the liberal education we wanted for our son. Our assumptions were dead wrong. That is the point Iām making. Assuming that the leaning of any university, whether actually left or right, will negatively affect the quality of the education or the experience had there may be incorrect. In our case, our assumptions were way off base and reflect poorly on us.
ALL political affiliations are represented at the academy and all are housed together. Imagine having to shower with 40 of your classmates, some of whom are not your political herd? Believe me, more than political leanings are exposed in those settings. 
This.
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