<p>Point taken Hanna. Next time I'll be sure and give the attribution.</p>
<p>However, I did preface my request with an appeal to conservative parents.</p>
<p>I didn't ask to receive the unnecessary remarks made. I don't give liberal remarks comments that are supposedly "funny".</p>
<p>And as to the Jesuit making that remark, I had 11 years of Jesuit education and I did have a history teaching Jebbie make that remark. The young ones are typically more radical than the older ones. But they love to challenge and I took that remark as a challenge to be met.</p>
<p>This applies to Princeton, Yale, as well, no? Harvard does not really count because Cliffies had been taking Harvard classes for a long time before it went truly co-ed. As for Vassar, did letting men in raise its un-PC quotient? Or did it actually lower it?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>There does not appear to be any such Dinesh D'Souza list.</p></li>
<li><p>Though neither a conservative nor a parent, I do know a fair amount about U.S. colleges and universities, and I can't think of any "formerly great schols that have sacrificed themselves to political correctness."</p></li>
<li><p>Anyway, without a bit more detail, the term "political correctness" is not very useful.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I'd go further. The expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." It's been downhill ever since.</p>
<p>Although not providing any specific information requested by the OP, many of the posters to this thread are definitely supporting his premise of PC gone awry. Some people simply apparently cannot tolerate anyone having intelligent discussions on certain topics. Instead they repeat the usual drivel or try to use ridicule and sarcasm to change the topic, rallying other likeminded PC individuals into a frenzy of agreement. QED</p>
<p>Not having been given more information by the OP about what the OP considers "great" and "formerly great" (an example will do), as requested multiple times, I cannot answer the question.</p>
<p>The OP's premise is that there are colleges that were formerly great and that they are no longer so because of PCness. There are some colleges that at one point or another adopted speech codes and other codes of behavior that went to ridiculous extremes, but whether they were "formerly great" may be a matter of debate. My idea of great or formerly great may not be the OP's. And whether their former greatness --should it be established--was undermined by PCness or by some other forces (correlation not being causation), may be impossible to establish. </p>
<p>Maybe Harvard stopped being great when it stopped requiring that entering freshmen know Latin, Greek and French? It must have been an earlier instance of PCness that led Harvard to do so, no? Except for my gender (a big except, to be sure) I would have gotten in without any difficulty under the earlier requirements, as laid down in a memo dated 1892. </p>
<p>Pafather, I notice you do not provide the information requested by the OP either. If you give it a try and provide one example, some of us might be able to follow your example and produce others.</p>
<p>We are wasting our breath conversing with the people who dominate these boards.</p>
<p>I just located a discussion regarding the Duke LAX team on which you posted.</p>
<p>These kids are convicted and guilty without even going to trial. I read the comments and I am flabbergasted by what has become of our "innocent until proven guilty". Harpies of political correctness gone mad. </p>
<p>I like how Ann Coulter just smiles as her opponents get shriller and shriller.</p>
<p>Calling some posters "harpies" is not shrill? hmmm... See what I mean by needing clear definition? In my book, calling someone a harpy is being shrill. But I personally don't like speech codes because they impinge on freedom of expression. So Musictoad is welcome to her word choice.</p>
<p>But reading (and having posted) on the Duke LAX thread, I see very few people willing to go on thinking the LAX members guilty of rape after more information has come out. Even from the beginning, there were two issues: loutish behavior (not limited to Duke, or LAX players, or athletes or students), and whatever happened on the evening of March 13. If there was no rape, I don't even think that what the students did --hiring a stripper--was loutish. It was tacky, it was something I would prefer my sons not do, but it was not loutish. But that incident brought to light other instances of behavior that was loutish such as vomiting and pi$$ing on neighbors' property. And that was what the Duke administration was addressing. Are we to infer that it gave in to PCness, and that as a result, Duke will stop being great? I have greater faith in Duke than that.</p>
<p>So I googled "college speech codes" and found this article.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a Philadelphia-based civil liberties group that fights for academic freedom and free expression on college campuses, goes even further in its condemnation of speech codes.</p>
<p>According to FIREs executive director, Thor Halvorssen, more than two-thirds of college campuses restrict student speech. It is false (a myth) to say that universities are reluctant to punish student speech, he wrote in an e-mail message. Colleges and universities routinely punish students and faculty for their speech, their writing, and even their membership in campus groups. FIRE opposes the current wave of campus censorship, pronounced as it is on our campuses, and we seek to defend and to enhance freedom of expression at Americas institutions of higher education.
<p>
[quote]
We are wasting our breath conversing with the people who dominate these boards.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's interesting how commonly used this tactic is, yet usually followed up with another 50 posts or so.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I like how Ann Coulter just smiles as her opponents get shriller and shriller.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It would take centuries before they even approached the level of Chomsky, Hannity, O'Reilly, Ward Churchill, and her own wonderful self. 90% of the people who find Coulter's arguments to be crap are not all that shrill, but usually flabbergasted at the sheer idiocy of what she allows to be credited to her. </p>
<p>Though I can't say that the liberal portion of American society is any less shrill, they certainly seem far less defensive than the conservative portion. I wonder how much longer neo-cons and their ilk will take up the battlecry of "protect America against the evil liberal conspiracy in the media, educational system, and everything else because we don't want to stop at the obvious targets?</p>
<p>Furthermore, if it's liberals who are so afraid of having their viewpoints challenged, then why are the conservative posters always looking for the cloistered protection of the fabled "conservative university?" Wouldn't they welcome the chance to evangelize and show the wayward liberals the inherent truth, whatever it is? Wouldn't they take up a Millian offense, always seeking to challenge their own arguments and beliefs in an attempt to plug up whatever holes there are?</p>
<p>This is why I find these silly labels of "conservative" and "liberal" to be so stifling in the long run. Why can't I be socially libertarian but also believe in the notion of the free market (though not laissez-faire run amok?) Do I have to be either Rand or Marx? Why can't I be both, picking and choosing, but always challenging?</p>
<p>Isn't that what college is about? Challenging those limp neurons?</p>
<p>As best I can tell, Marite and I are the only ones who have suggested specific universities. Does this mean that the conservatives, when asked by one of their own, cannot come up with a single example?</p>
<p>Interesting about USC. I thought its selectivity, as judged by SAT scores and GPAs, had gone up? Which would mean that a formerly mediocre college is becoming a great one, at least by one yardstick? But I don't know what relationship this has to being more liberal (causation, correlation, coincidence, chicken or egg?)</p>
<p>Oh, if you ask me, USC has improved considerably over the past two decades or so. It's gone from the "University of Second Choice" deriding those at "JewCLA" to a fine university in its own right.</p>
<p>However, if what I read in USC student blogs and from my USC friends (yes, UCLA grads and USC grads can be friends), then there are many who are not...well...happy with the liberal turn in many areas on campus. In fact, I used to subscribe to a newsgroup from USC that was most definitely more "liberal" in its slant. </p>
<p>If you ask me, "liberal" and "decline" or "improvement" are simply not correlated. Berkeley, at its scientific and research height, was also at its most radical. Today, it has a significant conservative voice on campus, and is most definitely less "out there" than it was in the 60s and 70s. Yet it hasn't been able to top those decades for academic quality.</p>
<p>Correlation? I'm sure that some snide lefties would love to jump on it and say, "most definitely!" But that would be as silly as the snide righties who love to say that Harvard is declining because of its "liberalness.</p>
<p>Maybe a great college is one where both conservative and liberal viewpoints are welcome, where students can respectfully discuss conflicting viewpoints and politely agree to disagree.</p>
<p>Then PCness is introduced and ruins it all.</p>
<p>Your point about Berkeley is a good one. I have said, throughout this thread, that funding has more to do with greatness than levels of PCness. I know one scientist who taught at Berkeley in the 60s. He left for Harvard after Reagan cut funding for science there. I suspect there were other aspect of Reagan's programs he did not like. But as a research scientist, what affected him most was not ideology but level of funding in his area of research. And that was the reason he left. Harvard at the time was considerably less left wing than BerKeley (not hard to be!) but it did not suffer budget cuts like Berkeley.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Then PCness is introduced and ruins it all.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I went to UCLA, a university constantly attacked by the frothing-at-the-mouth right for being liberal and PC, yet the Daily Bruin had significant conservative columnists and writers, the Bruin Republicans were given the freedom to host events including the now (in)famous "Affirmative Action Bakesale," and generally had large turnouts for libertarian, conservative religious, and other "not-so-liberal" events.</p>
<p>Perhaps they had more hurdles to overcome (though I couldn't get anyone to articulate them), but I found that conservatives had a nice tightly-knit, relatively unbothered community.</p>
<p>Now you want to talk about people who got harrassed? The LaRouchies and the Spartans (socialists) constantly got jeered.</p>
<p>I don't really see any sort of strong causal link between "liberalness" and university decline. What I do see, however, is the increasing willingness for universities to avoid contentious issues (on both sides of the fence) in favor of not getting labeled by the fundies on the left and right.</p>