<p>UCLAri:</p>
<p>Totally agree.</p>
<p>Greatness of a university is based on the scholarly output of the faculty and to a much lesser extent, on the subsequent output of people who did their graduate work there. I have never heard an explanation of what the political orientation of the faculty has to do with whether they make provable predictions about particle physics.</p>
<p>To the limited extent that some faculty have political issues within their areas of scholarly work- and such people are a small minority of the faculty as a whole- what counts is the scholarly quality of their work, not their viewpoint. </p>
<p>In short, it is hard to imagine how "going PC" could ruin a great university anymore than changing the colors of the school mascot could do so.</p>
<p>Marite: Sent you a PM.</p>
<p>afan</p>
<p>There a probably majors that don't lend themselves to PC, such as math, physics, etc. But there are majors where PC can run amok -- journalism, history, econ, poly sci, women's studies, etc. A major which has been over run with PC, can be a difficult place for free discussion and debate for students who want to discuss certain topics.</p>
<p>jlauer,</p>
<p>Sure it would be difficult, but that would have nothing to do with whether the great university was ruined.</p>
<p>I had that experience in college. I was a science type, so my "real" courses were devoid of political content. Back then, pre PC, there was no restraint on professors expressing astonishingly racist, sexist, and homophobic principles as normative. There was also no restraint on them grading on the basis of conformity to these norms. I quickly learned that if I wanted to pass my non-science courses, I had better parrot the party line and keep my opinions to myself. If women did not belong in positions of authority, if the solution to dwindling domestic oil supplies was to invade and conquer middle eastern countries, if blacks did not belong in elite colleges, well the person handing out grades was right, in fact brilliant, for pointing this out. I could not imagine debating politics in any class I was taking for credit. It would have been the height of folly. </p>
<p>It was still a great university.</p>
<p>"A major which has been over run with PC, can be a difficult place for free discussion and debate for students who want to discuss certain topics."</p>
<p>Good description of Hillsdale and Liberty U., from what I've heard.</p>
<p>Yes, but wouldn't it have been more valuable to have a class where real debate and critical thinking was, not just tolerated, but expected? One of the courses I am most looking forward to next year is a constitutional interpretation class taught by a leading conservataive scholar. While I am pretty liberal, word on the course is that one of its best aspects is that the professor really likes dissent, and in fact expects you to come up with interpretations that are more than just summaries of supreme court decisions, or of his own lectures. Being too PC doesn't ruin a college, but it can diminish the quality of certain classes.</p>
<p>After reading the rest of this thread, it strikes me that, while the OP's question was unnecessarily combative, the glib and hostile responses he's gotten have been uncalled for. I wouldn't want to go to a school where 90 + % of the students and profs were conservative, if I could help it, so I don't see why looking to avoid ultra-liberal schools is such a problem.</p>
<p>To the OP: Most top schools are predominantly liberal. Among the Ivies, Dartmouth and Princeton (and to a lesser extent, I believe, Cornell) have a strong conservative presence. Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, and Washinton and Lee are schools I can think of off the top of my head that would likely have a conservative continent - especially W&L. But I could be wrong.</p>
<p>jlauer:</p>
<p>My idea of a great university is one where there is a diversity of viewpoints and approaches. I would be leery of a department where there was only one valid point of view. I would also prefer a department where one particular approach to the subject of enquiry was not the only one or even the dominant one. I know a self-confessed liberal who dropped out of English because he thought poetry had become de-emphasized in his department. It was a matter of scholarly fad, not political ideology for the faculty, and for him, a matter of scholarly preference, not political correctness.</p>
<p>I know a Japanese woman who was denied admission to a Ph.D. degree because the prof, a Japanese, thought that her mission should be to attend to her husband. Never mind that her husband, a Scandinavian, supported her in her academic aspirations. Other profs in his university did not see it his way, but the Japanese prof was THE Japan specialist on the faculty and they felt they could not go against him. He, too, was politically correct--according to his own values. </p>
<p>I think that women's studies, because of the circumstances in which that discipline was born, reflect perspectives that can validly be called politically correct. I think, however, with maturity, the field is becoming less so. There are definitely some scholars in the field who are on the fringe (by my lights) but most students should easily identify them and avoid them like the pest. And if the field as a whole seems to be dominated by scholars of a certain stripe, there's no reason for a student to go into it. There are other ways to study human experience besides women's studies.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yes, but wouldn't it have been more valuable to have a class where real debate and critical thinking was, not just tolerated, but expected?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't know, I did not have that experience. In fields where there are no right answers, and all responses are subjective, I am not sure such a nirvana exists.</p>
<p>Speak when spoken to, do what you are told, get on with life. </p>
<p>You want real debate with critical thinking? Get a dog.</p>
<p>Oh my gosh, the conservatives are feeling threatened by the Jesuits? I love it. Sorry I came late to the party. ;)</p>
<p>musicrtoad:
[quote]
I like how Ann Coulter just smiles as her opponents get shriller and shriller.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Really? I guess she forgot to smile at my son's college. When challenged by a student in the audience about the war in Iraq she repsonded with, "I'm not going to put up with some *****y little girl screaming at me," Coulter said.</p>
<p>"After reading the rest of this thread, it strikes me that, while the OP's question was unnecessarily combative, the glib and hostile responses he's gotten have been uncalled for. I wouldn't want to go to a school where 90 + % of the students and profs were conservative, if I could help it, so I don't see why looking to avoid ultra-liberal schools is such a problem."</p>
<p>If that's really what the OP wanted, then how about: could anyone tell me which [Ivys, LACs, top universties, whatever] are more conservative (politically, culturally, academically, whatever). In fact, there have been threads just like that.</p>
<p>But the OP's question was politically and culturally loaded. It wasn't "unnecessarily combative"; that was the point -- or, at least, the premise. And there is no reason to just blithely accept that frame of reference. </p>
<p>I don't like speech codes. There is good to be gotten by deflating various intellectual fads and pretensions. <a href="http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/%5B/url%5D">http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/</a> </p>
<p>And a smart, left leaning defense lawyer has no problem exposing the rush to judgment as to the Duke Lacrosse players (as regards the rape charges -- not the rest of it). <a href="http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014964.html%5B/url%5D">http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014964.html</a></p>
<p>But I don't accept that any of that is what informed the OP; and I don't accept the OP's professions of innocence and naivete as to the language; and I certainly give no credence to faux huffiness from the OP and allies about the supposed lack of civility of this thread. Why? The enthusiastic embrace of Ann Coulter. <a href="http://www.anncoulter.blogspot.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.anncoulter.blogspot.com/</a> And of D'Souza and the Dartmouth Review.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2070%5B/url%5D">http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2070</a>
<a href="http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2001050201100%5B/url%5D">http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2001050201100</a>
<a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Ethepress/read.php?id=257%5B/url%5D">http://www.dartmouth.edu/~thepress/read.php?id=257</a></p>
<p>Wesdad:</p>
<p>So glad you linked to the Sokal homepage! My S used that incident in a paper on scientific writing. He had a ball reading the Sokal piece!</p>
<p>afan, you said:</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don't know, I did not have that experience. In fields where there are no right answers, and all responses are subjective, I am not sure such a nirvana exists.</p>
<p>Speak when spoken to, do what you are told, get on with life.</p>
<p>You want real debate with critical thinking? Get a dog.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I suppose, perhaps, that you had a negative experience in the social sciences. I had the opposite. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that poli sci (at least what I studied) was much more quantitative than say...Chicano Studies, but I never had the thought control professor at UCLA. What I did have was a faculty that would challenge and be challenged. In fact, I had one professor who had his data challenged by a student IN LECTURE, and returned the next day with appropriate corrections.</p>
<p>Nor do I believe that all answers in poli sci are subjective.</p>
<p>UCLAri:</p>
<p>There are different branches of poli sci that are more quantitative than others, as you know. Harvey Mansfield and Stanley Hoffman at Harvard are both political scientists with very different political perspectives. Both are interested in political theory rather than say, the voting behavior of the American public which is more likely to be the specialization of people associated with rational choice; this is a specialization that ha been influenced by economics (as I'm sure you know!). Henry Kissinger, a former Harvard Government prof, was in the same vein. His interest was Metternich. Stanley Hoffman has written extensively about European politics. Mansfield is an authority onMachiavelli, but recently he published a book on Manliness.</p>
<p>When I was in grad school, MIT's poli sci department was famous for being math-heavy. Tom Lehrer taught math to the poli sci grad students.</p>
<p>marite,</p>
<p>Of course, of course! But as a field, overall, I feel that most of poli sci is going down the quant path on a permanent basis. Especially with up-and-coming departments like UCSD openly embracing quantitative methodologies. This is even more apparent in the further integration of economic tools in poli sci (since the Rochester revolution) allowing political scientists to finally say, "See! We have objective arguments to make as well!"</p>
<p>But I suppose my post was more of a retort to the commonly held idea that poli sci is inherently subjective and always will be. Though it's not nearly as objective as econ, it's definitely making serious strides toward developing useful objective analysis tools to answer questions. </p>
<p>The sad part? I want to go into poli sci (e.g. PhD) yet I'm a bit of a mathophobe. Lame.</p>