<p>Colleges in major cities have a higher chance, then the liberal arts colleges.</p>
<p>What makes a college "liberal"?</p>
<p>Liberal political views...?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Liberal political views...?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What does that mean?</p>
<p>For example, would fiscal responsibility and balanced federal budgets be "liberal" or "conservative"?</p>
<p>How about a professor publishing a book on how the answer to environmental problems can be found in religious writings? Would that be "liberal" or "conservative"?</p>
<p>How about an professor of African History saying that the best thing the West could do for Africa right now is to end all government aid programs? Would that be "liberal" or "conservative"?</p>
<p>How about a general policy of having separate mens and womens bathrooms on every floor of every dorm? Would that be a hallmark of a "liberal" college or a "conservative" college?</p>
<p>If we are going to throw around pop-culture buzzwords like "liberal" and "conservative", we should at least define them.</p>
<p>Hendrix, Marlboro, Bennington, Macalester, Grinnell, Carleton, Lewis & Clark, Reed, Whitman, Connecticut College</p>
<p>Are you talking about liberal curriculum, liberal student body or what?</p>
<p>oberlin is super liberal</p>
<p>Intersteddad, I think when people talk about "liberal" campuses, they're referring specifically to social liberalism, not necessarily economic or political liberalism. At most of the colleges that are being mentioned here, you'll find intellectuals of every stripe - proponents of American unilateral hegemony, fiscal conservatives, Keynesian economists, Marxists, Western apologists, classic liberals, organic intellectuals, inorganic intellectuals, pragmatists, radicals, deontologists, consequentialists, absolutists, relativists, moralists, nihilists, the list goes on.</p>
<p>The bottom line though, and what unites this extraordinarily diverse set of people into the category of "liberal," at least as it's being used and understood with reference to colleges and campus atmosphere, is, i think, open-mindedness and a willingness to embrace, not simply tolerate, alternative forms of life and thought. The other big one is diversity - people tend to associate, either correctly or otherwise, a diversity with liberalism. I guess what people really mean when they're talking about a liberal campus is a campus where a great variety of ideas and viewpoints can interact freely.</p>
<p>And i like some of your examples of the line between "conservatism" and "liberalism" being blurry. Here's one that I like a lot - is opposing abortion on the grounds that it could be to discriminate against people with disabilities, of certain skin color, gender, or specific genetic makeup a liberal or conservative viewpoint? This is a viewpoint that is quickly gaining momentum among many radical feminist and Marxist circles :)</p>
<p>so it seems smart people are more liberal..."</p>
<p>The answer is "yes." That's not to say conservatives are all stupid, but they tend to be more close-minded. The term "university" was derived from the root word: universal; that the purpose of such institutions is to open student's (and professor's) minds be exposing them to a universe of ideas. Unfortunately, many with conservative views tend to go to college with the limited view of gaining a marketable "skill" and to "get a job." A liberal education, on the other hand, tends to oriented itself towards equipping students with the tools to question normative thought and grow through the exchange of viewpoints. Its sad to see students come to college find there own kind and seek individuals who think like they do. It is why truly educated thinkers are always deemed as dangerous by society. Hitler burned the books. Other totalitarian tyrants would always murder the playwrights, people who would question the norm through creative expression. </p>
<p>It is also why those institutions generally considered the best are more often also considered liberal. The exceptions are top technical schools (Purdue, MIT, Georgia Tech, etc); engineering schools, in particular, where the focus is narrower and liberal arts are often tangential. These schools often are deemed conservative.</p>
<p>University of Michigan (my first choice)
UC Berkeley (my friend's first choice)
NYU (my other first choice)
Wesleyan
Brown
Columbia</p>
<p>it seems smarter people are liberal. i almost lolled myself out fo my computer room.</p>
<p>more like your average student at these top unis are RICH WASPs and would just lose it if they lost to right to abortion because they have had so many sexual escapades etc.</p>
<p>"liberal" leaning is taken on more by people who do not follow politics much, as they see it as giving more freedoms and losing nothing, while this is not necessarily true</p>
<p>there are many smart "conservative" colleges, such as </p>
<p>Notre Dame
Brigham Young
William & Mary
Wake Forest
Washington & Lee
College of Wooster
Davidson</p>
<p>there is also a "highly conservative" regement among some top business colleges, such as</p>
<p>UChicago
Penn Wharton
NYU Stern</p>
<p>"so it seems smart people are more liberal..."</p>
<p>The answer is "yes." That's not to say conservatives are all stupid, but they tend to be more close-minded. The term "university" was derived from the root word: universal; that the purpose of such institutions is to open student's (and professor's) minds be exposing them to a universe of ideas. Unfortunately, many with conservative views tend to go to college with the limited view of gaining a marketable "skill" and to "get a job." A liberal education, on the other hand, tends to oriented itself towards equipping students with the tools to question normative thought and grow through the exchange of viewpoints. Its sad to see students come to college find there own kind and seek individuals who think like they do. It is why truly educated thinkers are always deemed as dangerous by society. Hitler burned the books. Other totalitarian tyrants would always murder the playwrights, people who would question the norm through creative expression. </p>
<p>It is also why those institutions generally considered the best are more often also considered liberal. The exceptions are top technical schools (Purdue, MIT, Georgia Tech, etc); engineering schools, in particular, where the focus is narrower and liberal arts are often tangential. These schools often are deemed conservative."</p>
<p>^The ironic thing is that the notion that we should question normative thought is in and of itself normative.</p>
<p>Lol I wish I saw more conservatives at U Chicago, but in 2 visits I've yet to see or hear of a single conservative, except for the obligatory Richard Posner and Gary Becker, who are at best center-right. </p>
<p>It's amazing to see here how ridiculously biased some people are. Smarter people are liberal my a<strong>. That's just the left's fun little way to pretend it isn't directly their fault that conservative types are practically run out of top campuses. Laurence Summers didn't last long, and he was a liberal! Tolerating/accepting of other views my a</strong>. Summers voiced a very, VERY scientifically defendable view (that the minds of women MIGHT be different than men) and the left-wing Thought Police at Harvard ate him up. And how dare he suggest that Cornel West actually do some work? Liberals are "diverse" in that they bring all kinds of different skin colors to campus. They do this in the name of diversity so they don't have to be diverse in opinion. No one can deny that huge majorities of top campuses are controlled by liberal professors, and I fail to see how that is "open-mindendness" or "diversity". The liberals will let unqualified former Taliban officials become students, enforce speech codes meant to silence dissenting voices, openly discriminate in the name of diversity, and even ask an applicant for professorship who they voted for. But open-minded and tolerant they are not. After all, why should we give free speech to racist, fascist, chauvinistic, war-mongering Republiucans?</p>
<p>Yes, to a great degree I do agree that the modern left has employed many of the tactics that were orginally reviled in the more conservative institutions that it fought so hard against.</p>
<p>At the same time, political scientists pretty much unanimously agree (and statistics show) that the more education a person has, the more liberal their VOTING PATTERN becomes. I'm not saying that education, intelligence, whatever makes people liberal or vice versa, because that's subjective. However, hard data proves that the more EDUCATED (not to be confused with intelligent) you are, the more likely you are to be a liberal VOTER (emphasis on voter because it can be argued that people who vote for liberal politicians and people who ARE liberal are not always one and the same).</p>
<p>Even people who graduate with more conservative degrees, such as business, medicine, engineering, etc. tend to shift their voting patterns to the left. This may be due, in large part, because of the largely humanist foundation upon which most education, and specifically collegiate education, seems to be built upon.</p>
<p>What about Bryn Mawr?</p>
<p>UC Santa Cruz is much more liberal than UC Berkeley by the way.</p>
<p>I would say UMich-Ann Arbor, UC Berkeley, and UCSC win the prize for this one. Berkeley used to be the center of the student free speech movement in the 60s and the hippie movement in the 70s. UMich-Ann Arbor used to be and still is the bastion of liberalism/hippie movement. Michigan is extremely well-known for for being liberal. Probably most well-known for being liberal after NY, MA and CA. </p>
<p>Here's my ranking for the most liberal states:</p>
<ol>
<li>DC</li>
<li>MA</li>
<li>NY</li>
<li>MI</li>
<li>HI</li>
<li>CT/NH/VT/ME</li>
<li>RI
.........all the way down to......</li>
<li>TX</li>
</ol>
<p>Bryn Mawr is filled with only women, who tend to be more liberal than men, and LACs tend to be liberal. Basically, it's known for being liberal.</p>
<p>There's no way that Umich, Berkeley, maybe even UCSC could match the most liberal of LACs. It's really not how it is.</p>
<p>I would say I'm more liberal than most if not all of the women at my school. :)</p>