I think in a very red state, the flagship U’s campus is likely to be more liberal than the state at large- but more conservative than the flagship in a more liberal state.
Does this matter?
As a student, I didn’t pick courses based on the professor’s personal philosophy, religion, etc. Plato and Socrates were plenty political, but I don’t think the personal orientation of the professor is material in the seminar room when discussing their work.
I am less concerned about political leanings than I am about general ignorance. Every time they publish a study showing that X % of college kids can’t find Iran on a map, or don’t know that Syria and Saudi Arabia are different countries I cringe.
To me- this is the horror show, not whether some tenured professor of chemical engineering has an axe to grind.
The bank examiner may be conservative in terms of financial risk taking, but may or may not be conservative in unrelated matters, right? Same with fire fighters with respect to fire risks, but not necessarily elsewhere, right?
Of course, if your sample of “conservatives” is mostly libertarian, then it appears that you are not encountering many social conservatives. But then that may not be too surprising among younger generation people in CS, from what I have seen. However, there are probably plenty of center-left and center-right people in CS who may be less outspoken about political things.
Diversity of thought (and race, sex, creed, etc.) is a wonderful attribute at any university.
In US politics I’m right of center economically (capitalism plus a safety net that doesn’t breed generations of sloth) and pretty much in the middle on social issues.
I went to a liberal state school (UW-Madison), but one large enough for a robust College Republicans group and plenty of conservatives on all applicable axes.
Did I search them out? Nope.
I interacted with those I felt were cool. Some were conservative, more were liberal, and a few were centrists. I imagine many of us have drifted toward the center since, but young adults are so intent on their brand of idealism.
Friendship is far more important than politics.
Anyway, I figure it’s like this:
Young people in general tend to lean liberal
Most people move right as they age and become secure/make money/gain independence.
Most humanities/social science profs and students are liberal, with the exception of Econ, which is pretty centrist economically (saltwater) or right of center (freshwater). Divinity students likely are all over the place, maybe barely shading right of center overall. Depends on the branch.
STEM is all over the place. I imagine if we took a national poll, economically it would come out just right of center and socially, a hair left of center.
Business Admin/Finance are right of center to right (Capitalism!) economically, and all over the place socially.
There were some social conservatives with views similar to/more conservative than those held by the fundamentalist evangelical branch of my extended family. However, they were few and far between and tended to have their arguments shot down by both of the main polarized camps on various issues.
Sometimes both camps would team up to debunk them when the discussion centers around say…the merits of evolution vs creationism/intelligent design.
Or is it that on some issues in the US, the overall population moves left, so that the “liberal” viewpoint you have when you are 20 is a “conservative” viewpoint when you are 60, even if your viewpoint has not changed?
I’ve known several folks including HS classmates and colleagues who were much more conservative in their adolescent/young adult years…including some former staunch HS Republicans/Ayn Rand Objectivists who have moved to the left as older adults…sometimes to the point of being radical progressive left activisty types.
One was a staunch Republican through our HS years and through his undergrad and law school years.
It was his experience working on the employer side of a large corporate law firm and seeing the myriad ways large corporations used to circumvent government regulations meant to safeguard consumers/general public and otherwise screw over employees and him and his team having to come up with legal arguments/maneuvers to justify what he increasingly felt were their unseemly actions that prompted a radical political transformation in his mid-late 20s.
It also prompted him to switch to working the employee side of employment law after several years and he’s just as active in radical-lefty activism as a thirty-something as most undergrads at my LAC were as 17-22 year olds.
Granted, some of this may be because folks in my generation(Gen X…in my case tail end Gen X) were “children of the Reagan/Bush I years” and tended to be more conservative on average than folks in older or younger generations at the same ages.
This was illustrated by my finding that the student body of my HS years was much more conservative than the ones older OR younger alums remembered from their HS days or finding from alums at other colleges…including Berkeley that their student bodies tended to be more conservative during my undergrad years than before or after.
Can someone who self-identifies please clue me in on what it is that a conservative would feel so passionate about at the tender age of nineteen? Is is the Pro-Life movement? Is it the repeal of Obamacare? Just tell me what you want.
That people’s politics change is largely a myth with the exception that there is evidence that the elderly often become more socially libertarian. But the views we adopt during early adulthood tend to stay with us.
I wrote on another thread that in my social circle people tend to become much less conservative as they age. Friends in their sixties and older are reevaluating everything they thought they knew. They are reinterpreting texts and changing how they teach. It’s pretty exciting. The older we get, the more we understand we understood nothing at all.
“Can someone who self-identifies please clue me in on what it is that a conservative would feel so passionate about at the tender age of nineteen? Is is the Pro-Life movement? Is it the repeal of Obamacare? Just tell me what you want.”
What conservatives often want is simply to pursue their individual passions. One of the reasons polling is so difficult is that people on the right don’t answer polling questions in sufficient numbers. Movements are more of a left thing. I would say that if there is one thing on which many young conservatives feel great passion, it is serving their country in the military.
I’m not so sure I’d go so far as to say it’s largely a myth even given the fact most people don’t charge their political views once they’ve entered young adulthood.
The ones who do change could be due to a gradual evolution of beliefs as they age or a radical transformation as with my former staunch conservative Republican turned radical-left activisty lawyer HS classmate.
The radical political transformations are more likely to happen due to dramatic life altering experiences.
For instance, while reading a series of books about how both East and West Germans dealt with and were affected by the 1990 reunification, it was interesting to see how a large number of former staunch East German card carrying Communists like a former East German Army Colonel* repudiate the internationalist-oriented Communist beliefs they were inculcated from childhood onwards to favoring taking part in and leading Neo-Nazi oriented groups whose beliefs centered on White-supremacist oriented German nationalism.
One of the prerequisites of joining the East German Armed forces officer corps** or many mid-higher level official positions in East German society was to demonstrate one was a staunch Communist to the satisfaction of the Soviet Union/East German Communist Party(SED) and thus, qualify and become a card carrying member of the SED. Failure to qualify*** or refusing to join that party meant many higher level professions are totally closed to you or promotions to higher positions beyond the extreme entry-level won't be forthcoming.
** Especially at higher levels beyond junior officer ranks.
*** One was frequently checked by local SED organizations along with the ever present watchful spies working for the Stasi intelligence agency. An agency whose level of penetration and scope of surveillance over East German society was considered by many historians to actually be far more pervasive than the Gestapo had been during the Third Reich.
I think it is quite common for someone who was raised in a conservative household to move to the left once they start encountering the broader set of diverse people and ideas that come with a typical college campus. (Yes, exactly what their parents are afraid of!). This isn’t a recent phenomenon – it happened to me as a young adult. Although the impact was not as much going to college as it was moving afterwards to a solidly blue state and realizing that the liberals were a whole lot nicer as human beings than the conservatives I had grown up among, and that I identified much more strongly with their ideas and goals. I went to a Republican caucus at about the age of 22 (wanted to see what it was like, and also vote in the straw poll), and was the only person who didn’t vote in favor of the list of conservative platform planks being pushed, including several anti-abortion measures (well, my H didn’t vote for any of them either). They passed unanimously except for our votes. Someone behind us said, “What are you DOING here?”. I thought, “What AM I doing here?”. Realized that I didn’t have to follow my upbringing on this, I was an adult and could think for myself.
Exactly, int. The views you develop between about the ages of 18 and 25 are (for the average person… of course there will always be exceptions!) basically what you’re going to believe for the rest of your life. Of course, little shifts happen- and large shifts (look at marriage equality as an example of an outlier issue where people rapidly flipped).
I remember a study saying that the strongest predictor for your lifelong politics is who you vote for in your first election. I don’t remember much about it other than that.
Also, your experience lines up pretty well with Mr R’s who grew up in a very conservative household in a conservative area. He is still politically apathetic but considers himself liberal because he can’t vote for people who believe in controlling lives and bodies. (I’m sure dating and marrying a borderline radical liberal like me has also shifted his views a little )
To those who think most people move left as we age:
How is it that more young adults are Democrats while more older people poll Republican?
Do I need to pull the old Churchill quote out of the basement to provide the caption to the numbers?
We know people move right – economically, at least. People tend to vote according to personal finances.
Socially, perhaps we do move left as major social issues are discussed en masse.
So if we move right economically and left socially as we age, we become, as a whole… libertarians. hehe
Anyway, this is an example of why we need to view “right” and “left” on at least two axes: economic and social.
There is at least a third, state/international/defense. I figure we become more stern as we age, but I have no numbers to back it – might be my own bias.
One famous exception to the rule is Hillary Rodham Clinton.
She was a Republican who strongly supported Barry Goldwater’s '64 campaign and those of other Republicans before she changed parties due to her evolving views on Civil Rights and her disgust at the veiled racism Nixon’s Southern Strategy presidential campaigning used to play to resentments of large numbers of Southern Whites angered about the passage of Civil Rights and dismantling of Jim Crow laws/ de jure segregation*.
I recalled seeing a similar study…but am extremely skeptical of it based on observing people around me and studying the history of different societies and political movements in the US and internationally.
I moved left. I have also noticed that my best friend from college, who was fairly conservative and unsure about Obama in 2007 is now an enthusiastic supporter of his and gave a “like” to Bernie on social media the other day. I don’t think broad generalizations about “becoming more conservative” with age hold up as the parties change, either. My mom was trying to make the case to me recently that she belongs to the party of Lincoln, and that should be enough to make minority voters want to vote Republican. Um… hated to break it to her, but her party has changed a LOT since then, and not for the better in the area of supportin civil liberties for minorities. Parties need to not only attract, but keep voters over time. If the party goes off the deep end, rational people start to shy away no matter what their age.
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