Given the recent controversy regarding the Dean’s welcome letter, I am curious to find out approximately what percentage of the undergraduate student body at UChicago is very concerned with social justice issues? And how vocal are they about it?
I’m trying to get a sense of the campus climate that would await a new student there
Maybe 5-10% would be described sarcastically by at least one friend as a social justice warrior, and some 2% embrace the label proudly and are actually quite loud about it. A less-social justice warrior-y place than most other liberal arts colleges. We’re in the south side of chicago which stirs up a lot of feelings, but it seems like a quarter of the school is an econ major at this point which has a major stabilizing effect.
Note: the majority of students are well-aware of social issues and have thoughtful opinions they are willing to openly discuss at a dinner party setting. Point I’m trying to make is that while most people have an opinion, very few have a closed-minded one and fewer still actually engage in identity politics.
I completely agree with that.
Despite what you might read on overheard the university is not dominated by the far left on either social or economic issues. We get all kinds, the people who use “liberal” as an insult from the left are balanced out by as many people who use “liberal” as an insult from the right.
As a whole and averaged out UChicago seems pretty centrist by college standards.
At some level, it may be fair to say that the overwhelming majority of Chicago students are “concerned with social justice issues.” The difference vs. many other elite universities and colleges is that a significant number of them approach those issues as libertarians and economic conservatives (i.e., “liberals” in the classic sense, not the current political argot).
If you are looking at liberal vs. conservative labels for students, it is worth remembering (a) @HydeSnark 's comment that “UChicago seems pretty centrist by college standards” is correct, but those last three words are pretty important, and (b) there is virtually no support for religion-based “values” conservatism on campus. If you were coming from a small town in the Bible Belt, the University of Chicago would probably strike you as very liberal. It would be very, very hard to find more than a handful of people who opposed marriage equality, for example.
As an addendum to JHS’s observation regarding religion-based values, I recall the following moment from a HUM 2 class from 1963. We were reading and discussing John Henry Newman’s “Grammar of Assent”. The discussion was proceeding analytically but not unsympathetically. Yet the prof seemed to think something was lacking in the level of our emotional engagement with this text. He asked for a show of hands as to how many of us (in that class of about 25) would call ourselves in some description of that word “believers”. Only one of our number, a brave soul, was willing to raise his hand. I suspect that others less brave should have done so in all truthfulness. However, the point being that it was not then the done thing to be religious in any sense of the word. (Not that this prevented us from attending “Messiah” at Rockefeller Chapel, or the occasional sermon of Paul Tillich or the latest “God is Dead” trendy theologian.)
That was a very small sample, of course. However, it matched my own experience outside the classroom. I wonder if the student body of the College could possibly have become any less religious in orientation today than it was then. I also wonder whether that prof’s question, which seemed unremarkable to us, could be asked in any of today’s classrooms, even at the University of Chicago.
It’s somewhat more conservative than the Ivies, but don’t let that fool you, this is still one of the most left-wing student bodies in the country. There was a comprehensive survey of the freshman class during orientation my first year on this among other issues - something like 50% liberal, 45% moderate, 5% conservative. In practice, I’d guess that virtually all of the moderates probably vote for Democrats. I do not know a single social conservative on campus - the College Republicans are overwhelmingly McCain types. The radical leftist party has won the last three student government elections in landslides (though they’re definitely left of the student body).
this question is a bit poorly posed. suppose you think student political environment is important, political position is not the only thing that matters to that environment. things like how students act and engage from their particular political views is the more important factor. so, whether people are willing to engage in substantive argument on the merits or form cliques and create some sort of social pressure based on politics should be the question, and chicago is in the former.
if you have strong political opinions, you can find likeminded organizations and also opposition at chicago. but secluding yourself from engagement with opposite views is not a virtue.