Except for Whittier, all those colleges maintain a Christian affiliation or purpose.
Kenyon is certainly not preppy and conservative now. Decidedly liberal, but not activist. It’s got a hip, creative atmosphere these days, though there is still a preppy, jocky element apparently. Body piercings of all descriptions are very popular;-)
I was trying to differentiate between those who just want a social justice atmosphere (the vast majority of colleges named above would fit) from those students with a genuine desire to accomplish social justice. Catholic colleges often have strong effective programs to address social welfare needs in their community, for example. If you google top social work programs you might get quite a different list than the ones mentioned here.
“Genuine desire to accomplish social justice” sounds a bit condescending as it implies those who want a social justice oriented campus culture which doesn’t accord with the one using such a phrase “aren’t serious”.
It’s also interesting as there are many active social justice activists, workers(i.e. Planned Parenthood), and even some conservative libertarians(non-SJWs) who would dispute the degree of social justice/freedom principles commitment of higher education/religious organizations which prohibits/strongly discourages birth control practices well-accepted in the secular medical community or abortions for religious impositionist reasons.
Disclosure: I attended Catholic elementary school and grew up in what was a heavily Catholic urban neighborhood in NYC.
Roycroftmom–you are making an implicit judgment that “activist” social justice work does not come from a real desire to effect change, only more one-on-one social work does, and then you are speaking as if that claim has been already accepted.
Community hands-on service is vital and good. But systemic change also is. I’m glad no one told the people who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial with King that they did not have a “genuine” interest in social justice.
I’m glad the brave college students who sat at segregated lunch counters didn’t think they were wasting their time when they really ought to be only doing charitable work 'in their communities."
I’m glad someone thought that marching for the right for women to vote was important.
Basically, what’s bothering me is that you keep explaining in a rather condescending way to the OP about what YOU think her D should be doing, as if they’re not able to make that determination themselves.
She didn’t ask for a judgment; she asked for school suggestions.
I apologize if I came across as condescending; that was certainly not my intent at all. And obviously I honor the efforts of civil rights workers, suffragettes, etc. But having worked for several years in a social justice venue, I am consistently surprised at the number of students eager to vocalize their support but unwilling to do anything more. So I do think there is a difference in what a student may be looking for in a campus. Marching was and remains important and helpful, but I am quite certain both the civil rights workers and women’s activists did a whole lot more work to achieve their goals than marches alone. Campuses differ in how willing students are to do anything more.
@roycroftmom 's post gives me an opening to express something that has bothered me about this thread, although several people have also addressed it implicitly. The OP categorized her daughter as a “social justice warrior,” but there was no clear indication that she knew what that meant. The girl in question has been to two demonstrations in the past two weeks, but so have hundreds of thousands of people – including me – who are nothing like what gets called “social justice warriors.” That phrase is used by right-wing pundits and their audience to denigrate people they believe are too concerned with political correctness and too quick to identify and to seek solutions for comparatively trivial questions of inequality or potential offense. Such as, perhaps, the students at Smith who object to it calling itself a “women’s college,” because some of the students may be transmen. The phrase connotes extremism, being far out of the mainstream, and also being far more concerned with appearances and language than with actually helping specific people who need help.
Few, if any, people would call themselves a “social justice warrior.”
So there have been two types of responses in this thread. One set tries to identify the colleges with the highest proportion of left-wing fringe students that might be appropriate admissions targets based on the daughter’s stats. The other set points out that practically any non-religious college in the Northeast or Midwest, and many religious colleges, too, especially Jesuit ones, will have a student body that is significantly more liberal than the residents of a small southern town. I’m with the latter group. That sounds like it would be perfectly satisfactory to the daughter.
JHS–though I agree that SJW carries a pejorative whiff which the OP does not appear to intend, I disagree about the standard atmosphere at a typical college campus.
You may think that going to two marches in two weeks is no big deal. I can confidently state that not one student I teach at a typical NE college attended one in the last two weeks, or has ever. They are nice, vaguely open-minded people, on the whole, who are bored by politics. Still. Really just not very interested.
I think that that’s much more the likelihood on most college campuses, anywhere. This idea that they’re all leftie radicals; that’s completely false.
My D went to a typical apathetic college her first year and stuck out like a sore thumb. She was never in step with her fellow students. When she did find more “activist” groups, she was the only freshman.
Perhaps transferring to Wesleyan was a copout–I’m sure you think so. But strength in numbers is nice. Feeling like you’re not a freak is nice. Being around more than a tiny cohort of people who are not “bored by politics” is nice. Having scores of close, caring friends who think the same things are important that you do, who still regularly get together 13 years after graduating. That’s nice too. Making that switch was possibly the best life decision (besides her H) that she ever made.
@JHS Further-- I don’t think it is fair to assume all right leaning/conservative people don’t CARE about social justice… I am a conservative generally and I do very much care about civil rights and the like. Your characterization isn’t necessarily fair either.
Not entirely true…some young people have reclaimed the term to apply to themselves. OP’s daughter may be one of them.
I believe the general feeling behind it is “Of course I care a lot about social justice…you’re trying to make that a bad thing?”
OK - OP here. Chiming in to say that I mean the term Social Justice Warrior in a positive light. I realize it was coined by those who think otherwise but I rather like the term. And while this thread has gone in unexpected direction from my initial question - I got lots of good leads and opinions from early responders - and the rest has been interesting in its own way.
@JHS , I think you might be reading too much into this phrase SJW. As I said, I am a raving loony liberal and I don’t find that phrase offensive. I think it’s a nice thing for a parent to call their child.
OP, you have lots of good suggestions in this thread for your child.
Yikes! I did not expect to get jumped on like that for my post.
@garland : I am a huge fan of Wesleyan. My father went there (long before anyone had heard of social justice warriors) and it absolutely changed his life. One of my best friends from high school went there, and I spent plenty of time there during college visiting her and her many cute friends. More recently, the kid next door, the kid across the street, my kid’s first girlfriend, and one of my virtual nieces all went to Wesleyan, all loved it, all got impressive educations there. I would recommend Wesleyan to anyone except a kid who was going to blow a gasket if he had to have a conversation about what pronouns to use for transpeople.
Wesleyan probably isn’t in the cards for the OP’s daughter, however. And based on my reading of the OP’s post, her daughter doesn’t need Wesleyan, either. She would like to be someplace where there are a lot of people like her. All sorts of colleges would fit that bill, not just Wesleyan or Oberlin or Bard (to name three obvious high-SJW type colleges).
I also certainly didn’t mean to suggest that no one on the right cares about justice, social or otherwise. Of course they do, at least many of them, and often back it up with action.
this is such an interesting search for OP’s daughter. at first it seems simple…aren’t most colleges full of kids that want to change the world/are liberal to almost an extreme degree? However, it depends…it all depends. Social justice comes in liberal forms (standard ivy league liberals that you’d find at Brown, say, or Columbia-- or state universities known for large liberal populations like wisconsin or UCBerkeley or some of the HBCUs). BUT social justice also comes in the form of more centrist or even conservative religious activism…more along the lines of Earlham (Quaker), Berea College (Christian) or some of the students at Kenyon (protestant). FInally, there is the whole Jesuit social warrior scene at great schools like Georgetown. There are a lot of choices all over the political spectrum.
Honestly, I think that it might be a good idea for a student like this to look for the majors that support activism, such as rhetoric, legal studies, social media, etc. Then she can get the skills she’ll need to do what she wants…
@thingamajig I like your comment and the sorting in general but just wanted to say a tiny thing, hopefully not too obnoxious of me, which is that Quaker is protestant. I’m pretty sure. Just a small gentle aside.
I grew up and went to college thinking I was conservative- then I left my home county and discovered how liberal I really was. Everything is relative. It matters if your area is dominated by different religions and their influence on local customs. Great for this student to go beyond her region. Now she needs to pick her flavor of differing areas and school cultures. She should also look at majors available and courses within those fields that are offered.
Chiming in to say that my kid would not object to being called a social justice warrior. She has explicitly told me that she doesn’t consider it an insult.
She goes to a. Jesuit school in the South, BTW. I agree that many Jesuit schools may be worth looking at for a student who wants opportunities to be involved in various ways. Her school offers outlets for community involvement and activism.
Actually, while Brown comes closer to Wesleyan, Oberlin, or similar schools on the social activism scale, I wouldn’t include Columbia in there from my experiences as a local New Yorker and someone who has had dozens of friends AND taken grad classes there.
IME, Columbia’s undergrad student body is largely apolitical/slight right leaning due to the prevailing vibe of students aspiring to pre-professional careers such as ibanking, finance, executive tracks in corporate America(talking aspiring CEOs) who IME tend to take a very dim view of progressive-left social activists and refer to them as “SJWs” in the original intended derogatory sense. Very similar to @garland 's description of her own students…except the strong whiff of disdain for those who are politically active…especially on the left-leaning side of the spectrum.
Also, even if one limits one’s focus to the vocal activists, there’s plenty of vocal conservative/right-leaning libertarians who are just as loud and obnoxious as their left-leaning counterparts on the Columbia campus.
This was one reason why nearly every(only one exception excluding myself) Oberlin classmate/alum I knew who attended Columbia for grad/professional school(law) felt it was “too damned conservative” and politically apathetic for them.
Not all Quaker affiliated schools are necessarily conservative or even centrist.
For instance, Swathmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mayr were all founded and continue to identify themselves as Quaker oriented schools to some extent. I would not describe any of those schools…especially not Bryn Mayr as “conservative” or “centrist”.
That doesn’t necessarily mean others who are politically active or active about social justice issues would feel the same, especially if it’s being uttered by strangers or family members who aren’t like-minded or worse, have had a history of belittling their activism/concerns.
In short, YMMV so check and verify before assuming it’s fine.
While an increasing number of social/political activists on the left-leaning side of the spectrum* are doing as the above, many still recognize that SJW is a popular insult term among those who are right-wing and right-leaning apolitical and react accordingly.
And there are some conservative/right-leaning apolitical folks who will reply that being concerned about social justice issues was a bad thing for the “weak-minded”. And it’s not a new phenomenon brought about by recent events, either.
Had the dubious honor of having a bunch as HS classmates back in the early-mid '90s. While most have reconsidered their views, others have doubled-down…especially those who have risen in their careers as Wall Street/Ibanking/Finance.
@cobrat I honestly never heard the term before and I live in a conservative household that listens to conservative media ALL the time
I agree with @garland. I would be hard put to characterize any Ivy League university - with the possible exception of Brown - and even that would be a stretch - as spilling over with SJWs. You can see it in their College Scorecard profiles. They are inundated with students who have crawled over the bodies of thousands of other applicants in order to get where they are and there just isn’t a whole lot of room for B personalities at these places - not anymore. These kids want a return on their investment and, maybe I’m being biased, but, future CEOs, investment bankers and management consultants simply don’t correlate with SJWs in my mind.