That would surely depend on whether you thought your fellow students would “very gently and wisely explained to me all the ways I was a lunatic” when you “wrote an essay defending McCarthyism” or if they would instead complain to the authorities who might then (for example at Yale) “summon you to a meeting, pressure you to publicly apologize and denounce you when you didn’t” https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/opinion/education/578181-yale-law-needs-to-learn-to-watch-its-language%3Famp
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Working with teens, I actually expect they will more likely skip the fistfights than many far polarized adults. At least the college bound teens. But then again it’s probably not so many college educated adults getting into the fights like in Jan or being the violent ones at protests either TBH.
Looks like it’s already falling apart. Two Top Advisers Resign From Anti-Cancel Culture University of Austin
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It depends on what those views are and who is in the discussion.
I had some interesting discussions in college with fellow students who were to the right of me. I also had students say that birth control was for sluts, the Holocaust was overblown and Jewish people should just get over it, Black people were lazy, and Gay men deserved to get AIDS. And all of this was during class discussions (it was the 80s, after all).
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Well the example cited above was “defending McCarthyism”.
Am pleased to say that I’m in complete agreement with @mtmind : If we cannot have a mix of political perspectives in our colleges these days, then the next best thing is that a kid with a conservative perspective should go to a liberal college (and vice versa). That would be bracing for both the profs and the students and might even lead eventually to better balance in all schools.
The hysteria is easy to understand - it comes from parents who have acquired political and cultural positions they want to pass on to their offspring, whom they cannot fully credit as independent human beings. Perhaps they fear being left behind or patronized by a person whose diapers they recently changed. Such fears may be misconceived, but they’re not crazy. It is not an unknown phenomenon that a kid returns from college questioning everything, asserting alien views, and blows up Thanksgiving dinner by lecturing his parents over the turkey and dressing on their ideological shortcomings. That fear is very human and not entirely unwarranted, though it may be unwise in terms of the personal development of the child.
But let’s not pretend that this is a failure of conservative parents only. A similar parental reaction surely occurs in the much less common case of a kid from a leftish household choosing to attend a conservative school and coming home with a new appreciation for the wisdom of the Founding Fathers or the thought of Edmund Burke (or, heaven forbid, a tolerance for his born-again and MAGA-hat-wearing fellow students). That kid could also be benefitting from exposure to alien ideas, and those parents would be correspondingly horrified by the prospect. We see many instances on cc of parents saying passionately that they will not so much as permit their child to set foot in a red state, even to attend a highly regarded and very liberal college such as Rice, Vanderbilt or WashU, much less an actual conservative college of the sort we have been talking about on this thread. Indeed, the reactions here to the existence of such colleges are instructive.
Malcolm’s advice is good, but it ought to go both ways.
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The biggest issue I see with many of the conservative schools mentioned in this thread isn’t their conservatism - it’s that they are very religious. That is going to blunt their appeal even to some conservative students (not all of whom are extremely religious). Many kids don’t want to attend a school where chapel attendance is mandatory, dating is forbidden/restricted etc. These are niche schools where the student body is very self selecting because of the rules & restrictions.
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Those restrictions were once widespread. The city I grew up in had three church-related colleges, all of whom had compulsory chapel, frequently flouted of course, when I was a kid. None of them do now. One of them continues to be quite hard-core Christian (if I can put it that way), but it also has a quite representative student body. My niece, who attended it, is a person of color who met and married a white guy who’s about as hardcore conservative as it gets both politically and religiously. They have three sweet kids and a happy marriage. There are more things in heaven and earth than we in our philosophy readily imagine.
Growing up in New England there were relatively few overtly religious schools on my radar. Catholic schools (like BC, Holy Cross) always seemed much more secular than the few Christian ones in our area. I wonder how long some of these very religious schools will last - the US population is become more secular by the year and with declining birthrates I think all niche schools (regardless the niche) will be hard pressed to remain financially solvent. I’m glad your niece found happiness - there is the shortage of that in the world.
Friend’s secular child was dating a student at Liberty University. Her student had to go stay in a hotel in order to visit this romatic interest, and was only allowed to see them on weekends during the day since there is a curfew every night and busy class schedule during the week. Stayed ten days so that there would be two possible weekends to hang out. I am still waiting to hear how this budding romance is working out. I was surpised to hear of these restrictions on adult aged people.
I don’t disagree with the point you’re making about the limited appeal of religious colleges. But since I pitched Hope College up the thread I want to point out that chapel there is voluntary (my kid has never darkened the doors). No restrictions on dating etc. And the chapel services for those that attend are designed to be very ecumenical in recognition of the fact that the student body includes a wide variety of Christians, including a strong contingent of Catholics.
I was sorry to see these two go, but I see the problem that the new university poses for both of them.
Zimmer has spent the last 15 years trumpeting the virtues of the University of Chicago as Free Speech U. Even following his retirement he continues as Chancellor and will no doubt be fund-raising on that basis. It was always going to be a bit awkward for him to be associated with a school that says that free speech is in danger at ALL American universities.
Pinker has been critical of Harvard, but he made his bed there long ago, and I doubt that he too subscribes to the blanket condemnations of American universities made in the manifesto. Add to this that while he has been the target himself of cancelling activities initiated by the woke, he would not want to limit his reach (and the potential readers of his books) to the anti-woke. He would not want to run the risk of one-dimensionality. Indeed, in his latest book he deplores “tribalism” in the intellectual sphere. He would want to steer clear of any suggestion of it.
Whether or not this is an indication of the disarray of the new university, it might be a harbinger that establishment figures, while sympathetic to its objectives, will be watching and waiting. As will we all.
Hope isn’t really what I had in mind when I was thinking of religious colleges (though it is religious) - I was really thinking of those schools whose rules and regulations are very strict when it comes to personal behavior and worship. I just happen to think that the latter has a finite universe of potential students as there are a finite number of young people that would be willing to adhere to such strict guidelines. I’ll freely admit that my Northeast bias probably plays into that assumption, but, from what I read, religion is on the decline and coupled with our looming baby bust the cohort of students that would be disposed to favor a very religious school may shrink significantly.
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I’m not sure if anyone linked this article yet. Admittedly, The Guardian is more than a bit liberal. Seems as though a few high profile folks have already left this “university.”
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The heavy sarcasm is what you’d expect from such a source, one that doesn’t hesitate to call the place a “fake university” and recite the usual talking points in denial of cancel culture. I saw no real news there and no indication of any people other than Pinker and Zimmer “leaving the university”. An instance of the cartoonish level of analysis was the author’s reciting in wonderment that “it doesn’t even have a campus.” Gee whiz, what a devastating gotcha - it is game over already in the land of the wishful thinkers. And what does one make of someone capable of the supposedly deadly observation that Jonathan Haidt, a member of the Board of Advisers, says he would wish his children to attend the school, but he himself, gasp, has not announced an intention to join the faculty?
As Kanelos said, the founders welcome that quality of opprobrium.
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The fact that comments like the following are incorporated in a “news” versus “opinion” piece actually serve to embolden and prove the other sides claims…
“If any of these free speech warriors wanted to actually take a stand for their stated beliefs, they would move to Texas, not to teach at a fake university, but to get a job at a public high school.”
I’m primarily interested in the fact that some people are already jumping ship. I expect others will follow.
Pretty fluffy piece. I posted it because it’s relevant to this thread.
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But you’re ok with the following in the OP article about “librul” colleges?
Ok. You lose me somewhere…
Also, I am very curious: what is the meaning of “anti-woke academics”? I get what woke means, but what exactly is the opposite of woke?
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I agree but think it’s relevancy is emblematic of a broader problem perpetuated by both extremes.
The consistent vilification or diminishing of alternative perspectives juxtaposed against a self perception of moral superiority is bad for a democratic and civil society. As a society the fact that both sides are so entrenched and determined to pursue a strategy to shout one another down in an academic setting should alarm people of good conscience regardless of political beliefs.
Reading through this thread I am struck by posters outrage at “the other side” versus my outrage at our populations unwillingness to listen to one another, empathize, or even seek out common purpose and respectfully disagree.
I have never learned anything or persuaded anyone while yelling. As a society we tend to yell a lot.
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The OP was hostile to the new college and picked a news source with the most inflammatory possible language used to describe what is a very real thing - the problem of free speech on many if not most American campuses. I don’t know why you’d say that I’m ok with that language except as a debating trick - the very kind Pinker deplores. The Guardian piece was hyperbolic as well, but also dull and inaccurate.
If you know what “woke” means I expect you can make a pretty good guess as to what “anti-woke” means. Consider the instance that has come up on the present thread - the cancellation of Dorian Abbot’s lecture at MIT on the grounds that he had perpetrated the unsayable and unthinkable in his critique of affirmative action (notwthstanding that the cancelled lecture had nothing to do with that subject). That was a woke action. An anti-woke one was the offer made by Princeton’s Madison Institute to host the lecture. Thought-crimes, struggle sessions, and cancellations mark woke culture; the reverse of these things is free speech and independent inquiry. You could call that anti-woke culture. A few years ago it was just ordinary campus culture.
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