Please suggest good colleges for robust political debate

[fractalmstr]

Politics are a funny thing in college. You will likely find out years after you graduate just how silly it all was, including how much you thought you knew, but really didn’t. Idealistic views tends to overshadow reality in many ways.

Regardless, if you’re in it for the fact-based, rigorous debate, I second someone else’s suggestion here by choosing a more STEM oriented college.

[ucbalumnus]

Of course, political debate is getting nastier, probably because it is increasingly identity*-based, rather than policy-based. When politics is identity-based, fact and rigorous debate go out the window when people see the other side as a threat to their being, rather than just someone with a different idea that may be worth consideration.

Race, religion, ethnic or national origin, social class, LGBT-or-not, immigrant-or-not, profession*, etc. Increasingly, political affiliation is seen as an identity attribute, rather than a more changeable and flexible status of agreeing with a given party’s policies for now.

**For example, police officers, lawyers, CEOs, Wall Street financiers, factory workers, etc… Scientists are not immune from such attacks like those from creationists, anti-vaccine activists, etc…

[Zinhead]

Of course, political debate is getting nastier, probably because it is increasingly identity*-based, rather than policy-based. When politics is identity-based, fact and rigorous debate go out the window when people see the other side as a threat to their being, rather than just someone with a different idea that may be worth consideration.

Yep, that is pretty much what happens when society moves from an honor or dignity based culture to one based on victim-hood. This trends was discussed in the following Atlantic piece.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/

Our current campus based victimhood culture has lead to Oppression Olympics in which various compete to see which is the most aggrieved as illustrated at a “Students of Color” conference at UC Irvine.

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/30436/

The crux of the debate centered around the conference theme: “Fighting Anti-Blackness.” Apparently it was not communicated to students that the conference would have a particular theme this year. At the event, held at UC Irvine, students of different minority groups began arguing when it became known that the conference would focus almost exclusively on discrimination against the African American community.

In one of the larger workshops, one of the students raised a question about why the only issues being discussed were those involving anti-blackness, prompting an African-American student to respond that black students are the most oppressed, to which a Muslim student made a comment about her people being bombed in the Middle East, according to Alvarez.

“I am very unhappy about how this conference was ran. There needs to be accountability for the trauma some of the organizers made. And I didn’t appreciate my workshop being cancelled,” wrote UCLA student Robert Gardner. “… It was really hurtful to have other marginalized identities silenced because a small fringe of organizers decided that their oppressions are more important (talk about Oppression Olympics. And yes, I am black and the majority of black folkx disagreed with the notion that the rally was anti-black. So the organizers were in the minority and did not represent the views of most of us).”

In any case, if the OP wants a robust diversity political debate, one must look for a large institution that attracts a variety of students. Schools like Amherst or other northeastern LAC’s don’t offer that as they are effectively mono-cultures despite their claims to be diverse.

[ucbalumnus]

@Zinhead

Yep, that is pretty much what happens when society moves from an honor or dignity based culture to one based on victim-hood. This trends was discussed in the following Atlantic piece.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/

Our current campus based victimhood culture has lead to Oppression Olympics in which various compete to see which is the most aggrieved as illustrated at a “Students of Color” conference at UC Irvine.

Students of Color Conference turns into ‘oppression Olympics,’ leads to fights, canceled sessions | The College Fix

It isn’t just the left that plays up competitive victimhood and identity-based politics.

[ThankYouforHelp]

There also was no mythical time in the past where you could say anything you wanted on a college campus (or anywhere else) and not have other people vehemently disagree with you.

.

[philbegas]

I don’t understand why people keep making it all about “victim-hood” or PC culture or whatever else they want to call it.

News flash guys, we have the internet now. If a person, or a group of people is feeling oppressed or bullied, they have a medium to come forward and say it. If campus police brutality is going on ( Like the UC Davis pepper-spray incident), people are going to see/hear about it almost instantly. There’s no “culture of victim-hood” going on. There’s camaraderie between people in similarly unfortunate situations and if you don’t like it then get rid of your network-capable devices and live as a hermit lol.

That also applies to what @ThankYouforHelp said. There was always vehement disagreement on college campuses, as well as activism. The only difference was that you didn’t hear about it unless A) it made one of a few major news networks or B) you heard about it through the grapevine.

Yes, you can find more or less conservative/liberal universities, and larger colleges will inevitably have a larger variety of opinions than small ones.