<p>Well, I wouldn't imagine it'd be like the sixties, but I suppose that if you go there you couldn't avoid discussing politics with another person at some time or another. I guess the questions that I want to ask pertaining to this topic are:</p>
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<li>Do most people tend to lean generally to the left at MIT, mainly because of the academic New England setting- to what extent do people tend to hold a wide variety of differing opinions?</li>
<li>Does MIT get a lot of students passionate about political ideals or anything like that? I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is no, really.</li>
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<p>I would be pretty surprised if the answer was ‘no’ to your second question, but seeing as I’m not an MIT student or alum I can’t say. But I’m betting that there a lot of people who do get passionate about political ideals, and just as many (or more) who don’t.</p>
<p>And from what I’ve read/heard, MIT leans left but there’s more of a balance at MIT than there is at HYP, but again that’s only word of mouth and shouldn’t be treated as fact.</p>
<p>I came to MIT as a very conservative Republican, and although I felt most students were politically left of me, I didn’t feel attacked or marginalized by people in my living group during political discussions. People were interested to engage me in discussion, but were generally respectful.</p>
<p>I know I certainly left MIT with a better-articulated political philosophy, and with more of a sense that I could make a difference. I don’t know how typical that is.</p>
<p>I was somewhat under the impression that it would lean left but I don’t know whether the fact that students come from all over would have an appreciable difference. But I kinda assumed that the faculty would be generally left wing, though. (I’m a Chomsky fan myself, though I’m not really that outspoken I guess.)</p>
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<p>How so? Well, to me MIT seems like a great place to develop that sense, as one is continually surrounded by brilliant individuals that do make significant impacts on the world by themselves, and there are probably many opportunities to make a difference as well.</p>
<p>University faculty in general tend to lean to the left.</p>
<p>As for the student body, I would imagine it’s fairly balanced (though a lot of domestic applicants are from the West Coast and New England areas - not sure if that’s relevant).</p>
<p>I would say that MIT on the whole is left of center but not extremely so. I always felt (coming from a more liberal living group than average - see below) like the true political divide was liberals vs. libertarians, not liberals vs. conservatives. It certainly was, and is, in my social group.</p>
<p>People tend to be fairly practical in their approaches to things. This guards against fringe views in any direction. However, it also leads to an attitude that gets mistaken for apathy, because people don’t feel like the standard easily-accessible political outlets are useful for accomplishing things, and given how busy they are, they aren’t going to bother if they don’t think it will accomplish things. So you don’t see a lot of demonstrations, for instance, and the ones that you see are normally about very local (i.e. MIT-specific) issues. But, I certainly knew people who canvassed or phone banked for Kerry and/or Obama, and people who are active with specific political groups.</p>
<p>There are political differences between majors and between living groups. A few years ago, Chris V. played around with Facebook and made graphs of political stance vs. major and political stance vs. living group. The data was collected when the '09s were frosh, so it’s a bit old, but I suspect that it still provides a decent rough picture.</p>
Well, in my particular case, I took a class (21A.216, Dilemmas in Biomedical Ethics) and realized that, as a scientist, I had a moral obligation to behave ethically not only in terms of my day-to-day work, but in terms of the effect of my work on the world. I realized for the first time that not everybody thinks that science is awesome and good the way I do, and I found out why.</p>
<p>That class sparked my interest in social justice and was a major contributing factor to changing my political views.</p>
<p>So the picture I’m getting is essentially what I’d expected- diversity in viewpoint but generally left and socially liberal, but overall not extremely political or polarized.</p>
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<p>Hmm, I wonder why Aeronautics and Astronautics is statistically the most liberal. It’s interesting to see how some majors are somewhat (if not drastically) more left than the others.</p>
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<p>I looked it up on ocw.mit.edu, and that actually seems like a very interesting course. I also found an essay on the debate on universal standards of health care written by a student in that class. Needless to say, it was extremely interesting and now that I think about it, I don’t really know for certain whether I like more, anthropology and social sciences or mathematics and exact sciences. </p>
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<p>I suppose, that in this sense, humanities and the social sciences are an important thing at MIT.</p>
<p>I agree with Jessie, and at least in my social circle, people really, REALLY enjoy talking about politics. I would say that the vast majority of my friends consider themselves to be libertarian, and Barack Obama was very, very popular amongst the people I know (two of my friends campaigned for him in New Hampshire during the primaries). In general, however, I feel like people who are interested in politics tend to clump together, so if you aren’t interested in politics, I don’t think you’ll feel left out. My politically-minded friends send me information and post articles and such, and they are generally happy to explain their viewpoints or to discuss the merits of others. Political discussions are generally open-minded and spirited, but I have never offended anyone or been offended by someone’s views, or by them attempting to push their views on me.</p>
<p>Where do you see that aero/astro is the most liberal? If anything it seems to be on the more conservative side (relatively, it is still on the + side of the -1 to 1 spectrum) being the third most conservative, unless if I am missing something…?</p>
<p>Really? Admittedly our social circles do not overlap 100%, but they overlap quite a bit, and the libertarians that I know are definitely the minority (though admittedly, they tend to be loud). Most are liberals. Haven’t you ever seen, on Erik’s zephyr class, where he’ll start on a libertarian rant and four or five people will start arguing with him? Seems to happen at least once every few days. :D</p>
<p>Most are civil libertarians, though, at any rate. And on the social issues that everyone likes to rant about, the liberals and libertarians tend to agree. :)</p>
<p>@Jessie: I think I’m friends with the half that are hardcore libertarians and you’re friends with the other half In general, I feel like MIT students are pretty economically liberal (aka, closer to the libertarian side of the spectrum), but I don’t think it’s really debatable that most MIT students are socially liberal.</p>
<p>Of course, it’s possible that I ignore the non-libertarians because I think they’re wrong :D</p>
<p>I misread that that third graph. Argh, I wish I could edit my post. In any case it’s a casual observation, and there is probably no single reason that one major is any more liberal or more conservative than the other.</p>
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<p>I have a couple people who enjoy political discussion, but honestly, there’s only one person I know who really argues on any intelligent level, if anything.</p>
<p>(I had to leave so here’s a follow-up post.)</p>
<p>I didn’t mean anything really disparaging by saying that other people I know don’t argue politics at an intelligent level, but most of them don’t have a well-thought out political philosophy and aren’t terribly well read. Thus it’s not really interesting talking about politics because they tend to think very linearly, and they either fall back upon their heritage if they’re generally conservative.</p>
<p>Talking politics becomes infinitely more interesting when you talk with people intelligent enough to understand that the systems it relies upon are complex, and to have some foresight to see how the future might possibly look like based off of broad long-term trends- to some extent look beyond the status quo. Not fall back on religion, morals, or ethics to oppose change, but to realize that you can’t stop change.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m waxing poetic a bit here but I hope I’ve made my point. I don’t see myself as a visionary or anything, but I’d love to meet and have a conversation with the few that are.</p>
<p>This example is getting a bit dated, but as I’ve said before McCain won the mock presidential election at MIT over Gore and Bush in the year 2000. I would say MIT is neither liberal or conservative. </p>
<p>Also, a magazine recently did an assessment of schools to see if they were a conservative-friendly environment. The three colors of a stoplight were the levels of conservative-friendliness–red (unfriendly), yellow (in between), green (friendly). MIT was the only top university with a green light. (For some reason Caltech wasn’t rated, but it probably would be the same.) I think HYP were yellow lights, and places like Brown and Oberlin were red lights.</p>
<p>While the humanities faculty (excluding econ) most certainly are leftist, they are not there to indoctrinate the students. If they were, they would have chosen another university to be at where that is the norm.</p>
<p>Which I guess is due to the somewhat politically balanced student body- even if they are a little left they may gravitate to a moderate over a Democrat. Then again, maybe things would have been different if McCain had won the Republican ticket.</p>
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<p>I don’t really think that maybe leaning one way and pushing students towards a certain end of the spectrum really constitutes indoctrination. Certainly many people in college have enough freedom to take some action if any member of the faculty is making life difficult for people by imposing a political viewpoint. </p>
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<p>Well, the people who tend to be liberal tend to be more free-thinking. Without trying to be too disparaging or simplistic towards either side, liberalism usually entails openness to new ideas and conservatism implies the opposite, even if its reaction to liberalism is cautionary but well-intentioned. Although this is a bit simplistic, if you’re a researcher working with stem cells and right-to-lifers are trying to make your work needlessly complicated, which side are you going to support? Which side are sympathizing colleagues going to favor?</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate to see that environmentalists or others in the left, however, do not tolerate any sort of opposition, especially from within. But I think the underlying reason is this: dissent from within will allow the opposition to undermine their current stance. Although Lindzen can probably bring up a strong argument against them, any sort of affiliation with energy companies or anyone opposing the idea of global warming could be used to undermine whatever he has to say, unfortunately.</p>
<p>The word “liberal” in the context of politics has evolved to mean something quite different than “liberal” as a general adjective. I know some very closed-minded liberals as well as some very open-minded, thoughtful conservatives. It all depends on the person.</p>
<p>Generally, MIT students are quite liberal on social issues and foreign policy. On fiscal policy, however, they are actually somewhat evenly divided.</p>
<p>I came to MIT as a traditionally conservative Republican (with an environmentalist streak), and now I am a libertarian-leaning “small government” conservative (still hanging onto the environmentalist streak). I guess you could say I’m a “Goldwater conservative” or a “Ron Paul conservative”.</p>
<p>During my first semester at MIT, I took 24.02 (Moral Problems and the Good Life). The class focused disproportionately on hot-button issues like abortion and homosexuality, which was disappointing to me. It seemed like the professor (and especially my TA) wanted to make political statements. We had to write three position papers, and I took very conservative positions in each paper. I realized that it might have been wise to moderate my opinions, but since it was Pass/NoRecord, I just went ahead and wrote very forceful conservative arguments. I was always a great writer in high school, and my 24.02 TA acknowledged my strong writing style…but she still gave me grades of C+/B- on all my papers. When I read her comments, it seemed like she had issues with my opinions rather than my writing or the strength of my arguments. Shortly before the final, I emailed the professor to request a meeting to discuss “some concerns” I had about the class. The final consisted of an essay, some short free responses, and matching quotes to authors from the class readings. I chose an essay prompt related to homosexuality and used all the same arguments I had used in one of my papers. I even used some of the exact wording from the paper. I did alright on the quote matching section, though I left one or two things blank. I was very surprised to learn that I got an A+ on that final. My final grade in the class was a B. I wanted to ask the professor how I could have gotten an A+ given (1) the one or two blanks and (2) that I used exactly the same arguments from a paper on which I had gotten a C+. However, I flew out of Boston immediately after finals and never met with the professor. I assumed that I just might not be very good at writing papers by MIT standards (MIT is a lot harder than my high school). That turned out not to be the case. In subsequent semesters, I avoided politically-charged HASS classes and never received anything less than an A- on any paper. In fact, the very next semester (spring freshman year), my history professor gave me the highest paper grades in the class and used one of my papers as an example for future students.</p>
<p>Though my political views have evolved such that I no longer believe many of the things I wrote in those 24.02 papers, I still view what happened as nothing but bias and discrimination. If I could do it over again, I would submit a complaint. I guess I’m telling this story now because I want any social conservatives out there to know that they should be discreet. I would like to think that my problem was an isolated incident, but I know another conservative student who had a similar problem with 24.02.</p>
<p>I should also make it clear that I never experienced any contempt from any fellow students because of my political views. The students are generally very open-minded and respectful.</p>
In general, I feel like MIT students are pretty economically liberal (aka, closer to the libertarian side of the spectrum), but I don’t think it’s really debatable that most MIT students are socially liberal.</p>