I am just wondering, from people who have attended Ivies: which Ivy League university has the least politically hostile environment (protests, suppression of free speech and free expression, etc.)? I am aware that Brown is usually considered the worst, but I was wondering if there were ones that were not as bad.
Probably the one in the most conservative state (NH).
Rather than limit yourself to just Ivy, consider that the peer colleges (MIT, Stanford, Chicago, Duke) have a less politically active environment than most of the Ivies.
How could a grad of one Ivy be expected to offer a comparison? And do you mean back when these grads were students? You know some things occur in cycles or depend on what’s going on outside the gates, the climate du jour, right? Protest is not some fixed characteristic, never to ebb and flow.
I would argue UChicago is more politically active than most of the Ivies.
Also, in answer to the OP’s question, I put my money on Dartmouth, Penn, and Cornell.
Disclaimer: I did not personally attend any of these schools.
“Probably the one in the most conservative state (NH).”
I’d argue it is actually PA right now but I don’t think the state a private college is located in has much bearing.
I think media sources exaggerate these issues, especially those with a right wing bias.
Besides, protest is a good thing, is it not? It’s free speech in action by citizens. I’d be more worried about an environment that discouraged that kind of free speech.
Well, if you mean that their commitment to free speech encourages political activity, I suppose. But the OP was asking about politically hostile, and UChicago actively tries to prevent that.
There is no communist university, fascist university, or ISIS university in America. Some colleges (including Ivies) have had policies/practices related to affirmative action or environmental stewardship that some people find objectionable. There are individual students, individual faculty members, and organizations on many campuses that do advocate viewpoints (or engage in activities) that could be considered outside-the-mainstream. This has been true for decades (at least). None of the 8 Ivies seems to be exceptional in this respect.
One could say they’re all on balance more-or-less left-leaning. You may have a hard time finding any tip-top, highly selective college that isn’t (other than the service academies). Some may attract fewer students who are very vocal or politically active. If you want a hotbed of political inaction, check out pre-professional majors/schools (architecture, business, engineering) at Cornell or Penn.
Agree, tk2279. But imo “left leaning” is maybe “liberal leaning.” (“Left” is loaded, many using it today to point fingers not so open mindedly.)
What’s “politically hostile” even supposed to mean? Of course you can have your own opinions and choose with whom to engage or not. Of course profs will expect you to be able to defend your academic positions, whatever they are.
I’d eliminate Penn from that group, at least outside of Wharton. That said, none of us here has first-hand knowledge of the climate at all 8 colleges. Additionally, I would not characterize any of the campuses as “hostile.”
Among the Ivies, I would say Dartmouth, Penn and Princeton are less “extreme” than the other Ivies. Other equally good universities that tend to be less “extreme” would include Chicago, Duke, Georgetown, Michigan and Northwestern. But it should still be noted that all of those universities are left leaning.
Politically “hostile?”
What’s “extreme?” You think those thousands of kids are all supposed to submit? All those kids focused on their educations and social lives are under siege? C’mon, some number of students stand up or advocate or maybe make some noise and you think everyone is hunched over in fear?
As if Ivy kids are helpless? Dang. The stereotyping isn’t good. It’s not a sort of Ivy level thinking. Drive past or through any tippy top campus and even when something makes the media, for the grand bulk of students, it’s life as usual.
Just to put this into perspective, a large protest at Brown might, on a good day, attract about 400 students. That’s out of an undergraduate student body of 7,000. Frankly, I have to give credit to any college, where upwards of half the student body is paying a quarter of a million dollars for their education, that can field that many protesters.
On some campuses, lol, you could get a larger percentage if the topic were the food.
On many campuses, any protest is very school focused. Meanwhile, there are classes to get to.
This is nothing like the late 60’s.
The Yale Halloween costume debacle is a good example of what I would consider to be an extreme, hostile political response to a nonissue.
"When Yale administrators sent an all-students email advising Yalies to avoid “culturally unaware or insensitive choices” when choosing their Halloween costumes, Erika Christakis responded with an email of her own, acknowledging “genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation,” lauding the “spirit of avoiding hurt and offense,” but questioning whether students were well-served by administrators asserting norms rather than giving them space to shape their own.
“Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity—in your capacity—to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?” she asked. “What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment? Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that.” ’ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/
In response, Christakis and her husband were labeled racists, received death threats and were harassed until they resigned. Students and faculty members who supported them felt unsafe expressing their support publicly.
Bless us, the OP is looking to major in philosophy + math, and has just started grade 10- points that seem relevant to both the question and the answer.
OP, academic institutions are places where thinking, analyzing, questioning, and learning are meant to happen. That almost inevitably means disagreements (to use an old Irish-ism, ‘a difference of opinion is what makes a horse race’).
There seems to be a view that academic institutions tend to be ‘liberal’ or ‘left-leaning’ because of some sort of ‘liberal agenda’. The truth (in most cases) is much simpler: it is that the people who are drawn to an academic life tend to be, by nature, open to new ideas, interested in thinking things through, in analysis, in solving problems. Definitionally, that is the antithesis of ‘conservative’ (whether as an adjective ‘holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation’ or as a noun ‘a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes’).
That does not mean that people who hold ‘conservative’ political views can’t be academics - some of the finest scholars have very traditional attitudes. But it does mean that a lot of the people drawn to academia are people who are comfortable with questioning traditional ideas. The primary qualification for teaching at a university is a PhD, and one of the key pieces of getting a PhD is not just mastery of the field, but completing a piece of work that adds something new to the field.
As a couple of posters have said, the original question (“politically hostile environment (protests, suppression of free speech and free expression, etc”) carries a lot of freight - and evident bias (‘Brown is usually considered the worst’)- a surprising lack of disciplined thinking from a potential philosophy major.
To go back to the original question: irl, none of those institutions are ‘hostile’. All of those institutions have people with a range of political views. If you will be unhappy in an environment with a range of perspectives, you will narrow your choices rather a lot.
Have you looked at Furman? It is one of the most academically rigorous of the colleges that are noted for conservative values.
My head’s still clanging from the word “hostile”–what does that even mean?
Is the OP looking for a place that doesn’t challenge ideas?
What I find amazing is that the conservative schools tend to get free passes on limiting “free speech” to conservative speech only–
- Liberty: known for escorting liberal speakers off of its campus and has never had a liberal commencement speaker
- Hillsdale: touts free speech--calls itself the free speech campus-- and yet hasn't hosted a single liberal speaker (as of 2014 according to a editorial written by a student there). Apparently liberal speakers are too controversial to even risk inviting.
- Bob Jones -- never had a liberal commencement speaker according to The Nation magazine (2013)
Etc etc etc.
He did not resign. She was a lecturer who, shortly after, decided not to teach the next semester. This story is difficult, but in itself, not an indication Yale, as a whole, is “hostile.” And one article suggests there was a little more we don’t know. And, says they retain their positions as house masters.
Watch out for media articles.
They subsequently relinquished those as well.
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/05/25/months-after-controversy-christakises-resign-silliman-posts/
Oh, and it’s no longer “house master”; it’s “head of college.”