Most college campuses are not comfortable places for people to be openly conservative. My school would not make a top 10 list of most liberal campuses, but it would definitely take more confidence to bring up conservative ideas than liberal ones.
That said, I can’t help but be offended by the idea that a college student is likely to be “indoctrinated”. Indoctrination, by definition, compells people to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. If you are worried about your 18 yo son or daughter getting “indoctrinated” you might have done something wrong. My mom taught me to think.
@TooOld4School ^^Same question. Indoctrination involves a curated, coordinated effort to enforce doctrine and shield from outside influences. College students are not shielded from the world. They have TV, internet, Twitter, and Fox News whenever they want it.
Kids tend to be more liberal for a variety of reasons: they mostly come from a socialist structure (the family) , they have big hearts, and at the universities mostly discussed on CC they are in the top few % of students, and get to look forward to additional education and somewhat lucrative careers.
Who are those kids around? Other kids who think like they do, especially if they live on campus. Their left leaning professors reinforce that ethos. That’s not surprising when at many universities, a liberal attitude is important to tenure and promotion. That’s where the whole SJW thing comes from ; youthful energy directed in a certain way.
If the university also promotes alternate views, and brings in alternate speakers, etc. the university is furthering developing critical thought in the students. Face to face contact is a lot more powerful than reading some blog or watching a TV show. Shielding the students, as we have seen at unis like UW or Cal with their security fees and other barriers, stymies their student’s intellectual growth.
I don’t mean to suggest that the students don’t have lots of alternate sources of information. But it takes some additional effort to find it and digest it critically, and a lot of extra time which might not be a plentiful resource in the life of a student in a demanding program, or one who has work, sports, or other commitments. After all, why would they attend a uni in-person unless they wanted some guidance?
“They mostly come from a socialist structure (the family)”
Say what? What an odd thing to bring into this discussion. I mean… hopefully their whole lives going forward will also be tightly connected to that “socialist structure”. That seems like a reason for them to stay or become liberal.
I think a pretty small minority of students attend these types of events and thus they don’t have a huge impact in terms of being “in person”.
At my kid’s school - a pretty politically engaged group - only one “sold out” and that was a SC justice in a space that holds 2-300 on a campus of 2k students.
Not to hijack, but @TooOld4School , you probably weren’t aware, but SJW is as offensive to many as “libtard” (and is frequently used by the same group). Let’s try to keep this a thoughtful, adult conversation.
Ideas have a way of spreading rather rapidly in a campus environment. I take this from the perspective of someone who attend college over multiple decades. The older students, single parents, and vets bring a much different perspective. Many academics are not familiar with those experiences either. So even if 1% of the students attend an event, it makes a difference.
@intparent , every functional family is ‘socialist’ within the family group. The parents have abilities, the children have needs. It’s during the transition from childhood to adulthood that they develop abilities and understand the limitations, incentives, and framework of society. Our society just delays the transition longer than in previous generations. Some, like the SJW, never grow up.
@FallGirl - I became more open minded but more conservative lol!
No, I don’t worry about my children becoming indoctrinated but I do worry that they will not be allowed to be truly free in America to speak their respectful ideas.
@Momtofourkids - On one side I agree with your thoughts. However, on another side I wonder if we ever truly had the freedom to speak our minds. Even now we have the ability to speak those ideas, but should be prepared for the consequences. I think it was more in the past liberals speaking their ideas got shut down by conservatives, but now it’s conservatives getting shut down by liberals…(Not just politically speaking, but ideas, culturally etc.)
Can we please stop it with the “my side’s getting shut down these days” sort of talk? Basically—and by the way, there’s really good social science research on this—we as humans are largely blind to that which harms other’s interests at the same time we’re hyper-aware of that which harms our own. (This is why yes, it’s obvious and objectively provable that the refs are biased against your team. It’s also obvious and objectively provable that the refs are biased against the other team—just not to you.)
Everybody speaks, not everybody listens. It is the way of the world, and it’s true whether the speakers or listeners are liberal or conservative or anywhere in between or something that doesn’t fall on that spectrum at all. Get over it.
(And now back to your regularly scheduled complaintfest.)
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Columnist Dave Barry once wrote that if you needed to make conversation, one of the safest topics was always “those were some really bad calls the team got last night.” He said it didn’t matter what your team was – people would always agree with you. That’s always stuck with me.
To add to your point, no matter what side you’re on, attitude matters. If you can’t say what you’re saying with respect, while trying not to offend and genuinely listening to other points of view, you’re a problem. Name-calling and self-righteousness aren’t nice no matter where on the political spectrum you sit.
@Momtofourkids, I also live in a very blue state, and we’ve had plenty of conservative presidents over the years while I was in HS, college, and grad school, and I never heard other Republican presidents treated without respect even when they were vociferously disagreed with. I believe the vitriol you’re hearing now is directed not against the office or even the party, but against specific acts by a man, which would never have been tolerated by presidents of either party in the past. And I’m not trying to make this political – quite the opposite.
“Everybody speaks, not everybody listens. It is the way of the world, and it’s true whether the speakers or listeners are liberal or conservative or anywhere in between or something that doesn’t fall on that spectrum at all. Get over it.”
The Heterodox Academy, with its 1700 academics, seem to believe that this is worth fighting, at least in academia. https://heterodoxacademy.org/ They seem to support a similar view to those in the George/West article above.
Allowing what has been called “incivility in discourse” to run free does have a heavy cost in a democratic society. Despite being the way of the world, democratic citizens have some duty to combat it. I ran into this talk by Mark Kingwell of U Toronto that discusses how returning civility to discourse is critical for our society’s survival: https://www.stolaf.edu/multimedia/play/?e=1540
(I looked and couldn’t find a paper or article that concisely describes his view other than his talk here)
Personally, I’m not afraid of indoctrination, but I am afraid of the fallout of not adhering to orthodoxy.
And what is the political association of those doing the “social science”? I think I saw a report where 90+% of professors and academia was Leftist. Do I want to listen to what they say is in my “own interest”? Do you listen to what the few right-wing think tanks say is in your “own interest”?
(Also, I’ve yet to see any good social science use the rather loaded term “leftist”, except insofar as it’s working to unpack what exactly people mean by that. Spoiler: It can mean a lot of different things, making it radically—ha! I pun!—useless for research on what the actual sociopolitical leanings of any group or individual might be.)
Cardiff & Klein’s study, as others have pointed out, has two major problems: (1) They looked only at a very small number of colleges in California—including oversampling UC schools at the expense of CSU schools, and ignoring community colleges altogether—and (2) that they analyzed party affiliation, which isn’t actually a good stand-in for sociopolitical leanings, and also excluded individuals with no party affiliation from their ratios despite the fact that (as they mention, but only in passing) those made up a majority of faculty members.
Really, there are no good studies on this, at least as far as I’ve been able to find.
I am mostly concerned for my kid’s safety on campus. After seeing the riots at Berkeley, though he could have likely gotten in, he decided not to apply. Not that he is conservative, he is largely politically agnostic, depending on the day, he is agreeing with conservative policy and then the next day, agreeing with a liberal policy. I’d probably call him classically liberal, and there doesn’t even to be space for that on campus. Look at Bret Weinstein and Jordan Peterson. But should my kid want to listen to a moderate or a conservative, he’s likely to be shut out (they tend to limit the venue size) or caught in a violent crossfire. How is he going to be a good liberal or conservative, if he isn’t exposed to both, how will he stand for his beliefs.
