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If you think college faculty are liberal, it’s only because American politics has twisted your perspective: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/05/09/i

If you think college faculty are liberal, it’s only because American politics has twisted your perspective: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/05/09/if-you-think-college-faculty-are-liberal-its-only-because-american-politics-has-twisted-your-perspective/ https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/05/09/if-you-th...

ikeboy 10y ago
> If you are one of those things, you are much more likely to believe in creationism, or conspiracy theories, or so-called ‘scientific racism’, or any of a number of other destructive and thoroughly debunked ideas I notice no citation, nor what "much more likely" means.
- npsimons 10y ago
  > I notice no citation, nor what "much more likely" means. The blog post still makes the very important point that no one cares about beliefs when hiring. If one so chooses to be a bad teacher and teach things that are flat out wrong, well, that just makes firing them justified based on incompetence. I think the NYTimes article is begging the question; if you ask why there are fewer conservatives/evangelicals/fundamentalists in the universities, one possible answer is that they are self-selecting, not that they're being discriminated against.
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    How do you know that? Very little evidence is offered. The other side is quoting studies about bias in hiring, and the reply is basically "we would never do that, trust us". Edit: re self-selection, two points: 1. If the self selection occurs at the student levels (i.e. professors are hostile to conservatives which causes them to drop out of academia before they get to the teaching level) this is still bad. 2. Even if it's entirely self selected, it's still a diversity problem.
    - npsimons 10y ago
      > 1. If the self selection occurs at the student levels (i.e. professors are hostile to conservatives which causes them to drop out of academia before they get to the teaching level) this is still bad. Not necessarily; if someone realizes that their basic beliefs are incompatible with the basic tenets of an institution, that saves everyone time in the long run. And I'd like to see some evidence, any evidence of professors being hostile to conservatives. And no, "God's not Dead" doesn't count. That's such a persecution complex strawman. > 2. Even if it's entirely self selected, it's still a diversity problem. There's diversity and there is pandering to vox populi and anti-intellectualism. The first is good, the second is not, and quite frankly, the face of modern conservatism in America has been anti-intellectual for quite some time. And hey, Kristoff seems to have misrepresented the data! https://medium.com/@ginasue/the-lie-of-liberal-intolerance-on-campus-6ba4c67ea8e0#.de9ylal06 https://medium.com/@ginasue/the-lie-of-liberal-intolerance-o... Surprised, I am not.
      - hsod 10y ago
        I don't see anything in that essay that supports any but a very broad interpretation of the phrase "misrepresented the data". I see a bunch of innuendo and odd stats like this one: > Of professors who say that they are religious, fully 19% of them can be classified as “traditionalists,” which would include evangelical Christians (which in Kristof’s NYT op-ed were presented as a maligned minority, not part of the solid 1-in-5 religious professors who are traditionalists found by the survey). One in five religious professors are traditionalists. So what?

ikeboy 10y ago

> If you are one of those things, you are much more likely to believe in creationism, or conspiracy theories, or so-called ‘scientific racism’, or any of a number of other destructive and thoroughly debunked ideas I notice no citation, nor what "much more likely" means.

npsimons 10y ago
> I notice no citation, nor what "much more likely" means. The blog post still makes the very important point that no one cares about beliefs when hiring. If one so chooses to be a bad teacher and teach things that are flat out wrong, well, that just makes firing them justified based on incompetence. I think the NYTimes article is begging the question; if you ask why there are fewer conservatives/evangelicals/fundamentalists in the universities, one possible answer is that they are self-selecting, not that they're being discriminated against.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  How do you know that? Very little evidence is offered. The other side is quoting studies about bias in hiring, and the reply is basically "we would never do that, trust us". Edit: re self-selection, two points: 1. If the self selection occurs at the student levels (i.e. professors are hostile to conservatives which causes them to drop out of academia before they get to the teaching level) this is still bad. 2. Even if it's entirely self selected, it's still a diversity problem.
  - npsimons 10y ago
    > 1. If the self selection occurs at the student levels (i.e. professors are hostile to conservatives which causes them to drop out of academia before they get to the teaching level) this is still bad. Not necessarily; if someone realizes that their basic beliefs are incompatible with the basic tenets of an institution, that saves everyone time in the long run. And I'd like to see some evidence, any evidence of professors being hostile to conservatives. And no, "God's not Dead" doesn't count. That's such a persecution complex strawman. > 2. Even if it's entirely self selected, it's still a diversity problem. There's diversity and there is pandering to vox populi and anti-intellectualism. The first is good, the second is not, and quite frankly, the face of modern conservatism in America has been anti-intellectual for quite some time. And hey, Kristoff seems to have misrepresented the data! https://medium.com/@ginasue/the-lie-of-liberal-intolerance-on-campus-6ba4c67ea8e0#.de9ylal06 https://medium.com/@ginasue/the-lie-of-liberal-intolerance-o... Surprised, I am not.
    - hsod 10y ago
      I don't see anything in that essay that supports any but a very broad interpretation of the phrase "misrepresented the data". I see a bunch of innuendo and odd stats like this one: > Of professors who say that they are religious, fully 19% of them can be classified as “traditionalists,” which would include evangelical Christians (which in Kristof’s NYT op-ed were presented as a maligned minority, not part of the solid 1-in-5 religious professors who are traditionalists found by the survey). One in five religious professors are traditionalists. So what?