4 ms·

FWIW, adjunct professors I know have been corroborating this for awhile. Also note that conservative politicians in the U.S. are increasingly applying ideologic

FWIW, adjunct professors I know have been corroborating this for awhile. Also note that conservative politicians in the U.S. are increasingly applying ideological pressure on academic research, and also as government budgets are cut, more is funded by private interests looking for particular results. Adjuncts have little power to protect themselves and the integrity of their work. Finally, looking at the political situation in much of the developed world, you wouldn't be surprised by the fact that the study of the humanities (and social sciences) has declined; perhaps we need to invest more in it.

k5329 10y ago
>Also note that conservative politicians in the U.S. are increasingly applying ideological pressure on academic research Conservatives didn't politicize the academy alone. Studies[0] have shown left-wing professors will openly admit to discriminating against conservative peers and students. From the abstract I quote: "In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents were, the more they said they would discriminate." Other studies[1] have confirmed that there is an incredible lack of political diversity in certain university departments and that it's likely caused by outright discrimination. "This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: (1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority’s thinking. (4)" Given that these university departments are overtly discriminating based on political affiliation, is it any surprise to see funding for these university departments being politicized? Sorry, if you're discriminating based on political affiliation, you're not doing science, you're doing activism. [0]: http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf [1]: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-political-diversity/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-...
- hackuser 10y ago
  > Conservatives didn't politicize the academy alone I'm talking about conservative politicians - external actors, not internal. Also, I'd love to see some cites about the issue you raise from reliable sources. I'm sure it happens to a degree - it happens everywhere - but there is so much static on the issue from partisan conservatives, who follow the program of delegitimizing everyone who disagrees with their ideological program (e.g., the "media", climate scientists, Obama, Clinton, etc.) that they can't be trusted on anything.
  - k5329 10y ago
    >I'm talking about conservative politicians - external actors, not internal. Yes, I'm claiming (and evidence supports) that internal actors politicized these disciplines. Do some research into these fields. All of them were politicized in a remarkably short amount of time. Conservatives are just responding by denying public funding to self-identified partisan political activists. > Also, I'd love to see some cites about the issue you raise from reliable sources. I gave you cites from reliable sources. The second link I sent you is a review article of all of the research done into this subject. I'd highly recommend checking out some of the citations in that paper, they're very illuminating. Another good one to check out is this paper[0] from Stanford which measured the implicit bias association test applied to political groups. In all of their studies (I believe they recreated 3) they found that implicit bias is as much as 50% stronger for political identity than it is for racial identity. From that paper: "Compared with the most salient social divide in American society—race—partisanship elicits more extreme evaluations and behavioral responses to ingroups and outgroups. This remarkable patterns applies to both explicit and implicit measures of group affect and holds even when the tests of ingroup favoritism are unobtrusive and completely nonpolitical, and partisans are incentivized to treat copartisans no differently from opposing partisans." [0] https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2015/iyengar-ajps-group-polarization.pdf https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2015/iyengar-ajps-group-po...
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > I gave you cites from reliable sources. The second link ... Heterodox Academy's stated mission is to advocate for more conservatives in academia. They also have no independent claim on credibility that I know of. That's not what I mean by a reliable source; it's the kind of source I avoid (of any political stripe). > Conservatives are just responding by denying public funding to self-identified partisan political activists. Can you give examples? I've seen them attack climate scientists and tenure for everyone.

k5329 10y ago

>Also note that conservative politicians in the U.S. are increasingly applying ideological pressure on academic research Conservatives didn't politicize the academy alone. Studies[0] have shown left-wing professors will openly admit to discriminating against conservative peers and students. From the abstract I quote: "In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents were, the more they said they would discriminate." Other studies[1] have confirmed that there is an incredible lack of political diversity in certain university departments and that it's likely caused by outright discrimination. "This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: (1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority’s thinking. (4)" Given that these university departments are overtly discriminating based on political affiliation, is it any surprise to see funding for these university departments being politicized? Sorry, if you're discriminating based on political affiliation, you're not doing science, you're doing activism. [0]: http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf [1]: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-political-diversity/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-...

hackuser 10y ago
> Conservatives didn't politicize the academy alone I'm talking about conservative politicians - external actors, not internal. Also, I'd love to see some cites about the issue you raise from reliable sources. I'm sure it happens to a degree - it happens everywhere - but there is so much static on the issue from partisan conservatives, who follow the program of delegitimizing everyone who disagrees with their ideological program (e.g., the "media", climate scientists, Obama, Clinton, etc.) that they can't be trusted on anything.
- k5329 10y ago
  >I'm talking about conservative politicians - external actors, not internal. Yes, I'm claiming (and evidence supports) that internal actors politicized these disciplines. Do some research into these fields. All of them were politicized in a remarkably short amount of time. Conservatives are just responding by denying public funding to self-identified partisan political activists. > Also, I'd love to see some cites about the issue you raise from reliable sources. I gave you cites from reliable sources. The second link I sent you is a review article of all of the research done into this subject. I'd highly recommend checking out some of the citations in that paper, they're very illuminating. Another good one to check out is this paper[0] from Stanford which measured the implicit bias association test applied to political groups. In all of their studies (I believe they recreated 3) they found that implicit bias is as much as 50% stronger for political identity than it is for racial identity. From that paper: "Compared with the most salient social divide in American society—race—partisanship elicits more extreme evaluations and behavioral responses to ingroups and outgroups. This remarkable patterns applies to both explicit and implicit measures of group affect and holds even when the tests of ingroup favoritism are unobtrusive and completely nonpolitical, and partisans are incentivized to treat copartisans no differently from opposing partisans." [0] https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2015/iyengar-ajps-group-polarization.pdf https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2015/iyengar-ajps-group-po...
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > I gave you cites from reliable sources. The second link ... Heterodox Academy's stated mission is to advocate for more conservatives in academia. They also have no independent claim on credibility that I know of. That's not what I mean by a reliable source; it's the kind of source I avoid (of any political stripe). > Conservatives are just responding by denying public funding to self-identified partisan political activists. Can you give examples? I've seen them attack climate scientists and tenure for everyone.