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Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators
- matchbok 8y agoSeems that the problem is the existence of departments like the "Office of Diversity and Campus Engagement". It's a school. Why are these needed? To pad tuition?
- fjsolwmv 8y agoAren't the sports teams and the residences and the fraternities more of a problem?
- geofft 8y agoOne cold, capitalist argument is to attract and retain black students, women students, and LGBTQIA students, have them do their best work, and have them graduate and succeed in life and donate back to the university.
- matchbok 8y agoI don't disagree. I just fail to see how it warrants an entire department with (I'm sure) 4+ highly paid admins. Every dep at my college was horribly bloated.
- marcoperaza 8y agoThe bureaucracy always expands to consume all available resources. This is basically a law of nature.
- jchanimal 8y agoIt’s funny that the pundit writing this says the example liberation event is lopsided, when it seems perfectly mainstream to me.
- aschampion 8y agoFurther, having worked in university systems, diversity offices and administrators are not highly funded. Almost all their activities are student led and organized; they usually just provide administrative guidance for student initiatives.
- mklarmann 8y agoTell me again. What is his issue?
- jchanimal 8y agoI think it’s the old canard where conservatives don’t realize that the reason their viewpoints are not represented on campus is because they don’t hold up to intellectual scrutiny.
- friedman23 8y agoAre you using the argument that because current conservative policy is to deny the existence of man made climate change that every other conservative position is unscientific?
- tiglionabbit 8y agoWell, what defensible prepositions have ya got?
- stevewodil 8y agoWeird, since typically the issue is seen in reverse where leftist views don't hold up to statistics and logic. Check out some of Ben Shapiro's talks, or Crowder's 'Change my mind' series
- the_gastropod 8y agoAh, yes. Let's review a few classic "leftist" views, and see if they hold up: 1. Single payer healthcare is both more effective and cheaper than the for-profit model we have now. [1] 2. Climate change is both actually happening and is largely caused by human activity. [I really hope I don't need to cite this...] 3. Gun control tends to lower gun violence. [2] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/upshot/why-single-payer-health-care-saves-money.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/upshot/why-single-payer-h... [2] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/4/16418754/gun-control-washington-post https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/4/16418754/g...
- dash2 8y agoOh man, so true. Where I am it's like a permanent Pride parade. That said, is this really a big issue? Employees, often public employees, at traditionally liberal institutions, many of whom are humanities PhDs themselves are liberal... Popes are often Catholic and wear funny hats... I'm not clear this is a huge threat to Western civilization.
- creaghpatr 8y agoQuality of public school education in America continues to decrease every year.
- jeffdavis 8y agoPeople don't go to Catholic church to hear a diversity of religious opinions. People do go to college thinking that it will broaden their intellect, but at least when it comes to politics and culture that does not appear to be true.
- geofft 8y agoI have a few questions: 1. Why aren't there very many conservative administrators? Are they not interested in these sorts of jobs, or is there discrimination/bias in the hiring process? 2. Why does having such events threaten the free and open exchange of ideas? Shouldn't it be quite the opposite? Incoming conservative students are being exposed to viewpoints they haven't heard before; isn't that a good thing? 3. Why aren't conservatives organizing similar events? The only group I can think of is Turning Point USA, which is hardly acting as a serious ideological advocate for conservative viewpoints. 4. The author calls "justice for women" a progressive cause. Does he believe conservatives are not interested in justice for women? Should conservatives run events about injustice for women to provide ideological balance, and if they do, is that good for society?
- fjsolwmv 8y ago1. There may be biological reasons why people with conservative psychology are better suited for other jobs than University administrator. 4. By the literal meanings of the words, justice for women is progressive, not conservative. Giving women civil rights wss please.
- geofft 8y ago1. I'd like to see the author explore that. 4. Ok, then, is it not a moral imperative for those of us who agree with progress to silence conservatives, and vice versa? Who is the author appealing to by extolling the virtues of an open and well-represented conversation?
- smsm42 8y ago> Who is the author appealing to by extolling the virtues of an open and well-represented conversation? I guess to people that still think that a functioning civil society, composed of diverse viewpoint engaged in productive policy debate, is better than a zero-sum tribal civil war.
- smsm42 8y ago1. Probably because if you're very liberal and 100% of your peer group is very liberal, you will have a lot less chance to network with somebody non-liberal and thus less chance to hire such person. And if you never hire one, there would not be one in your organization. 2. Yes, presence of liberal viewpoints is certainly beneficial for conservative students. Presence of 100% liberal viewpoints and nothing else - not so much. That's the whole point of diversity - or should be - 100% of the same perspective is not as good as the mix of different ones. 3. They do. But then there are protests, huge security fees, demands to fire whatever administrator allowed the unperson to speak on campus, death threats, speakers cancelling out of fear for their physical security, property damage, hostile environment complaints against organizers, etc. etc. Swimming downstream is a lot easier than swimming upstream. 4. That depends on what you call "justice for women". As it happens in politics, people choose very appealing brands for their ideas, but the underlying reality may or may not be appealing. If "justice for women" means a woman accusing a man in sexual harassment leads to automatic expulsion of the accused man, on her words alone, no due process - is that something that the man would get behind? If "justice for women" means that since women have been discriminated in hiring in the past, now men should be discriminated instead, to achieve summarily just outcome - that would be a very controversial opinion. A lot of things can be called "justice for women", it all depends what is under the brand name.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoIt's unfortunate that HN only shows the domain name of a source. Sources like NYT and other newspapers have News and Opinion directories, which quote different reputations.
- johnday 8y agoThe links are direct on HN - you can always hover links to find out, if you'd rather not give the Opinion section any traffic.
- ianai 8y agoThe topics discussed are about as political as “slavery is wrong.” Edit-Just to add a quote, the author describes the following as being liberally “lopsided.” “The conference would touch on such progressive topics as liberation spaces on campus, Black Lives Matter and justice for women as well as for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and allied people.” This has no place on HN, as it’s clearly political and not what this sites about.
- true_religion 8y agoTo be fair, no one ever describes their side in unfavorable terms so I cannot expect the conference’s self description to be poorly worded. For example, a conference for hardcore racists will claim to talk about the importance of “european heritage”, and hardcore sexists merely claim to want “traditional family values”.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 8y ago> The topics discussed are about as political as “slavery is wrong.” “Slavery is wrong” is intensely political, even if mostly non-controversial.
- mmaunder 8y agoA conservative leaning political post on HN's home page? I'm guessing this will be disappeared in a few minutes.
- Dancecity 8y agoUp for 5 minutes and is already flagged.
- gpm 8y agoLook at the comments that already exist - is there any way that you can imagine this not turning into a flamefest?
- weberc2 8y agoIt didn't have to be; the article itself was inoccuous. If it weren't for trolls, the comments here could have been productive.
- 394549 8y ago> Look at the comments that already exist - is there any way that you can imagine this not turning into a flamefest? That's an interesting censorship tactic: if you don't like a topic or an idea, start a fight about it, the ruder and unproductive the better. Your disliked topic is thrown out like a baby with the bathwater, an objections to the censorship can be countered with the misdirection that the topic or idea isn't getting suppressed, just "fights." That's why I think, in the interest of open, good-faith discussion, the flamers themselves need to be moderated, but not the topics that attract them.
- gpm 8y agoYou're not wrong, it's an instance of a heckler's veto. But HN policy is (basically) to allow the veto to work as the lesser of two evils, on the theory that there are lots of other places to discuss this sort of stuff. I think that's a reasonable policy for a tech site.
- mmaunder 8y ago
- glenrivard 8y agoVictim hood. Primary strategy of the right wing.
- josefresco 8y agopolitically lopsided When the fuck did equal rights for minorities, women, and GLBTQ become "politically lopsided". We're talking about human rights here. There is no legitimate "other side" to this argument, just hate. This article is concern trolling 101.
- jchanimal 8y agoExactly. Pretending there are two sides to this question is almost a paradigm example of what is wrong with American thought.
- babypuncher 8y agoBut if one candidate says we should exterminate the Jews, and the other candidate says we should NOT exterminate the Jews, they both deserve equal mindspace!
- hackeraccount 8y agoGoodwin.
- smsm42 8y agoExcept we have no candidates that are saying we should exterminate the Jews. But plenty of candidates and non-candidates what are saying "he is disagreeing with me on tax rates, immigration rules and Title IX due process enforcement, so he's as good as wanting to exterminate the Jews". The story becomes even funnier if we consider how many of these people support BDS, which is aligned with people that literally do want to exterminate the Jews, and some (like Rasmeah Odeh) actually did murder the Jews, and some others (like Linda Sarsour) are only one enthusiastic handshake removed from ones that did, and wholeheartedly support them.
- dang 8y agoPlease don't do this here.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
- assblaster 8y agoI contend that this is yet more evidence that college education needs radical reformation. The best way to reform college: competition. Why not have a "free", government funded post secondary education that is online only and is standardized across the entire country. The standardized course content is created by the leading experts in all relevant subjects. Testing of students is on standardized exams only. The cost of this system would be miniscule compared to the redundancy of multiple institutions, and to the physical footprint/costs of traditional schools. Especially in light of this article which shows huge resources spent on pet issues of liberal administrators. When colleges need to compete on price with this free system, then colleges will reduce costs and cut this unneeded waste.
- hackeraccount 8y agoI think automobiles need radical improvements. Why not have the government give out free cars as way of getting the private car companies to produce a better product.
- LiterallyDoge 8y agoStack Overflow already exists.
- minikites 8y ago>The conference would touch on such progressive topics as liberation spaces on campus, Black Lives Matter and justice for women as well as for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and allied people. I was taken aback by the college’s sponsorship of such a politically lopsided event. How is this lopsided? If you want a space with opposing views, visit anything or anywhere else in all of Western society, where everything and everyone caters to the "ideal" person: a white male aged 18-49.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jahaja 8y agoI think I'll never understand the US pundits view that there should be some sort of permanent equilibrium between what goes for liberal and conservative in the US, no matter how bonkers the latter goes. It's like monarchists in 1920's Europe clutching at every straw and demanding respect while deluding themselves that their time has not yet passed.
- sebular 8y agoIt's impossible to take this author and article seriously when he opens by describing "justice for women as well as for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and allied people" as being "politically lopsided".
- tiglionabbit 8y agoThe author whines about progressive events existing without conservative events. He never describes what sort of conservative events he would want to see.
- Uhhrrr 8y agoIt does seem ridiculous. Devil's advocate, it may be that he is so immersed in campus culture that he assumes everyone knows that "justice" is code for illiberal leftist ideas like the progressive stack and forced equity.
- iaosfgnionio 8y agoI've never been sure whether or not this is a problem. Academics are not a representative cross-section of the American people, so there's no real reason to expect their political opinions to be representative. I would argue that professors should know better than the general public. In that case, we should want to see true beliefs over-represented and false ones under-represented. So-called liberal and conservative beliefs are often mutually exclusive. That means that at most one of them can be true. Wouldn't that suggest that, if academics are doing their job of finding the truth, they should be biased? If professors were half liberal and half conservative, that means that at least 50% of them are wrong. If liberal beliefs are true, this bias might be what we want. If they're false, of course, then it clearly isn't. Or maybe not. Professors and administrators are responsible for teaching. There is certainly an argument to be made that a diversity of viewpoints is useful. Informed and well-reasoned positions might be useful for education even if half of them are wrong. And a spirited debate among peers could help everyone learn and come closer to the truth. If the bias were the other way, with 90% of administrators being conservatives, would this author be saying the same things? Would I be saying the same things? I think the answer to both is "probably not." Or, if we said the same things, we'd definitely feel differently about them.
- JoHawth31 8y agoA couple things I think you’re missing: Your assumption that one of the positions, either liberal or conservative, must be correct, is wrong. Second, the assumption that professors know better than the general population in all cases is also incorrect. People in academia have a way of thinking that is sometimes divorced from reality and real world experience. Professors can be much more wrong than the general population in some cases. This highlights the original point: viewpoint diversity and rigorous debate are the best tools for discovering truth. If your idea is so fragile it can’t exist outside of some protected ecosystem, the idea probably isn’t very good to begin with.
- iaosfgnionio 8y ago>Your assumption that one of the positions, either liberal or conservative, must be correct, is wrong. I didn't say that. I said that at most one is right. I would also say that, even if both are wrong, one is probably wronger than the other. >Second, the assumption that professors know better than the general population in all cases is also incorrect. I didn't assume they do know better. But I think we should want them to. Which would imply they should be "biased."
- LiterallyDoge 8y agoWhy is this post flagged?