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Im split minded about this. On the one hand, academia has been taking sides for a long time. On the other, there are elements that should be non-controversial

Im split minded about this. On the one hand, academia has been taking sides for a long time. On the other, there are elements that should be non-controversial. I wish academia were more rigorous about not taking sides. I feel like they’ve been injecting their own ideology unnecessarily for a while. Am I supposed to ignore that? The best approach is some kind of grand bargain, and carefully considered compromise. I have experience in academia. I’ve heard how they talk. They see their mission as transforming society. There are exceptions, but even the exceptions are under pressure to conform. It’s hard to address two problems at once. And I feel there are two legitimate problems: an overly ideological academy, and the need for both support and independence. Solving one problem is hard enough. Solving both is impossible. So we will probably go back and forth for a while. My default is to look at foreign countries. But I don’t see anywhere else that’s solved these problems.

0xWTF 1y ago
Whenever I hear a critique of the US academy I'm reminded of Rodney Dangerfield and Sam Kinison's bit in Back to School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeeL-U7cbpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeeL-U7cbpE Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've read (I believe on this very forum though I can't find the link, but also see 1, 2, and 3) that the European universities are often closely aligned with local industries. A challenge here in the US: outside Silicon Valley, what are the manufacturing industries in the US cities with universities? What are the major industries in Kansas City? Are those companies funding research at UMKC? What are the major industries in Dallas? Are those companies funding research at Southwestern? Ronny Chieng actually breaks down the larger problem quite nicely: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i1Hi_hacvN4 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i1Hi_hacvN4 So now we do in fact have an incredible university system supported in part by a mess of underskilled labor in fly-over states that dropped out of college after saddling themselves with significant educational debt. Wildly, the one industry that is a major economic driver in most cities is healthcare, which is a pretty dead-end industry in terms of economic output, that is, outside of certain world-reknowned institutions like the Mayo Clinic, healthcare doesn't really generate a significant exportable commodity. (1) https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-education/innovation-in-education/university-business-cooperation https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-educa... (2) https://www.jstor.org/stable/24118541 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24118541 (3) https://sciencebusiness.net/news/universities/deepening-collaboration-between-academia-and-industry https://sciencebusiness.net/news/universities/deepening-coll...
- pyuser583 1y ago
  America is mostly a service based economy. Same with Silicon Valley. I don’t think anything is manufactured there. All this is to be expected in a service based economy.
  - 0xWTF 1y ago
    SV only started looking like a service-based economy, from a taxation perspective, after IRC section 174 changes came into effect.
  - Tadpole9181 1y ago
    America is one of the largest manufacturers in the world. Literally second only behind China. Something like 18% of global manufacturing exports (in USD). I feel like people forget this sometimes. We're in a tight spot and should reverse course in many ways, but we aren't these helpless little babies that do nothing but serve food and write software. Maybe because it's very convenient to the rhetoric one side of the aisle uses.
- ryathal 1y ago
  While most the manufacturing work has left the US, the Midwest is full of engineering universities. It's not a coincidence that the big 3 auto companies were based in Detroit and Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are full of top engineering colleges. There's still lots of nameless firms there designing all sorts of things that are manufactured across the globe, but they don't have the employee count to be massive drivers of a city's economy.
const_cast 1y ago
I don't think it's that Academia is/has been taking sides, it's that the right has continued to become more and more insane in the past few decades. The right is now explicitly anti-science and anti-fact. They, quite literally, ARE ideologically opposed to clean air. We've had decades of extremely strong pro-oil propaganda and what have you and it's caused this extremely tumultuous situation where people think there really is two sides to everything. But there just... isn't. There is no logic, no reasoning. It's all about making money and fucking over as many people as possible. That's it. It doesn't matter what Academia does because even acknowledging the sky is blue is a threat to the right. They operate in an alternative universe of lies. No truth is safe, no matter how benign or obvious.
- pbh101 1y ago
  Both can be true.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Right, but they're not. Because as stated, the reason we're in this situation is because we've let obvious falsehoods masquerade as legitimate opinions when those making the claims don't even believe them. You think the petroleum industry actually believes climate change is a hoax? Of course not. That doesn't stop the right from being ideologically opposed to clean air. The problem here is people such as yourself, and other's, are far too forgiving. You're attributing more good will then you have any right to. These people are lying, they know they're lying, and they're doing it to make a quick buck. If we can't even acknowledge the situation we're in, then we have no hope of fixing it.
maxsilver 1y ago
> I wish academia were more rigorous about not taking sides. I feel like they’ve been injecting their own ideology unnecessarily for a while. I don't think this is true. I think academia is still pretty good (not great, but pretty good) at not taking sides. I don't see a ton of overly-ideological academics (if anything, Academia skews unnaturally conservative, simply out of fear). I think the 'problem' is that science is moving forward and settling debates that previously weren't settled, and therefore lived in the realm of "political opinion". But because people don't like the mostly-objective scientific results, and because it's being debated politically, they're simply accusing academia of 'taking sides', because that's how they picked their political views. Examples exist with things like Global Warming, or Human Rights, or LGBTQ+, or Vaccines, or so on. Global Warming is an obvious one -- while there's always more to learn, and we can't perfectly predict everything -- the base science has been 100% settled for decades now -- the earth is warming, human pollution is the primary cause, we know what we're doing to cause it, and our refusal to stop causing it is changing environments. We can argue about how much, or how long, or how badly, or the accuracy of models and projections and so on -- but there is no factual argument that Global Warming isn't happening, or that humanity isn't directly contributing to it. But people simply don't like that answer, despite it being true, so they debate it anyway -- and then flip around and accuse academia of 'picking a side' when Academia didn't pick or choose anything. If any academic could, in good faith, prove "yep, air pollution isn't causing global warming, in fact, Earth's orbit is falling into the Sun at a rapid rate, we can prove this with astrological/radiological measurements" or whatever, they'd be rushing to demonstrate this. They aren't, because they can't -- it's simply not true. I'm not saying it never happens, or that no one abuses academia to push political views (it does sometimes happen). But most academics aren't "picking" their stance on these issues, science and research is uncovering facts or evidence on a continuous basis, and academics usually just stick to what's been discovered or observed (and -- for the parts still unknown or missing -- make theories or educated guesses that are supported by science and do not contradict the objective discoveries. If new results or evidence arrives, they revoke or adjust their theory to fit with the new discovery). Some humans simply refuse to accept the things that have been discovered or learned through science. It requires a person to be willing to change their mind based on something they have learned, and a lot of people simply hate doing that ever (so much so, that their answer to hating objective results of science, is to simply defund all the science)
belorn 1y ago
I would not called it a solved problem, but lets describe the Swedish approach. Any government or organization acting for the government (which schools and universities are included), must act under the principle of objectiveness and equallity. From this principle the educational department has policy that if a school has political activities, such as inviting political representatives, they must only do so under objective terms equal to all political parties. They explicitly write that selecting the invitation on the basis of excluding someone is not allowed. They can also not base the criteria in order to exclude certain political views. During a time when a controversial right-wing party gained popularity, some schools decided to stop doing political activities with students as a result. Others allowed any party to join in the discussions with students, as suggested by the policy.

0xWTF 1y ago

Whenever I hear a critique of the US academy I'm reminded of Rodney Dangerfield and Sam Kinison's bit in Back to School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeeL-U7cbpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeeL-U7cbpE Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've read (I believe on this very forum though I can't find the link, but also see 1, 2, and 3) that the European universities are often closely aligned with local industries. A challenge here in the US: outside Silicon Valley, what are the manufacturing industries in the US cities with universities? What are the major industries in Kansas City? Are those companies funding research at UMKC? What are the major industries in Dallas? Are those companies funding research at Southwestern? Ronny Chieng actually breaks down the larger problem quite nicely: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i1Hi_hacvN4 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i1Hi_hacvN4 So now we do in fact have an incredible university system supported in part by a mess of underskilled labor in fly-over states that dropped out of college after saddling themselves with significant educational debt. Wildly, the one industry that is a major economic driver in most cities is healthcare, which is a pretty dead-end industry in terms of economic output, that is, outside of certain world-reknowned institutions like the Mayo Clinic, healthcare doesn't really generate a significant exportable commodity. (1) https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-education/innovation-in-education/university-business-cooperation https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-educa... (2) https://www.jstor.org/stable/24118541 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24118541 (3) https://sciencebusiness.net/news/universities/deepening-collaboration-between-academia-and-industry https://sciencebusiness.net/news/universities/deepening-coll...

pyuser583 1y ago
America is mostly a service based economy. Same with Silicon Valley. I don’t think anything is manufactured there. All this is to be expected in a service based economy.
- 0xWTF 1y ago
  SV only started looking like a service-based economy, from a taxation perspective, after IRC section 174 changes came into effect.
- Tadpole9181 1y ago
  America is one of the largest manufacturers in the world. Literally second only behind China. Something like 18% of global manufacturing exports (in USD). I feel like people forget this sometimes. We're in a tight spot and should reverse course in many ways, but we aren't these helpless little babies that do nothing but serve food and write software. Maybe because it's very convenient to the rhetoric one side of the aisle uses.
ryathal 1y ago
While most the manufacturing work has left the US, the Midwest is full of engineering universities. It's not a coincidence that the big 3 auto companies were based in Detroit and Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are full of top engineering colleges. There's still lots of nameless firms there designing all sorts of things that are manufactured across the globe, but they don't have the employee count to be massive drivers of a city's economy.

const_cast 1y ago

I don't think it's that Academia is/has been taking sides, it's that the right has continued to become more and more insane in the past few decades. The right is now explicitly anti-science and anti-fact. They, quite literally, ARE ideologically opposed to clean air. We've had decades of extremely strong pro-oil propaganda and what have you and it's caused this extremely tumultuous situation where people think there really is two sides to everything. But there just... isn't. There is no logic, no reasoning. It's all about making money and fucking over as many people as possible. That's it. It doesn't matter what Academia does because even acknowledging the sky is blue is a threat to the right. They operate in an alternative universe of lies. No truth is safe, no matter how benign or obvious.

pbh101 1y ago
Both can be true.
- const_cast 1y ago
  Right, but they're not. Because as stated, the reason we're in this situation is because we've let obvious falsehoods masquerade as legitimate opinions when those making the claims don't even believe them. You think the petroleum industry actually believes climate change is a hoax? Of course not. That doesn't stop the right from being ideologically opposed to clean air. The problem here is people such as yourself, and other's, are far too forgiving. You're attributing more good will then you have any right to. These people are lying, they know they're lying, and they're doing it to make a quick buck. If we can't even acknowledge the situation we're in, then we have no hope of fixing it.

maxsilver 1y ago

> I wish academia were more rigorous about not taking sides. I feel like they’ve been injecting their own ideology unnecessarily for a while. I don't think this is true. I think academia is still pretty good (not great, but pretty good) at not taking sides. I don't see a ton of overly-ideological academics (if anything, Academia skews unnaturally conservative, simply out of fear). I think the 'problem' is that science is moving forward and settling debates that previously weren't settled, and therefore lived in the realm of "political opinion". But because people don't like the mostly-objective scientific results, and because it's being debated politically, they're simply accusing academia of 'taking sides', because that's how they picked their political views. Examples exist with things like Global Warming, or Human Rights, or LGBTQ+, or Vaccines, or so on. Global Warming is an obvious one -- while there's always more to learn, and we can't perfectly predict everything -- the base science has been 100% settled for decades now -- the earth is warming, human pollution is the primary cause, we know what we're doing to cause it, and our refusal to stop causing it is changing environments. We can argue about how much, or how long, or how badly, or the accuracy of models and projections and so on -- but there is no factual argument that Global Warming isn't happening, or that humanity isn't directly contributing to it. But people simply don't like that answer, despite it being true, so they debate it anyway -- and then flip around and accuse academia of 'picking a side' when Academia didn't pick or choose anything. If any academic could, in good faith, prove "yep, air pollution isn't causing global warming, in fact, Earth's orbit is falling into the Sun at a rapid rate, we can prove this with astrological/radiological measurements" or whatever, they'd be rushing to demonstrate this. They aren't, because they can't -- it's simply not true. I'm not saying it never happens, or that no one abuses academia to push political views (it does sometimes happen). But most academics aren't "picking" their stance on these issues, science and research is uncovering facts or evidence on a continuous basis, and academics usually just stick to what's been discovered or observed (and -- for the parts still unknown or missing -- make theories or educated guesses that are supported by science and do not contradict the objective discoveries. If new results or evidence arrives, they revoke or adjust their theory to fit with the new discovery). Some humans simply refuse to accept the things that have been discovered or learned through science. It requires a person to be willing to change their mind based on something they have learned, and a lot of people simply hate doing that ever (so much so, that their answer to hating objective results of science, is to simply defund all the science)

belorn 1y ago

I would not called it a solved problem, but lets describe the Swedish approach. Any government or organization acting for the government (which schools and universities are included), must act under the principle of objectiveness and equallity. From this principle the educational department has policy that if a school has political activities, such as inviting political representatives, they must only do so under objective terms equal to all political parties. They explicitly write that selecting the invitation on the basis of excluding someone is not allowed. They can also not base the criteria in order to exclude certain political views. During a time when a controversial right-wing party gained popularity, some schools decided to stop doing political activities with students as a result. Others allowed any party to join in the discussions with students, as suggested by the policy.