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The retrogression perception is correct; but the specific timeframe is so incorrect that the back of my head blew out like a pinata. The goal is - and I am not
by lopsotronic 4mo ago
The retrogression perception is correct; but the specific timeframe is so incorrect that the back of my head blew out like a pinata.
The goal is - and I am not picking on the reactionary wing alone, this impulse has broad support across our ideologies - de-industrialization. The complexity of post-Enlightenment civilization is being rejected, in favor of some hypothetical state. This puts the past timeframe as far back as the 17th century.
But not a "real" past. No one can recreate the past. Only their idea of the past.
And of course, when you "create" anything, too much and too quickly, you risk systemic collapse. Not a problem if you imagine you will be Immortan Joeing around in your Death Wagon, but odds are, I'm sorry to say, against it.
- WarmWash 4mo agoTrump is a populist doing populist things, including attacking the intellectuals. Conservatives have been basically purged from academia over the last 30 years, which frankly was a pretty dumb "victory" to celebrate, because now they voted in a dumb gorilla that is just smashing things as revenge.
- MisterTea 4mo ago> Conservatives have been basically purged from academia over the last 30 years, Any citations on this?
- WarmWash 4mo agoSure https://www.aei.org/articles/partisan-professors/ https://www.aei.org/articles/partisan-professors/ I'd be shocked to find anyone surprised by this.
- jasonlotito 4mo agoThat doesn't show they were purged. There are many reasons their numbers declined.
- WarmWash 4mo ago[flagged]
- jasonlotito 4mo agoSo you admit you were lying. Gotcha.
- WarmWash 4mo agoThere are not many reasons for climate change, it is in fact just humans. That should be obvious.
- anon84873628 4mo agoOk, so we establish that "Climate change could seem to have many causes, but educated people know that human activity is the proven cause of the majority of the change." And now you have another situation where "there could be many causes for the change X". And you think that because Climate Change followed that pattern above, X must necessarily have only one real cause, and that cause is your preferred pet theory. Does not sound like a convincing argument.
- defrost 4mo agoLet's just talk about the recent (past 500 years) change in the insulation properties of the planet's atmosphere. It's been in a constant burbling flux that has many factors, fires, volcanoes, etc all contribute to the steady level of churn. The substantial change away from baseline is well recorded, tied back to sources by isotopes, and has a single cause - carbon dioxide by products from the combustion and release of previously sequestered carbon sources. There's no doubt about that - there are multiple atmospheric libraries of gases from various parts of the world to back that up. The data source sets for atmospheric makeup and ocean thermoclines are deeply tied into Cold War nuclear test monitoring and watching enemies, not some hippy dippy eco friendly new age hand wavyness.
- mullingitover 4mo ago[dead]
- javascriptfan69 4mo agoWhat if its just self selection? Conservatives spread propaganda about woke universities -> conservative kids are less likely to go. Do this for decades and you end up in the situation we're in. Either that or conservatives are just stupider and less likely to be academics; which is, in my opinion, more likely than your hypothesis about grand conspiracy.
- cosmicgadget 4mo agoAnd it's more than the self selection force of conseratives being too frightened that college will change their worldview. Take a liberal and a conservative with equivalent postgraduate degrees. Now offer them their choice of a faculty position or a C-suite career track. Based on the values that define their respective ideologies, is it a coin toss for which path either chooses?
- anon84873628 4mo agoOr even that the categories are shifting. People who hold perfectly reasonable classical Conservative viewpoints are now excluded from the Republican party. An institution failing to shift more right doesn't make it biased.
- Levitz 4mo agoWhat if it's not that? Let me give you a hint: the concept of DEI statement to apply for a position exists
- cosmicgadget 4mo agoI don't think there is surprise that higher learning is associated with progressivism. I think the surprise is that someone believes its indicative of a giant conspiracy to exile conservative professors.
- try_the_bass 4mo ago> I don't think there is surprise that higher learning is associated with progressivism. This is such a wildly elitist take. There's nothing intrinsically progressive about education, and to just declare so as fact is an excellent example of the exact kind of hostility that keeps non-progressives from being at home in higher education. > I think the surprise is that someone believes its indicative of a giant conspiracy to exile conservative professors. Is it really surprising that people who disagree with someone's politics would let that bleed over into their assessment of that person's professional abilities? We literally see this everywhere! People use a person's politics to discredit other aspects of their being all the time. Conservative professors are a rare breed in academia because non-conservatives in academia make it a very hostile workplace environment.
- cosmicgadget 4mo ago> just declare so as fact is an excellent example of the exact kind of hostility that keeps non-progressives from being at home in higher education. My friend, I simply stated a conclusion that is very commonly accepted, including by conservatives (hints: populism, religion, gender roles). You're welcome to dispute it but instead you declare it 'hostile'. If conservatives think this is offensive then I'll add that to the list of reasons they seem to avoid scenarios where their viewpoints are challenged (because that's how academia works). > Is it really surprising that people who disagree with someone's politics would let that bleed over into their assessment of that person's professional abilities? It certainly can. That's a long way from a coordinated conspiracy. And there are layers of insulation like wanting talent regardless of personality and avoiding legal issues. > Conservative professors are a rare breed in academia because non-conservatives in academia make it a very hostile workplace environment. Like stealing their lunch or lighting them up in a reply-all or what are we talking about here? Note I'm not freaking out that you "just declared something as a fact".
- titzer 4mo agoFTA > The lack of diversity among professors is problematic for both education and research, ostensibly the overriding purposes of universities. I basically did a spit-take here. Lack of diversity is suddenly--and only--a problem when it doesn't include conservatives. The funny thing is that racial and cultural diversity is higher amongst faculty than the general population. For decades America has attracted the brightest and highest-achieving college students and researchers from around the world, and those people eventually get faculty positions and advance their careers. It has gotten to the point that we hear people (usually conservatives) complain that some fields are dominated by non-white people. And shock, as it turns out, American conservative viewpoints are actually a minority in the world. If higher education were actually representative of world population, 1/5 would be Chinese, 1/5 would be Indian, 1/5 European, and only 1/20 would even be American. If we were generous and say that half of America is conservative (it's not), then only 1/40 would be an American conservative. Most people in the world are not American conservatives. This is just a fact. They say that reality has a liberal bias. For the record, I don't believe it has a liberal bias, because American liberalism is just a weird grab bag of outposts on the cultural war front, but reality absolutely does not support a rightwing view. We hear conservatives whine and moan about diversity exactly when it suits them, and we've all seen just exactly how they feel about diversity.
- amanaplanacanal 4mo agoMore likely that conservatives turned liberal once the right went all in on anti-intellectualism. Of course the real question is: what does conservative even mean any more? The joining of Falwell and Reagan fucked both conservatism and evangelical Christianity.
- Windchaser 4mo agoYep, it's at least partly this. I watched a lot of "moderate" academics become "liberal" after Trump's first election. If you're a scientist by principles and a moderate by political views, and the right-wing party comes out in opposition to science, well, it's fair that you might then join the "pro-science party". Being pro-science becomes a liberal position. So it's not that conservatives were "purged" from the ranks of academia.
- datsci_est_2015 4mo agoIt’s a pretty commonly repeated theory amongst far right / reactionary “thought leaders”. They call it the “Long March Through the Institutions”. I think the comment you were responding to was ironically referencing it.
- WarmWash 4mo agoIt's not especially a "right wing theory" anymore than climate change is a "left wing theory" https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/conservative-professors-dei-initiatives/682944/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/conservati...
- datsci_est_2015 4mo agoYou misunderstand, the idea of the “Long March Through the Institutions” is that innocent conservative intellectuals are the victims of a central, coordinated campaign for them to be expelled from academia in order to transform academia into an institution that serves leftwing agendas. It’s an explicit rejection that such a transformation could occur naturally, and can fairly be considered a conspiracy theory by the mainstream specifically because it meets Barkun’s criteria for conspiracy theories: - nothing happens by accident - nothing is as it seems - everything is connected as well as the lack of a smoking gun.
- WarmWash 4mo agoI don't really buy that idea, but like the one black guy at the Country Line Dance, you get the strong vibe you are not in the right place, and kind of just want to leave, regardless of how people are upfront treating you.
- datsci_est_2015 4mo agoYeah you may not believe it personally but there are definitely many in the reactionary right who do. It’s not difficult to find their forums.
- 4mo ago
- lovich 4mo agoConservative views are very anti science, look at their consensus on climate change. Of course the universities were going to be mostly liberal. Like at their core conservatives are against change, that’s the “conserve” part of their name and science is a process that constantly updates our understanding of reality.
- logicchains 4mo agoLiberal views are very anti-science on race. Some famous professors even lost their positions just for adopting the statistically correct position that the majority of the difference in outcomes between races is accounted for by IQ, which is mostly immutable after childhood, not some societal conspiracy against certain races.
- tptacek 4mo agoWhich famous professors would those be? This is an active research area, with papers published year-round.
- jayGlow 4mo agoJames Watson the guy who discovered DNA was stripped of honorary titles based on comments related to race and IQ. there was a lot of discussion about that recently when he died.
- anon84873628 4mo agoFunny how Conservatives are always so big on the free market, except when no one wants to buy their ideas.
- enugu 4mo agoSure, but isn't the response worse than the problem? When intellectual standards are abandoned (as opposed to correcting a specific bias), discourse degrades into mindless anger, conspiracies and leaders who defraud their own supporters. Given the money available to conservatives, why haven't they been able to setup vibrant universities, films, art etc. The point here is not to blame conservatives, but push the analysis of the cause to something deeper than just saying that the opponents have all the power.
- datsci_est_2015 4mo agoThe piñata bit is a bit hyperbolic, but largely I agree that it’s a movement built against the principles of the enlightenment, and the movements of modernism and post-modernism that grew out of it. It’s like: what if we took all of the principles of the enlightenment, and forced them through a sieve that served our racist, xenophobic, chauvinist world view? Rediscovering eugenics and pseudoscience, especially for christofascist ambitions and exploitative grifting.