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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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So I think it goes without saying that I don't agree with... well, pretty much any of this. If you really want to talk about this I think it's gonna be a little bit of a hard road, but I'll take a stab at it.
Your whole message is generalities. That's a difficult starting point for a debate, because my generalities are radically different than these, but it's hard to talk about it because these kinds of broad statements are hard to argue for or against factually. It's just my world view versus your world view and us hurling disagreements at each other.
Let's start here: Would you describe Ron DeSantis as a conservative? Would you describe Biden as being on the left? I can talk to you about specific policies from DeSantis and Biden, and how they match up with your generalities, and it can be at least a factual conversation. Also, who are some examples of who you mean by "academics"? (some of the conservative ones who used to be around and some of the liberal ones who are currently around)
No I do not consider de Santis a traditional conservative. I am not sure how I would define him. He did well with Covid by letting people make decisions. I agree with him removing the special district from Disney but I don’t like how he’s turned it into a petty fight.
Biden is left but he’s disorganized. He can’t think past his nose. He isn’t far left. Putin speaks highly of him for their similar ideologies.
Academics. People who work in academia. When I went to college almost all my teachers were conservative. I only had one liberal teacher and that was my English teacher.
I teach college courses on the side and I’ve seen the change from facts to feelings.
Hm. Okay, here's where I'm coming from: I've talked to a lot of people on the right who in my opinion say stuff, or think stuff about the world, that doesn't hold up to factual scrutiny. They hear a lot of people say certain things, and so they start saying it too, but they resist talking about it in a way that pins it down to facts; they just repeat the general viewpoint. I'm asking you specific questions about e.g. who are some academics who exemplify who you're talking about, so I can get my head around what you're trying to say as a specific thing that can be tested factually, as opposed to just a generality.
IDK if that conversation is something you're interested in. Out of curiosity, what college did you go to with all these conservative teachers? I went quite a while ago, and I remember one English teacher who was visibly liberal, and one econ teacher who was visibly conservative, and all the rest were apolitical as far as my knowledge of them.
Can you send me the quote?
Right, on this I think I know exactly what you're talking about and I probably agree with your view on the people you're talking about. A certain section of the academic left in the US has been skating towards something very weird that I think is un-fact-based, in a way that's actually very similar to the way I think a lot of people on the modern American right are un-fact-based.
I doubt you are going to know any of my college professors but the whole psychology department was conservative. But Dr. Rogers, Dr. Corvellis, and Dr. Case were all conservatives and high up in the department.
I went to school in the midwest in the late 80's.
https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-says-wants-work-joe-biden-claims-shared-values-between-democrats-communism-1537501
Putin Says He Wants to Work With Biden, Claims 'Shared Values' Between Democrats and Communism
I was told for next semester I need to add more social justice to my classes. I am not tenured as I am PT. I said no, not because I am for or against social justice but because it has nothing to do with what I am teaching. I am teaching cybersecurity courses right now. We avoid politics unless it is relevant to the topic.
Hm... I wouldn't be surprised if there are individual universities where particular whole departments are conservative, then and now. Are you basing your whole statement about academia then vs now on your experience in that one department? Because that would be easily believable to me, but I'd hesitate to apply that to the whole of academia.
Again, in this case I actually do feel like I know what you're talking about with a particular brand of left-wing-ism that's become common in academia now that didn't used to be, and if it's what I'm thinking of, then I will agree with you 100% that that particular brand is a bad thing.
This is just super weird. I mean... I get that this particular article says that Putin said once that he can work with Biden and drew some parallels between Soviet history and American history.
What's your assertion with this in terms of what it means about Biden? If you're trying to point to this to say that Biden and Putin are aligned in any way, I think you gotta tell Biden that, because he's more or less fighting a proxy war against Putin right now.
It’s anecdotal but don’t confuse conservative with republican. I bet most of them were democrats. It’s one of my complaints is we’ve become more divided. My hard science instructors were conservative. Psychology has went hard left now and it use to be more conservative. But it’s all anecdotal and I acknowledge the limits of that. I went to three schools and two leaned conservative. One I have no clue. It never came up. The second school was mainly retired military as instructors.
What does it mean about Biden? Fair question and I’ll give you a fair answer. Nothing. It’s a dig at Biden but Putin is a master at words. Putin isn’t stupid. He picked those terms carefully to stain Biden.
Biden political is all over the place but if we look at his record he’s fairly conservative. As president he’s neurotic. He’s trying to appease the left when he’s more right. Look at his crime bill in the 90’s
Not the guy you asked, but at least to me, the generality is the issue. It isn't an issue that liberal academics exist such that any single person is worth a call-out, but rather that the academic system as a whole is significantly slanted.
I went through college recently, and between the two universities I was at, both were overwhelmingly liberal (politically speaking) when it came to university policy, and my teachers overwhelmingly expressed liberal political views, and I general, this is backed up by the data. The specific universities I've attended is something I'd rather not divulge here for privacy reasons, but I don't consider it particularly important to the issue since it extends beyond my own observations.
Right, but you get what I'm saying that I don't necessarily agree with the guy out of the gate? We kind of have to dig beyond the generalities in some capacity, if we ever want to get past just shouting the generalities at each other back and forth.
This, I can 100% agree with. I talked about it in my initial statement - I feel like academia is naturally pretty left-wing, and the military is naturally pretty right-wing, and neither of those is (in my opinion) something anyone has to "fix." It's just a natural product of the environment. More what I was surprised by was the other dude saying that his professors when he went to school were dominantly conservative.
I agree that just shouting generalities back and forth doesn't accomplish anything, but I find that moving to more specific things doesn't help in that kind of conversation anyway, just changes the scope. Rather, I find that discussing the values behind the concern and the effects of the generality to be a better use of time since it doesn't just fall into nitpicking an example. I find that this thread describes it best. Any specific examples often end up being somewhat trivial and arbitrary, when the real concern is with an overall trend
I agree that the slant doesn't need to be "fixed" per se. My issue is largely that the slant is often either entirely ignored when it might call an academic work into question, or used as some stupid "hurr durr right wing hates being smart" type talking point.