Ask Lemmy

There are plenty of right wing academics but they are a minority. It probably varies by field too. In the core sciences that minority is probably the smallest and is greater in the humanities. My professor was a right wing scientist and we often clashed on values. I felt sorry for him at times because it would be his point of view Vs the entire research group. He is fundamentally a good person that can hold illogical and contradictory opinions that felt like they were emotionally based.

In academia you are trained to not accept any claim without adequate evidence. Look at left wing claims vs. right wing ones and show me one that has better evidence on the right.

There are fewer right-wingers in academia, and they tend to work at schools with right-wing orientations. Turns out reality has a liberal bias.

Current STEM researcher who also happened to have met a few academics on the right side of the political spectrum... I am very qualified to speak about this I hope. I'll try to use as unbiased language as possible

First of all, you are correct. It is generally true that most academics are left-leaning (obligatory not all, but you get the point)

In general, higher education attainment is associated with being left-leaning: academia is known to have extreme levels of education attainment (many jobs require a PhD). On top of it, academic jobs reward intellectual curiosity, do not tend to pay super well, tend to heavily rely on governmental funding... all of these are traditionally more associated with the political left or left-leaning. Still, there very much are right-leaning academics, they just don't tend to scream around a lot about it

There are notable exceptions however. Economics is quite famous for being politically balanced, although what economics treat as left/right-leaning might be a bit different from the general public. If I remember, business schools (yes there are business professors!) tend to be more right-leaning. This is a smaller field and a bit more anecdotal, but quite a few prominent meta-science researchers are right-wing nutjobs: the "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" guy and the NIH director Bhattacharya guy are both COVID deniers

There are also fringe scientists as some others have mentioned, but most people within their fields don't consider fringe scientists as part of the academia so to speak

That's the thing about right-wing populism. It relies on primitive instincts. It's a baseline. It requires no effort.

Rich people are smarter, otherwise they wouln't be rich. No don't tax them, they worked so much harder than anyone else to get there! Taxing them will only punish the imaginative and the resourceful, while incentivising the lazy and the worthless. I blame the immigrants because they work harder and for less money, and it's their fault that I also have to work harder for less! We need one more lane, that would relieve the traffic so much!

These takes always seem super OBVIOUS at first, and if you never bother revising them - you'll just be stuck with them. The longer you live with them, the firmer you'll latch onto them.

That's why it's so crucial for the rightwingers to dismantle the education system. They need you to be ignorant. Take things face-value.

IMO:There are 3 type of "right wingers":

• The sheeps (the majority about 90%) they are less educated, easy to manipulate & very reactionary.
• The shepherds (the minority about 1%) they are highly educated, come from generational wealth & want to defend & multiply their wealth by influenving the sheeps.
• The sheep dogs (about 9%) they are highly educated & very oportunistic. They don't come from wealth and dream of wealth. Their only goal in life is to be shepherds one day. (Most likely they won't achieve it maybe one will make it to be uaed a champion that it's possible) but they will do everything to achieve it and thus work overtime for the shepherds & influence the sheeps as much aa poaaible.

So yeah, about 10% of the right wingers are educated. The majority still is less educazed and easy to manipulatw.

I'm sure there are some academics who are right wing and some uneducated people who are left wing. But for the most part it is generally true that academics are more likely to be left wing. To put it rudely, stupid people generally believe right wing talking points. Right wing worldview is full of contradictions an uneducated beliefs. People who are curious and bother to educate themselves about the issues are generally more likely to be left wing. Than again, I am left wing so of course I'm going to be biased towards believing left wing views are smart

Reality has a left wing bias. They exist though and they're infuriating.

I know a right wing guy who has a PhD, speaks 5 different languages and is an immigrant. He says that you can tell which immigrants are terrorists by just looking at them and everyone who looks like that should be arrested.

I know another right wing guy who has a PhD in Informatics and owns 20 houses in Amsterdam. He doesn't see the problem. People can just move somewhere else.

Both of them don't just have PhDs, they work as academics, one in Berlin the other in Amsterdam.

It depends on the country, but there's a self-preservation aspect to academics leaning left. In the USA especially but not exclusively a major right-wing policy point has been defunding academia and publicly-funded research in general. Unless you're in a field that can reliably pull private funding, such as some branches of the oft-mentioned economics, voting and sharing right-wing talking points carries a major risk of getting your funding cut and leaving you without a job.

Go to any school of economics, comp sci faculty, school of business and dare i say biology and you'll find a lot of em. They tend to be less vocal. Historians too.

Being an academic means being open minded because when researching something, the outcome may be different from what you expected. In such cases do you concede that your initial theory was wrong or do you stubbornly continue to believe that you were right and keep trying to prove yourself correct?

They exist, but the problem is reality has a liberal bias and academics tend to follow the evidence.

Depends on what you call "academics". If you mistake phrase shifter courses like "business administration", "politics", or "law" as academic, then yes.

Unaware. Go into accounting to find a bunch.

Certainly it's not none, but there's a trend where college educated people tend towards leftist ideals purely because they're exposed to more ideas, more people, more things, and that tends to lead to broader acceptance, which is, unfortunately, a polarizing thing. Many right-wing points are grounded in xenophobia, racism and an 'us vs. them' mentality, and it's harder to hold those ideals when folks are put into situations where they have to actually interact with and get to know the people they're "against", rather than them just being faceless boogie men to be feared and hated.

You can find stats showing that support for the Conservatives falls in Canada as education rises. So depending on region and definition, it's not just you.

That being said, that doesn't mean there are zero. Jordan Peterson as a famous example.

Are you confusing liberal with leftist?

The actual left begins at anticapitalism. American academia is full of liberals, who are right-wingers that believe in capitalism even though the most liberal controlled states proves it doesn't work. (Read: California's massive homelessness problem.)

There are, but they often kicked out of academia pretty quickly because academic universties dont want to be associated with these people because it discredits the Universities reputation, by providing pseudoscientific beliefs.

J peterson, recently SABINE from youtube, you dint mentioned failed academics too, MDs like she claims she was "ousted from academia in germany, because shes a women" but it was actually are far right views(funded by friends of thiel), and then another one that claims " being a POC played a part why they are not "smart" enough for certian jobs, because they have tendancy towards not being intelligent.

so these people become "influencers" for the far right. when i was in CC, one of my gen bio prof told us that she had a student that was christian, and she was only giving answers on HW/tests as "GOD did it". nevertheless, they had to drop out of COLLEGE.

if there was, they would have to constantly challenge the research, studies out there in academia that contradicts them. theres no way they stay in academia, and thier "own" research is based entirely on assumptions and outdated research.