The argument is in the premise, a powerful tool used by people sophisticated in public messaging:
The premise here is that the status quo beliefs are knowledge, ideas that disagree are 'activism' - political activity - and are not knowledge. It's fundementally a higly conservative framing that, obviously and intentionally, protects the status quo power.
Once you accept the premise, everything else follows - assuming X is political activity, and school is for learning, not so much for political actitivty, then obviously .... The effective means is not to make an argument directly for the premise - that makes the premise an issue on the table, something to debate. Instead, assume it in your argument: Stop this politicized liberal activism! See how that works? Even people who disagree have to figure out what they disagree about and construct an argument.
In reality, neither idea is more political than the other, and the university, of all places, is where to explore and develop new ideas. Teaching the status quo idea is just as much indoctrination as any other idea - maybe more, because it doesn't raise the question of challenging itself. The real question is, how are they taught. And regardless, I trust the students at Yale are smart enough not to be so easily manipulated - just like the people on HN, of course, who know so well what's good for the students.
> The premise here is that the status quo beliefs are knowledge, ideas that disagree are 'activism'
This is not the premise at all; I don't think anyone signing this letter thinks that and it's an extreme interpretation – I have no idea how that is your take-away. The letter specifically calls for a broad inclusion of viewpoints.
Recently (in Netherlands, not US) there was a case where a course description told students to stay away if they can't deal with the "fact" that Israel is an apartheid state.
Of course there is nothing wrong with treating all sorts of different aspects of "Israel" and "apartheid state", but once you start describing these things as "facts" that "some people can't deal with" who should "stay away" then you're not starting any discussions or challenging anything: it's activism. And not even very good or effective activism at that.
This is the type of thing people object to. There's been tons of incidents over the last few years (this just happens to be fresh in my memory). I don't know what specific incidents there have been at Yale, but I'm guessing they're of roughly the same shape as this.
It's the students (and faculty) that cricitize Israel that are kicked off campus and suppressed. The idea that we need to protect the rights of the powerful majority to live without challenge is a brazen misuse of civil rights, which are there to protect the minority from the majority.
This is your opinion. And people disagree with you.
Presenting opinion as objective facts is counterproductive, no matter how strongly you believe something and think it is just.
I’m not sure what your approach is to just say it’s a fact and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong and their character is wrong. It seems like it will be hard to convince people because this is such an illogical stance.
I think it will make people disagree with your position just because of strict logic if you are wrong on this, then it seems more likely that your other positions will be wrong.
What is the argument for Israel not being an apparheid state? It seems to fit the definition. (As in: "enacting policies of segregation political, social, and economic discrimination against a sector of the population based on race or religion").
It’s not necessary to debate all things all of the time. My point isn’t whether Israel is an apartheid state (if you’d like to start that complex discussion join a thread and you’ll be more likely to find people to discuss with you).
My point is that just because you feel strongly about something doesn’t make it true. And interjecting your “truth” into unnecessary places is counterproductive in that it doesn’t convince people of your claim.
But we can't reduce everything to equal opinion, an extreme relativism. There's also the conflict between truth and norms - sometimes the norms haven't caught up with the truth. Here are examples, without commenting on Israel and Gaza.
Think of climate change: should denialists be given time in a science class? It's a controversial issue; many believe the denialists; but factually it's wrong.
Think of Galileo teaching astronomy, when very few believed him. Should he have tolerated factually wrong opinions? It would be hard not to, but it would be a lie and waste of time.
> Should he have tolerated factually wrong opinions?
I think this is the crux.
What was Galileo’s goal? I think it was to increase truth and help people. So I think he would need to find ways to engage with and convince people who had factually wrong opinions.
It’s certainly ineffective to just not talk to people who don’t agree with you.
And imagine how stupid people would have seemed if they posted something in the syllabus that said “Don’t even think of registering if you don’t agree with the fact of a geocentric universe.”
I think the point is that there are certainly facts, but we need to have temperance and some level of tolerance to allow for convincing people, and learning for ourselves.
>> school is for learning, not so much for political activity
That is the radical idea imho. I cannot think of anywhere more associated with political activity than schools. From Harvard's impact on the forming of the US as a nation, through anti-slavery writings, Brown v. Board of Education, the Kent state shootings, through modern school shootings/gun control, to today's "culture war" ... schools have always been at the heart of every US political issue.
There are two parts: primary in the examples you cited are advancing a truer, fairer goal set on how to reason about and for justice. It's about having better premises, arguments. This is primary for any teaching institution.
Second, we have effecting the change in society through organization and political speech, action. That's not primary for teaching institutions even if it co-located by it.
Your assessment is not on the mark. There is a qualitative difference between, say, a history course on Israel, Palestine since WWI and using the course to push for policy changes in one's country's foreign policy. The difference is intent. Teachers disseminate facts and ways to organize facts. They should not intend to lobby or influence or to politically organize selves or students.
"Teaching the status quo idea is just as much indoctrination as any other idea"
The whole point of graduate degrees is make standard, known, accepted better by advancing the subject to the contrary of a fixed "fact set" grad students are encouraged to break doctrine wherever it is
The context is that professors are increasingly vulnerable to being fired based on the political whims of students. There have been a few cases at Yale recently:
- the Halloween thing
- a teacher who wanted to let that right-wing hack Yiannopolos speak (free speech)
- and I feel like there was one more about gender politics
You can argue the actual politics or who started what, but what I'm seeing is a lack of respect. Challenging ideas is all well and good, but what puts it over the line is threatening people's careers over them.
Interestingly, there are other issues of censorship going the other way, particulary Yale giving in to right-wing donors.
Would you agree that all forms are wrong? Then we have a coalition with the power to protect speech.
> - a teacher who wanted to let that right-wing hack Yiannopolos speak (free speech)
Must they let everyone speak? What about people with nothing valuable to say? What about people who spew hate? People who generally encourage violence and hate? (I think we can agree that direct incitement to violence should be banned.)
I think it's important to lean heavily toward more speech, but there may be lines. Also, Yale is there to provide education and the best knowledge, not an equal opportunity platform for BS.
Agreed. Moreover here's what I want to see and hear more about: for any position that a student feels is extremely wrong, go to the lecture and defeat the argument! Winning isn't cancelling. Winning is getting the other side to stumble, and reconsider.
So long as you recognize that there exists a material reality, the correspondence to which we call truth, there can be objectivity and a separation of activism from teaching.
If there can be no reasonable way to get closer to an objective truth, the very foundations of universities are in question and the entire institution destroyed. In fact, that is exactly what Queer Theory promotes, in which papers describe that when Queer Theory becomes normal, it must deconstruct itself further.
No. I reject that notion. There is objective reality, and there is a reasonably objective way to teach knowledge apart from activism. It is entirely possible to promote alternate viewpoints without activism, so long as your alternate viewpoint is not "there is no objectivity".
There's objective reality IMHO, but humans have demonstrated that we fail to see it clearly, and that our view of reality is biased by our beliefs, drives, experiences, etc. This understanding of human nature extends back to Plato, at least.
One strong bias is that we follow social norms; we follow the herd. Challenges to that norm are upsetting, disruptive. But norms are not privileged in truth; there have been endless evil and ignorant norms in history.
> If there can be no reasonable way to get closer to an objective truth, the very foundations of universities are in question and the entire institution destroyed.
Nobody said we can't get closer, but the way to get closer is not to accept one set of beliefs and supress the others; it's to innovate and improve. We know much more about economics than we did 50 years ago and 100 years ago and centuries ago, but we still have far to go.
There are lots of topics being conflated here IMO.
There are surely questions of subjectivity and bias, but I think they are distinct and perhaps secondary to the question of intellectual honesty and humility.
My favorite thinkers with intellectual honesty and humility will not only admit, but highlight the biggest challenges to what they believe. They can acknowledge counterpoints and tradeoffs.
When someone intentionally dodges or avoids the weakness of their own opinions, they are practicing rhetoric and manipulation, not education and truth-seeking. This is not so much an act of internal bias, but proactively attempting to mislead and instill bias in others.
How many people can or will identify and confront the strongest possible counterargument against what they think without changing the subject?
> Lie: Engineering, History, Science, et al are strongly dependent on social norms.
I believe in the ideals you are talking about - I think they are essential. If we don't look at how we fail those ideals, how our biases have resulted in untruths, obviously we won't get closer to them.
We need to face the cold, difficult truths: I encourage you to read histories of those fields; it is overwhelmingly the case that bias has affected them in significant ways. As simple examples, much of engineering has historically assumed male users; not only does that affect seatbelt usage or bulletproof vest usage in the military (a real thing!), but it also excludes women from doing certain jobs - the equipment is made for men but not for women.
Much of medical research has been on males for male problems - for example, heart disease research for a long time used only male subjects, though the disease affects women differently. Part of the reason is the training (school) and hiring bias toward male researchers, as many studies have demonstrated (some simply by removing author names).
It's self-perpetuating: We are biased, of course, to hire people like ourselves (an early lesson in business school) and to focus on problems we have experience with. You need someone to push to disrupt that cycle, force women, in these examples, into the system. Otherwise, it just keeps running on that way forever.
...
None of those biases require anything remotely like "activism" found in today's environments. All of those can be addressed with ease in existing objective frameworks.
There is some fundamental disconnect in your position if you think applying an objective framework will correct scientific and educational practice. The fact that you seem to be neglecting is that science and science education are social practices. All activism is, is an attempt to change social practices. It's not all somehow unclean or wrong or anti-truth.
What reason do you have to say that? These biases have persisted for generations, even millenia in some cases. Generally, they don't change without pressure and, as MLK said, 'tension'.
Plus, what is so bad about activism? What is wrong with people actively participating in democracy? It's nothing compared to the consequences of racism, sexism, etc.
Do you need a link to actual historians discussing the breadth of historian opinion on particular topics and the evolution of thought over time on interpretation of historical events?
The context is, "is an activist method" necessary, or could the existing objective viewpoint take into account a fuller understanding of history over time.
So yes. Of course we gain a better understanding of history. Does that require activist methods? Throwing out old methods? Is the change fundamental to methodology?
No.
This is a real paper published by the University of Oregon under these new activist "methods". I present "Feminist Glacier Studies". It adds nothing of value and if anything, reduces the net value of the field. This is what a non-objectivity lens does to the field of knowledge. It destroys it. History is the same way. And no, Joan de Arc was not trans.
Talk to a historian. I think there's an Ask an Historian subreddit, where you'll get excellent, nuanced, reasonable perspective from actual historians.
Agree - your first paragraph restated better what I wrote elsewhere in this comment set. Telling a student what's going on in a subject is one thing. Intent to mould an outcome isn't. Teaching is not a by way to lobby.
This is a very naive take. The view of most postmodern forms of critique is that we can rule out clearly wrong views of the world as useless or counterproductive, but there is no one unmediated perspective that represents the truth. Moreover, there are many perspectives of the underlying reality that should be considered and treated with charity to determine what is "true" in them.
That's why queer theory holds that it should be deconstructed if it becomes the dominant perspective. There doesn't need to be one! The "working theory" of reality can and should be intersubjective because it is always mediated through individual perspectives, language, etc. It's a matter of finding common ground and incorporating productive ground from other perspectives that moves us forward as a society. Seeking an objective and unified description of the underlying "foundational" reality is silly. Reality is not Truth. Instead, truth is a property of linguistic statements and other representations of (what are ultimately subjective or intersubjective) perspectives of the underlying reality.
People reject that notion with funny statements like "No. I reject this" because they don't understand the argument and feel threatened by it.
> We create small, smart cadres of people who watch power and wealth pass them by, and they advocate to overturn the system driving their envy.
"They're just jealous" forms of arguments are an ad-hominem fallacy, where characteristics of the opponent (here their supposed intent) are used to discredit their argument [0]. Not only is there no evidence that these activists aren't sincere (which doesn't mean that they are right) but even if they were driven by envy, that doesn't invalidate their criticism of those in power...
Good point, motive and intent do have value in assessing the likelihood that someone committed an crime (or any action). It's not quite the same as using motive to claim that someone is wrong though.
However, I agree that ad hominem is not always fallacious. If I claim that tobacco is not bad for health and it turns out that I have no medical background and that I was paid by the tobacco industry, arguably an ad hominem argument can be used to cast some doubts on my credibility on this particular issue. Probably enough doubts that one doesn't need to pay further attention to what I said.
However it's an approach that should be used with caution. It is much too easy to misuse it to lazily explain away someone's inconvenient argument. It is particularly pernicious when it is using a supposed feeling like jealousy, that are hard to disprove.
I might make an argument that we decided to sidestep fights over class equity for things like sexual and racial equity. That suits the powers that be better. Because now the lower classes are arguing about status instead of their share of the pie.
> University faculty-activists are a perfect example of elite overproduction a la Turchin.
The faculty pushing back against "administrative encroachment" and seeking "the primacy of teaching, learning and research" are your perfect example of an over produced elite?
Mentioned in the article, maybe. But it’s common knowledge that most faculty today are de facto activists, they just done self identify as such usually.
Listen to the recent pinker mearsheimer debate. Pinker would be a good person to advocate for the triumph of enlightenment values and where else would those values be most evident than the academy, and yet Jewish students are made to cower in fear at the student mobs tolerated, if not in effect manufactured by the educators at the nations’ highest institutions, Harvard, Penn, MIT… I know people who were in forced out of grad school for not engaging in activism, let alone committing the ultimate sin, having heterodox views. Perhaps that’s less common in STEM, where politics are non-essential, but it’s de rigeur in social sciences and I’d imagine much of the humanities. It’s common knowledge in many circles that you’ll get different education at Claremont vs berkeley.
Berkeley has had the left leaning historical reputation from the days of the free speech movement and Vietnam protests. But these days (it-least from an outsiders view) it actually seems more grounded since it's a public school & doesn't do race based admissions (Berkeley is 35% asian & 20% white vs CMC is 16% asian and 35% white)[1][2]
> Berkeley is 35% asian & 20% white vs CMC is 16% asian and 35% white
My guess is that this is at least in part due to the different racial makeup of their respective applicant pools. Going to Cal is a dream of many Asian high schoolers; CMC is not revered in the same way.
Also... CMC's free speech is only rated average and sits at 73/248 schools [1] and is the same free speech score as Oberlin which has had some infamous recent incidents[2].
I think their arguments are pretty weak justifying why it fell off. It ignores the obvious change since 2020/2021. Covid was the primary issue (and classes may have been remote) and now issues around race/sex are more prominent.
> a negative reaction to white professors employing the n-word hardly persuades me that CMC has a free-speech problem.
"negative reaction" is a framing... Another would be that there were multiple incidents of students reporting professors to the administration for the content of their lectures (And they don't see how that would effect free expression on campus!)
> This is a very strange criterion for evaluating free speech on campus. Some degree of self-censorship is natural, healthy, and wise. What socially aware person expresses every thought that crosses their mind
If this really is a "bad criterion" (I don't think it is), then it'd be a systemic bias effecting every school & not uniquely CMC.
It could be worse, looks like Emory dropped from #4 to #202
CMC is a private liberal arts school that costs 60k in tuition/yr and only has only 13 hundred students... But I guess in some circles it's well known that it's not as left leaning as it's peers like Amherst or Oberlin.
Berkeley vs U Chicago or Berkeley vs U Virginia would have clicked.
“I know people who were in forced out of grad school for not engaging in activism”
Really?
I also don’t think the school needs to manufacture student mobs. People get these opinions from the internet far more than school imo. Furthermore, if Jewish students were cowering, which I doubt, it wouldn’t invalidate the mob’s reason for forming, which is in response to an ongoing genocide. I’m glad the school doesn’t crack down on opposition to such.
Is it common knowledge? My understanding is that it's generally the administrators and students who are the main forces of activism on campus, not the faculty (outside of some departments).
Both this article and the article on Turchin himself don't pass the smell test. They both read more like opinion pieces than informative articles. Like they were written by either Turchin himself or people who know him.
I didn't get that same feeling from reading the two articles, but Turchin's article on Elite Overproduction is relatively new and the idea is only as old as 10 years. It's a theory that's very convenient for explaining the present but seems to be grounded in past political instability, so who knows... maybe it'll stand the test of time. It is interesting though.
This is a jaded and uncharitable take. I'm faculty and not an activist, but I know quite a few faculty activists, and they do what they do out of a sincere desire to help others. It's not about resentment at all.
As an example, I'm on the neurology faculty. One colleague is an academic activist in the sense that she educates, develops programming, and sits on several committees dedicated to ensuring that historically marginalized groups realize that neurology is a career possibility for them. It gets results, and it's not just self-validating. The claim that belief you can help someone assumes your own superiority is unfortunate.
Some form of at least partial superiority is inherent in the notion of "helping", as is a power dynamic.
You say that your colleague's diversity-focused activity gets results, and my question is: what results? A more diverse body of students studying neurology? And if that is the answer, then who cares? What is your argument that increased diversity makes neurology or science better?
If diversity is your objective function, fine. But there are other goals to pursue, and which should be pursued in academia by faculty. I think diversity is very far from what should be the top priority.
The advantage of diversity is that it is an easy metric to understand, pursue and make gains in.
If you insist about the inherent superiority, you should define superiority. Obviously in the case of my colleague, she has achieved success in that career already. Surely that is the only "superiority" in the example, and that's benign.
The results are two-fold: most directly, more members of marginalized communities pursue and are successful in the field. More distally, clinical outcomes (patient return, treatment plan adherence, and medical outcomes) are higher when patients see doctors with a shared historically marginalized status, particularly race/ethnicity. That's borne out by the research. So increasing the diversity of the workforce enhances outcomes in diverse patient populations.
Your view is just overly jaded. There are data backing all of this up. It's not just done out of a feeling or a PR move or meaningless corporate metric (though those things indeed contribute to the motivation in a lot of cases).
A "sincere desire to help" is a form of self-validation, a move to serve the socially ambitious, and a show of power, in that "helping" implies superiority.
It would be great if educators they could separate the search for truth from the search for "justice". Many can't. Fields in which facts only exist to support justice narratives probably don't belong in university at all.
Do you really think people go into academia as faculty expecting to become rich, only to end up disillusioned? They can't be that smart then, lol. I don't think I've ever met a single faculty member who was there out of good business sense.
It's hard to tell from this article what is at stake and who is
calling for what. Whose free speech? Students, professors,
administrators, donors? And the idea of "neutrality"? hmmm.
Not directly related but much apropos is this video on "What's gone
wrong with political journalism in the UK" featuring Armando
Iannucci [0] .
The key concept is that neutrality and integrity have nothing to do
with each other.
One can be a monster by feigning neutrality, as Howard Zinn says it
[1] "on a Moving Train". What matters, at least in journalistic if not
academic integrity, is the "360 degree scepticism" needed to make the
choice of when neutrality is appropriate or not.
Reading Howard Zinn's "People's history of united states" with its endless series of atrocities I just tend to not believe a single word from him.
I liked this fact from Wikipedia article though:
> "In 2008, the film was chosen by the Zinn Education Project (a collaboration of two national organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change) to be included in an education package sent to 4000 high school and junior high school teachers across the country."
> endless series of atrocities I just tend to not believe a single word
The good news is that if you're susceptible to denial and percepticide
it means you're a "nice person". TBH I had the same reactions reading
Christopher Browning, Solzhenitsyn, Chomsky, Primo Levi. The bad news
is that you grow out of it, and with the courage to face the world,
realise that historians don't just make up stuff to scare people -
otherwise they'd have more fun and money being fiction writers like
Stephen King. Now I'm not a "nice" person I can tell you, the weird
news is that the bad news is the good news.
>historians don't just make up stuff to scare people - otherwise they'd have more fun and money being fiction writers like Stephen King
Historians don't want to scare people as a terminal goal. They want to scare people as a means to an end--promoting their ideology. Being Stephen King might scare more people, but it would fail to accomplish that end.
And most of it isn't literally making stuff up, it's failing to mention some things and overemphasizing others, making things sound more or less certain than they really are, implying connections which may not be true, etc. It's like journalists--they can mislead without actually telling literal lies.
Also, some of it is motivated reasoning, not lying. They honestly believe some things, but they honestly believe them because it's convenient for themselves.
Critical thinking is not difficult if you make it a priority. Zinn states facts that can be verified. He also states opinions and arguments based on the select set of facts he presented, and you can take, leave, or criticize those arguments.
It still stands that to say "I don't trust a word this guy says because he lists atrocities only" is lazy and uncritical. Not directed at you, but to the general conversation.
This is the correct move. Students need to learn math, science, history, philosophy, and generally grow in critical thinking. There is instead a lot of indoctrination being foisted onto their minds, and a lot of it is even anti-American. That is fine for someone to explore on their own time, but institutions of learning becoming centers of indoctrination is a huge no from me.
Consider to what extent you're steeped in the mire accumulated from being very-online. If you agreed with everything else, then that should give you pause on why you're so hesitant or resistant to that usage.
I think you are partially correct in your judgement of me, though probably not for the reasons you think.
If I didn't use the Internet I wouldn't know what the term 'anti-American" meant. Nobody I know uses that word and no books I read or movies I watch mention it too. It is a term that I've encountered only on the internet. As a result, my connotation of the word depends largely on how the internet uses it.
On the websites I visit, the term "anti-American" is usually used to justify hate against minorities or some other segment of society. I'm sure it is used in different contexts too (in other parts of the internet), but not on the parts of internet I usually browse.
It's that the poster didn't give any supporting comment to their claim that a lot of [the idealogy that is being foisted on the minds?] is "even anti-American".
Claiming something is un-American is fine. We're (mostly?) red-blooded Americans here.
However, pointing at something and saying it's un-American and expecting the crowd to gasp in horror and join you in denouncing it, is a very clear signal of a Fox-news-or-something-deadened brain.
As a non-American, I've usually seen that word being used to defend racist ideoalogies or promote hate mongering, in online discourse. So whenever I see that word I naturally brace myself for whatever new idea the speaker is going to promote.
I think Americans would have a different association with the word though.
I would consider it as being opposed to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Things like the Bill of Rights, separation of church and state, democracy, the President being a civilian, the notion of the inherent rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, etc.
Then how is suppressing activism, which in its peaceful form is the most threatened expression of the contents of the Bill of rights, as the Mar professors claim to want to do, not “anti-American”.
I’m sympathetic to the idea that the university as an institution should maintain neutrality. However, at the same time, individual professors, students, and even administrators should be protected by the university when engaging in speech.
There's nothing un-American about activism. People are free to hold and express whatever beliefs they want. But when they want to force their beliefs on others, by:
1. shouting down anyone with a different view
2. requiring "loyalty oaths" from the staff
3. harassing others who disagree with them
4. trying to block roads and otherwise impede people from going about their business
What makes those anti-American? What does it have to do with the US in particular?
And who are you to tell other Americans what's American or not? That assertion is what is fundamentally un-American. It's everyone else's country as much as yours.
> 4. trying to block roads and otherwise impede people from going about their business
That is the fundamental nature of protest, stopping people from going about their business. The whole point is that the issue is being ignored.
Suddenly, all protest is suspect in our great democracy.
They infringe on our rights. Do you really believe there is a right to harass others?
> What does it have to do with the US in particular?
It's the US that has a Constitution, a Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, etc. Of course, any other nation is free to adopt them as well, and become American.
> And who are you to tell other Americans what's American or not?
I'm an American. I have relatives that fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WW1, WW2, and the Korean War. In particular, these are my father's opinions, very strongly held by him. I did not earn them like he did in combat, but he's gone now and so I carry on. He told me once that he fought so I wouldn't have to. Never forget that our freedoms were all paid for with blood, lots of blood.
> It's everyone else's country as much as yours.
Yes. I see people all the time eager to throw away our rights that were so bitterly fought for. The Constitution also has a lot of checks and balances meant to make it difficult to for people to throw it away.
> all protest is suspect in our great democracy
You can protest all you like. But our freedoms do not include the right to impede other peoples' rights to go about their business.
> They infringe on our rights. Do you really believe there is a right to harass others?
It depends on your definition of "harass", but yes, absolutely. You have a right to express, including through protest, your opinions to others who don't want to hear them.
Specifically, there is no right to not be harassed. There are laws against certain forms of it, but that's not a 'right' in a traditional sense, like the right to free speech, or 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.
Obviously, 'harassment' is such a broad term, it's a way to censor and oppress and especially to silence anyone who disagrees with the status quo. They must allow the status quo to continue or they are harassers.
>> And who are you to tell other Americans what's American or not?
> I'm an American. I have relatives that fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WW1, WW2, and the Korean War.
The other people are Americans too; you have no extra rights there. What you or your relatives did gives you no extra rights at all under any law or democratic custom.
> I see people all the time eager to throw away our rights that were so bitterly fought for.
That's what I see you advocating, trying to suppress dissent that you don't like.
> our freedoms do not include the right to impede other peoples' rights to go about their business.
They absolutely do, again depending the definition of "impede". That's what protest is, and you can see it in protests going back centuries. It's a free country and you're going to have to deal with people doing things you don't like.
Also, it's an argument for the status quo - going about their business may mean impeding others' rights. As the admittedly over-simplistic example, slave merchants impeded others' rights, and impeding the merchants protected rights.
> slave merchants impeded others' rights, and impeding the merchants protected rights.
I'm sadly amused that you interpret an assertion that all have a right to liberty is a right to enslave people. It's not a very clever argument, I see it all the time. I was hoping for better from you.
Just for curiosities sake: So if being opposed to the constitution is anti-american, does that mean that people who submit and support amendments are anti-american too? As the amendment was proposed because a person didn't agree with what is in the constitution.
On the other hand, if being anti-indoctrination is the goal, it might be a good idea to turn the same lens toward universities that see an oversized volume of alumni participating in the defense industry, something seen as pro-American (albeit against many of the criteria you list off). Historically, some universities have been extremely fond of propaganda in this regard, going as far as to creating direct pipelines from school to participation, like Caltech's participation in the V-12 program, JPL, or Project Vista.
If that isn't indoctrination, I'm not sure what is.
Indoctrination isn't bad, and students should be able to have a choice between whether they want to get indoctrinated by the types of people who created the nuclear bomb, if they want to get indoctrinated by hippies, or if they want to get indoctrinated by a church-funded university.
Education is inherently ideological, and the market is really leaning toward hippie faculty at the moment. Allowing market forces to do what they will seems fine. It'll come back around eventually, and in the meantime, state school kids are doing what prestigious university students are too good for. Look at Anduril, which is far more impressive a defense achievement than anything that's come out of Caltech since before you were a student.
> Allowing market forces to do what they will seems fine
Sure. But I draw the line when people try to force their anti-American agenda on people.
> Look at Anduril, which is far more impressive a defense achievement than anything that's come out of Caltech since before you were a student.
Caltech is a very small university.
> Education is inherently ideological
My education at Caltech was nearly entirely math, science, engineering, etc. I don't see that as ideological. I did get a palpable sense from the profs that these subjects were exciting.
I never heard any defense propaganda from the Caltech faculty, none at all. JPL was there, but not a single soul pushed me to apply for a job there.
The only propaganda I recall was my economics professor pushing Marxism, and if you didn't regurgitate his Marxist views on the exams, you received a bad grade. I learned my lesson, and instead satisfied the social studies requirement by taking business accounting - something useful.
> Sure. But I draw the line when people try to force their anti-American agenda on people.
This doesn't happen, though; there are a lot of universities that love pro-American sentiment in professors. A university deciding to be anti-American seems fine, and quite American. As an employer, it should be able to choose who it wants to offer positions. No one is forced, they just fail to incentivize prestigious universities in maintaining their employment under conditions they desire.
If it is attacking American institutions and making it hard for an elite institution like Harvard to adequately address an extreme anti-semitism problem, it is anti-American. If it makes people feel worse about living in the United States and tries to impose any concept of original sin onto an American citizen, as is the case with a lot of "woke" propaganda, it is anti-American.
It's been interesting to watch as "woke" morphed from a word uttered with pride to an insult. I can't think of another word whose valence has changed so quickly and unambiguously.
It would have been less surprising if the out-group started using it as an insult and the in-group still claimed it as a badge of honor. I wouldn't have guessed that the in-group would have abandoned it so readily.
> I wouldn't have guessed that the in-group would have abandoned it so readily.
You never understood the meaning of the word, then. Woke is a synonym for "enlightenment." Indeed, the notions of wokeness echo an earlier philosophical revolution we continue to call the Age of Enlightenment.
Who, with a serious face, will claim to be enlightened? According to the Buddhism I studied, there was never a surer method to identify a fool.
Wokeness was never worn as a serious label. Wokeness may be acknowledged, be that applied to a person or a concept. The only time I've heard anybody self-proclaim wokeness is literally in self-mockery. He's woke, she's woke, that's woke, stay woke, but never I'm woke. So I'd make one edit to your first sentence: it was not uttered with pride, it was uttered with respect. And people still do that today.
So there was nothing to abandon. Nobody identified that way. And now wokeness is now a boogeyman. It means whatever anybody wants it to mean. Nevermind that this fight has been raging since the 17th century, but it's got a new name now and hey you can sell fear with that.
This acronym was always pro-Trump and has been simultaneously used pridefully and as an insult. I'm not aware of any pro-Trump folks attempting to dodge the MAGA label (which folks who previously claimed the mantel of "woke" now do). This is what I view as the difference — no one says they're "woke" anymore, even if they have the exact same views as before.
> It's been interesting to watch as "woke" morphed from a word uttered with pride to an insult. I can't think of another word whose valence has changed so quickly and unambiguously.
Don't be surprised: It's standard conservative messaging tactics going back years. Take something valuable to their enemies an demonize it through endless repetition. The Democrats and liberals have tried to avoid every fight, and so it works every time. I'm not exaggerating to say that I predicted 'woke' would be demonized too.
IIRC, someone recently published conversations among some conservative groups where they planned their messaging around it (not an unusual tactic) and specifically what would be effective.
Criticizing American institutions is about as American as it can get; that freedom and that behavior is almost the whole point of democracy. Should we all just go along with what some other Americans tell us?
When conservatives attack liberal institutions, like they are now attacking universities, is that un-American?
> making it hard for an elite institution like Harvard to adequately address an extreme anti-semitism problem
It is just one partisan side's claim there is some extreme problem, and that Harvard is not addressing it. I haven't heard the claim that someone is preventing them - the conservatives have been blaming Harvard.
(I'll note that the conservatives couldn't give rats ass about anti-semitism; they heavily trafficked in it for years, many prominently. They are only trying to attack an 'American institution', higher education.)
> If it makes people feel worse about living in the United States and tries to impose any concept of original sin onto an American citizen, as is the case with a lot of "woke" propaganda, it is anti-American.
It's un-American to make people feel bad? What about the people you are making feel bad? If the original sin is true, should we hide from the truth? We can't admit our mistakes?
How does one tell the difference between teaching and indoctrination?
Every fundamental hard science started controversial. In some circles, they still are. Do we stop teaching heliocentrism because it's the devil's work? Who decides?
Teaching is about encouraging students to ask questions. It's hard because the questions sprout like mushrooms on the forest floor and you may not have the answers, the time, or the patience for all of them.
Indoctrination is the opposite: providing stock answers and refusing to elaborate. Using social pressure and authority to shame students and block their questions. Its purpose is to instil deference and obedience -- to enlist more soldiers for war -- not to enrich the spirit.
The topics that you or I consider to be "fundamental hard science" are significantly less controversial than the topics that would normally fall under the category of activism. I'm not saying that controversial ideas should be completely ignored, just that controversy may be an important factor, in the eyes of some, to draw the line between cold hard truths and up-and-coming divisive ideas.
There is a huge amount of understood science, math, history, philosophy, and critical thinking to teach. It is being replaced with a lot of propaganda instead.
When students are going to school and leaving with improved skills, life experiences, networks, and more critical thinking...it's teaching. When students leave with a chip on their shoulder to disrupt the United States and attack its institutions and reputation and even cause problems, without any actual skill acquisition or increase in critical thinking, it's indoctrination.
What about when it's both, because they learned many things about the United States that make a desire for disruption of the current status quo justified?
I think we're deluding ourselves if we think we can give people critical thinking and not have them question the consequences of colonialism, or slavery, or the industrial revolution, or manifest destiny, or homeland security, and which of those consequences should be kept and which should be torn down.
(There's a pretty good book on this subject, actually: among other things it touches on, The Myth of the Rational Voter [2007, Bryan Caplan] notes the stark difference in voting habits among those with and without a college education. Does that mean all college education includes indoctrination, or does it mean learning critical thinking causes people to think critically to similar conclusions, or perhaps both? And at another level of abstraction: if you're a policymaker and you want people to vote in the way they tend to do when not college educated, aren't there incentives to cast education itself into doubt?)
If you start talking about Palestine in your Differential Equations class, that is indoctrination. If you start talking about Jews in your CompSci 102 class, that is indoctrination.
There is no reason to talk about anything besides the class, in the class.
Can we mention economics in that differential equations class? What about hyperinflation? Specific instances of hyperinflation?
Can we mention Einstein in physics 101? His faith and politics is too far, surely, but are they really entirely unrelated to his science? What about Heisenberg? Bohr? Oppenheimer?
Ha! I'll be honest, it's been over a decade since I took intro physics, and I work in the optics industry, so my perspective is certainly skewed! Fascinating what we take for granted...
Answer is pretty clear. You are bringing them as some sort of trick question. Economics, inflation, hyperinflation calculations can all be related and on topic of differential equations but bringing in *How neoliberal economics is causing hyperinflation does not belong to maths class.
One could mention all above physicists and more in Physics class but talking about how Einstein was misogynist would not be topic for Physics class.
I don't think it's a trick question at all... I think these are standard, everyday, run-of-the-mill questions. Progress is driven entirely by people, and people are often influenced by their messy personal histories. Conflicts, disagreements, and interpersonal relations are deeply entwined with even the hard sciences! Can you imagine the situation in, say, linguistics?
Einstein as a misogynist might not be appropriate, but how about as a Jew in Nazi Germany? Is the phrase "God does not play dice with the universe" indoctrination? Can we discuss the Solvay conferences? The first Solvay conference is likely the most important gathering of scientists in modern history. The third? Indoctrination.
What about Galileo and the church?
I guess my point is that history is messy, and not scientific. Does this mean we should remove dates from science classes?
It is interesting that you referenced "God does not play dice with the universe". If you were to discuss it, I would suggest discussing what he actually said:
"Die Quantenmechanik ist sehr achtung-gebietend. Aber eine innere Stimme sagt mir, daß das doch nicht der wahre Jakob ist. Die Theorie liefert viel, aber dem Geheimnis des Alten bringt sie uns kaum näher. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der nicht würfelt."
There are a number of different translations, but one is:
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.
It is relatively easy to understand both the context and meaning of what Einstein said, especially if you read his numerous other works. The objection to some of the key underpinnings of Quantum Mechanics was something he mentioned a number of times.
They key here is that you can explore and understand what Einstein was talking about without digging deep into the meaning of a god, or his view of religion. The concepts of Quantum Mechanics are complicated enough to keep any undergrad or grad student busy for a lifetime.
That's more or less how it was discussed in either my QM or E&M class (sans German). I found it fascinating, and it's kindled a lifelong love of QM within me!
But, in the context of this thread... Is it physics? I'd say no! It's metaphysics at best and really more along the lines of history and philosophy. That would make it indoctrination by many of the arguments in this thread! (I intend this to be a somewhat uncharitable interpretation.) My argument is simply that classification is hard.
And again, this should be one of the easier field to classify! To bring it back to my linguistics example, can you imagine trying to discuss African American Vernacular English without leaving the confines of linguistic theory?
100% this. This should not be rocket science. Time to kick out faculty and problematic students that want to make math and comp sci and biology about these types of things. Leave those for politics and philosophy classes where real and meaningful debate can take place.
There was a time we thought of physics as just a discipline physicists do, detached from the use of the science.
Then two cities got wiped off the map in intentional runaway nuclear reactions.
A whole generation of physicists learned the hard way that if you don't make hard sciences at least a little like those types of things, you may lack the framework to realize when you're being co-opted into a machine that kills... That "pure" science takes huge moral risks if it believes itself to be detachable from the world it is trying to explore.
Credit where credit is due, they responded to the new challenge (https://pugwash.org/).
Those two cities getting wiped off the map is not an output of people thinking of physics as a discipline. There is no causal relationship between:
p1 - treat physics as a discipline
p2 - two cities get wiped off the map
There are many more variables that are relevant here, and in times of justified war like WW2 things are different. Consider a war scenario where your physicists spent all their undergraduate study time learning about identity politics and writing political preambles on their papers in order to get their papers even looked at.
Go read about Orlov, Sakharov and Khalatnikov, (or Abdus Salam as a bonus track) and see if you can exhibit even an ounce of shame that any one of them felt, and hang your head.
Reminds me of Oakland, CA schools doing a walkout protest march when their kids already don't get enough teaching, being one of the worst school districts in the country. What message are you even trying to send? The most history-illiterate has a message you should listen to?
Like a similar comment - I don’t know if I believe that an american can ever utter anti-american things - with some small exceptions for flat out treason.
Freedom of speech is the first amendment, and even though it is counter intuitive, criticizing america, it’s institutions, and especially capitalism is fundamentally american speech - quite possibly the most american thing you could possibly do in the eyes of the founders.
Colleges of sciences and engineering rarely would have lecturers venture down that road anyway, except in courses about society, history, and philosophy embedded in those schools, so I don’t think it’s a problem in any case, and your characterizations are being overblown.
Other research areas will be inherently fuzzy on that. That’s almost tautological - the people teaching history, philosophy etc… are going to have an opinion because they wouldn’t even be teaching unless they were passionate about the field.
In one sense you are right. But the spirit of the times at some institutions is not to be an American so you can make a better America. It's to foment violence and division and outrage even levied at the reliability and strength of the highest institutions like the SCOTUS and the Constitution and secure borders.
Furthermore, these types of things replace real learning on math and science and history and other things that have volumes of education available sans these ideas.
An entire generation is being taught to be passive and to ignore threats at the border or abroad. Elite institutions like Harvard are currently ousting some faculty members who foment anti-semitism in this modern age. It is more common to see hot takes against the SCOTUS and Constitution and secure borders from uninformed youth than any realistic takes. They learn these things from someone.
"Secure borders" is such a vague phrase - in various courses you can learn about the history of borders, the political theories and history of nation states and concepts of human rights, the socioeconomic drivers of migration, etc. There's no "Open Borders 101 Class", and confidently proclaiming that "They learn these things from someone" is a huge red flag.
You CAN hear about "Border security" from politicians of various persuasions, but as far as I can tell there's not a lot of ideological (or really any kind of) consistency to be had from them.
Statistics published by federal agencies show miniscule levels of threats at the border compared to domestic threats. "Threats" abroad is and always has been a dogwhistle for Pentagon funding and expenditure, and that's not even addressing the question of how the US can reasonably expect to have jurisdiction in such cases rather than addressing these things diplomatically.
> realistic takes
Normative stance with absolutely zero authority. That is, until you make it clear what you consider "realistic". Dollars to donuts it's going to be cribbed directly from institutional (read: tautological) "common sense".
This conversation has already happened millions of times before. You're not actually addressing things in a way that moves the conversation forward.
The obvious "threat" at the border is illegal immigration. If you don't think that illegal immigration, in the numbers we're experiencing it, is at least some kind of threat, then at least say so. Address the GP's point, rather than trying to pretend he didn't have one, even if he stated it not absolutely directly.
American leaders have a pattern of creating a crisis and using it to manufacture consent. The immigrants didn't come out of nowhere, you might want to look into the US's history in the region.
This is the issue with first-order thinking: if you assume all other factors as constant, then sure, increase in demand with no change in supply is a problem.
Domestic policy, especially around jobs and employment, has been hostile to domestic workers. The US re: management of the economy does not correctly account for inevitable immigration, so the response is a reactionary one to conditions that could and should have been anticipated. We can make room in our economy for more workers because we know how to improve productivity: capital investment into productive enterprises.
The way we do capital investment today is largely by incentivizing private investors to take ownership of shares in companies, but as we've seen that creates perverse incentives around maximizing shareholder value -- see: massive layoffs of late, commonly justified by the phrase "wages are up to half of expenditure". It's a direct consequence of fiscal policy and the way the economy is structured. This doesn't even address things like wealth and income inequality, which are for this discussion out of scope.
What about a more holistic approach, with public money invested and public ownership of companies? This puts the companies in a context where they are measured not just by pure microcosmic profit measures, but by their contribution to GDP as well as exports. The government uses different functions for optimizing different metrics than private citizens. Free marketeers pretend that private investment can achieve the same macroscopic goals but we've seen exactly how and how often those assumptions, hopes, and dreams fail to be borne out in reality.
With more public investment, and easier paths to citizenship, US productivity re: GDP and exports would skyrocket if implemented correctly. American exceptionalists would come full circle to the ideals of earlier times by creating strength through diversity on the shoulders of a "nation of immigrants". What's more American than that?
All of this goes against institutional common sense, but even that's somewhat besides the point, because the point is that GP just assumes that their view on the matter is obviously and absolutely correct so the conversation ended before it ever began. To echo the pithy and trite tone of GP: know-it-alls and pooh-poohers are un-American.
But one teacher's history is not another teacher's history, and the same for philosophy, and science in some parts of the country/world. Much of the private school system is run by money, and that money comes from people and places that have an interest at heart...it is not just a free giveaway like it may seem sometimes. Take the private funding away, and you have less bias, but now you have underpaid staff. Lose, lose.
Sure, this is a good step in allowing student to explore other teachings and points of view and learning to think for themselves. That is not how most of the education system is built though, it is built to spoon feed a curriculum, no questions asked. This is quite sad because kids and adolescents are naturally very curious.
In my opinion, drawing on my past experience as a teacher in a very impoverished area, there has to be a sliding scale. Facts are facts; my middle school students were expect to learn long division, but many struggled with addition, some even still counting on their fingers.
Phonics, math facts, sentence structure: some of these should be indoctrinated at an early age, so as to enable later on the higher levels of inquiry that represents true intellectual freedom.
On the other hand, you have some people trying to sell "woke kindergarten" aaaand...its not going well for the students and their ability to reach academic goals consistent with early primary school.
Of course, a strong foundation for rudimentary skills is a must, unfortunately not everyone is interested in building that and want to skip to the insert crazy topic of the month. My view is that technology has outpaced the ability of teachers to keep up. A student will see 100 new things on TikTok before a teacher can even blink and address any of it, its an uphill battle and I don't envy the teacher's job.
The rot in academia is closely tied to the rise of the public-private partnership and exclusive licensing of taxpayer-funded research to private interests - and of course, they've been indoctrinating their students and staff on this issue, because Lord forbid anyone starts demanding that university research results belong to the taxpayers who financed them, let alone any notions about 'open-source drug discovery'.
E.g. "Yale's $1.5M Ketamine VA Settlement Spotlights Private-Public Partnership Complexities (2023)"
Corporate Lysenkoism is the norm in American academic institutions these days, that's what all the students are being indoctrinated into - whatever hysteria is circulating around the social science-related culture war nonsense is jut a distraction, a misdirection away from the real core problems in American academia today.
Meanwhile, there's a pretty sizeable percentage of the educational world that has inextricably tied education to religion. How about getting religion out of higher (and lower) education?
> Surely religion is just a specific form of activism.
Even if this were true (a couple billion people would probably beg to differ), the First Amendment specifically protects the free exercise of religion. So any law that attempted to prevent religious-affiliated organizations from operating a university or school would be clearly unconstitutional.
Fair enough. One's belief in creation myths, higher powers/beings, afterlives, etc... is not, per se, activism, but once you start gathering people on a regular basis to bring about societal/behavioral change (ya know, commandments, morals, laws based on religious ideas/notions/opinions, etc...), much less proselytizing, then, yeah, it's pretty much the definition (or at least the poster child) of activism.
Lovely tangent; it seems you don't have any ideas about how this could be accomplished in a way that is consistent with the First Amendment (which was the entirety of my original comment)?
What are you talking about? The whole article implies that they're gonna decouple activism from teaching. Just apply the same playbook to religion? Oh what's that? It can't be done? Ah, I see. Maybe that was the meta-point behind my whole rant after all. You wanna have religious schools? Fine. You want (non-religous) activist schools? I guess that's fine too. But the notion that we're gonna get rid of "activism" and not touch religion in teaching/education/academia strikes me as absurd.
You're absolutely right that people can claim shelter under the First Amendment by calling their beliefs a religion. Sometimes the courts will go along with their claims, other times they won't. But that doesn't change what @slyrus is complaining about, which is that people with sincerely held religious beliefs are allowed to run educational institutions.
No, once again you've misunderstood or mischaracterized what I'm getting it. Folks can hold their beliefs with whatever sincerity they choose, but when they mix those beliefs with teaching, it becomes a pernicious form of activism. So if people are gonna try to decouple activism from teaching, they better include religious activities, doctrines, and proselytizing in said activism. That's all. Or, to put it another way, if you're gonna allow religious activities to get mixed up with teaching, be prepared for other forms of activism to be mixed in as well. To put activism grounded in supernatural beliefs/prophets/sacred texts on privileged ground above other forms of activism makes little sense to me.
> No, once again you've misunderstood or mischaracterized what I'm getting it.
Actually, I'm replying to someone else, not you.
> To put activism grounded in supernatural beliefs/prophets/sacred texts on privileged ground above other forms of activism makes little sense to me.
I can see that! But the Founders felt differently, and they're the ones who wrote the Bill of Rights that, for the most part, still reigns supreme. Unless you've got a workaround that I'm not thinking of (IAAL, FWIW), there's not much point dwelling on the question of whether religion is a type of activism. As I said above: even if it is, it's constitutionally protected.
Best read this closely first, before the article. At bottom, it's a demand that the administration cede power to faculty, on multiple fronts. Questions of national politics energize the dispute, but are secondary.
>Best read this closely first, before the article. At bottom, it's a demand that the administration cede power to faculty, on multiple fronts.
Sounds good. Administrators have often been the most petty of tyrants in academia, and faculty self-governance is a more original founding principle of university life than administrative ideological governance.
Bret Devereaux of NC State has a good take on the activism part. From a pragmatic point of view, one can view activism as taking and spending from the account of 'good-will'. That's fine, but you also have to fill that account as well. Typically, this is via some sort of outreach effort and speanding time in the community helping with some thing or another.
The issue that Devereaux points out is that the income and outflow are asymmetric. You spend at a greater rate that you put in. So, for every hour/dollar/gadget/etc that you spend with activism, you must put in somewhere between 5-10X the outreach time/money/gadgets/etc.
Campus activism has been tainted by Marxism. "Critical [race|gender|disability] Theory" is just standard Marxism applied in the social science context. Since Marxism pre-requisitely requires framing everything in the world into a "oppressed vs oppressor, have vs have-not, good vs evil" binary, you will become a target for hostility/harm if you are perceived as somehow privileged.
If isolating/targeting people based on on race/gender/ability bothers you, you should stand up against "Critical (Marxist) Theory" infiltration of activist circles in the social sciences. Activism should be about empowering the needy, not harming the need-nots.
> Cannot the system itself be the oppressor, instead of "white people"?
Sure, and that begs the question "who created the system?", "who does the system benefit?", "why is the system structured this way?". All of which are /good/ questions to ask, that critical theory advocates are all too willing to provide easy non-nuanced answers to, answers that boil down to "white people". Unfortunately, it turns out that anti-racism (at least as currently implemented/advocated in the majority of colleges and universities) is just racism with a different label.
>All of which are /good/ questions to ask, that critical theory advocates are all too willing to provide easy non-nuanced answers to, answers that boil down to "white people".
Then the problem is the the advocates and not CRT, no?
>Unfortunately, it turns out that anti-racism (at least as currently implemented/advocated in the majority of colleges and universities) is just racism with a different label.
I apologize for editing my comment to remove that context in trying to create clarity about my point. I had actually meant to reply to a different (similar) thread. I will reply to your point while acknowledging I edited my original point hoping nobody replied yet.
--
Sure. There could be a racist judge, corrupt cop, or absurd law oppressing people in any government system ever. But that does not meet the bar required justify totally "tearing society down and rebuilding everything from scratch" as a Marxist might suggest.
There is no evidence that any alternative system would be better. There is much evidence that alternative systems end up worse. Why not fix problems where you find them instead of throwing the baby away with the bathwater?
> There is no evidence that any alternative system would be better.
Bull roar. The Haudenosaunee had a collectivist, shared-ownership, woman-led society that thrived for hundreds of years if not longer, and became something of an empire in what is now the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada.
This is what inspired Engels to consider collectivist approaches to society building as an alternative approach to the intrinsic oppression of capitalism.
My reading of wiki does not match your "collectivist, shared-ownership, woman-led society" claim.
I read that they had a matrilineal kinship system that treated women as equal, not women led.
As for the collectivist, shared-ownership: Then they destroyed other Iroquoian-language tribes, including the Erie, to the west, in 1654, over competition for the fur trade.
No other Indigenous nation or confederacy had ever reached so far, conducted such an ambitious foreign policy, or commanded such fear and respect. The Five Nations blended diplomacy, intimidation, and violence as the circumstances dictated, creating a measured instability that only they could navigate. Their guiding principle was to avoid becoming attached to any single colony, which would restrict their options and risk exposure to external manipulation."
The discredited right-wing conspiracy theory is that Jewish scholars worked to substitute "people of color" and "white people" for "the proletariat" and "the bourgeoisie" in Marxist theory in order to make it more modern and appealing in postwar America, so as to destroy America and... pave the way for Jewish world rule, I guess.
One of the problems with a lot of the liberal arts curriculum today is that every university tends to slant the same way with the same topics. They all come to same conclusions on non-deterministic, subjective ideas. There's a missing counterweight in may cases that exists to critique, ridicule, and otherwise keep in check opposing ideas.
For each critical theory (race, gender, secuality, etc) department there should indeed be a neo-reactionary (or similar) one, for example. But not only is there not, any questioning or debate of the crits is stone walled as racist/misogynist/homophobic/white/etc. There's actually some good ideas there but not being allowed to or having the university platform to formalize opposing ideas and to challenge undermines them. This is how religion happens, not free inquiry.
Let the ideas flow and let the strong ones prevail but certainly not become doctrine.
> One of the problems with a lot of the liberal arts curriculum today is that every university tends to slant the same way with the same topics. They all come to same conclusions on non-deterministic, subjective ideas. There's a missing counterweight in may cases that exists to critique, ridicule, and otherwise keep in check opposing ideas.
What is that based on? People I know in universities are exposed to a very wide range of ideas.
In the OP, isn't it the conservatives who are suppressing ideas?
Sorry, but all teaching[1] takes a position. Being fringe/widely accepted and taking a position are orthogonal concepts. It sounds like Yale's instead engaging in curriculum by controversy avoidance, which incidentally is one of the worst ways of designing a curriculum and most certainly "taking a position" - the position of trying to avoid controversy.
1. by virtue of being an interpersonal interaction
Bias may be unavoidable, but it should be rooted out to the greatest extent possible. This is a core principle central to human advancement. It is central to the scientific method, and liberal societies generally.
Fringe positions can be revolutionary and important. More often, they are reactionary and not well thought out. There is nothing wrong with advocating for a fringe position. But you better have the intellectual goods, and not just win arguments by default by suppressing dissent.
The latter is activism. Controversy should mean giving opposing view points a fair shake and judging between them by the strength of the data and arguments supporting them. Not by university administrations unilaterally deciding and declaring dissent as "unsafe" for the students who don't want to be exposed to anything that challenges their world views.
I think it's important to understand what bias is. Bias is not having an opinion. Bias is when several particulars to you influence your opinions in ways that don't reflect certain values, like the common good, truth, accurate representations of the matter, or similar values. I also think conveying certainty when there is none is a form of bias (when advocating for change, for example), as is equally advocating for absolute ignorance where there are some principles we can have confidence is.
That's different from neutrality, which for me is avoiding expressing opinions at all. I think neutrality is valuable if otherwise dialogue would be misinterpreted or cause conflict. Conversations need a well moderated (safe, welcoming, with vigilance for good-faith discussion) and freely exchanging environment to be productive, otherwise I think neutrality is the best option. Neutrality is also a good option when there are different cultural notions/opinions that can coexist without coming into conflict (this is a case where promoting uniformity and uniform agreement can be harmful, I believe! -- like, we don't need to agree that basketball is superior to football or something like that).
Maybe for math and science you can do this? But history, is bias and indoctrination.
What Germans learned about WWII during the 70's and 80's was significantly different than what, say, Russians or Americans learned about WWII during the 70's and 80's. And what Russians and Americans learned about WWII was slightly different from each other as well.
Even within a nation. In Florida slavery will be taught more as a precursor to legal immigration, in Minnesota it will be taught as an evil and an affront to humanity.
History all depends on what you want to indoctrinate the kids with. Which, in turn, all depends almost totally on your bias.
You do not need bias to win the case for the Earth being >6,000 years old. An unbiased presentation of the empirical data at our disposal is sufficient to make that case very strongly.
> The bias should be, for hard sciences, on the scientific method and evidence-based reasoning.
There's an old saw in the AI community about Minsky talking to a student training a tic-tac-toe neural net. When he asked why the net was randomly-wired initially, the student responded that they didn't want it to have preconceptions of how to play. Minksy responded that it still had preconceptions; we just didn't know what they were.
Eliminating bias is a mu-goal. An unbiased electrical pin isn't a perfect signal; it's a floating input, passing along whatever radio flux slips through it. Our goal is always to seek out the right biases.
Homo sapiens have had access to nature for 160,000 years. We've spent a lot of time thinking we've folded nature when we had no right to. Why should I think now is any different?
if one believes in objective reality, it stands to reason that it is possible for a person to believe things that match to that reality and it is possible for a person to believe things that do not match to that reality.
My claim is we should bias towards believing things that match to reality. Seeking "unbias" is seeking ignorance.
I've given up that people are capable of understanding basic concepts like operationalization let alone identify when and where they are doing it in their day to day life. The closer someone positions themselves as a rationalist, the further they are from understanding how they are participating in the collective action of coloring reality with their biases.
It might be theoretically possible for people to inch toward objective reality, I've never seen it work in practice. It's a failed ideology and for some reason folks believe that this, the millionth time, it's going to work.
This is one of those issues where I find myself both disagreeing and sympathizing with everyone involved. We desperately need collective truth, reconciliation and forgiveness on a societal level. Without that, these issues are just going to get worse and worse as all sides continue yelling at each other and we all retreat inside of our protective bubbles. The supposed woke mind virus has equally infected the left and the right, which increasingly mirror each other in their demonization of the other side and unwillingness to engage in good faith. No one is immune, not least those who claim to be above the fray.
> But you better have the intellectual goods, and not just win arguments by default by suppressing dissent. / The latter is activism.
Isn't that what conservatives are actively, openly doing everywhere - suppressing dissent in libraries, universities, business (ESG, DEI, etc.), society, courts, political protest, media - suppressing liberal dissent?
It's an interesting question (and I upvoted you, though I'm the GP):
First, dissent is mostly about speech, IMHO, and DEI is only incidentally about speech. But let's look at it as an act that contests the status quo.
The point of DEI is to change the status quo, in which power, status, wealth, and freedom are distributed disproportionately to white males. A widespread belief (that I share, but I'm trying to examine this neutrally) is that it's largely due to racism and sexism that are historic, current, and systemic [0]. The whole point of DEI is to change that.
DEI has been embraced by many in power, making it an odd 'dissent', though maybe that's just a successful dissent - it's an generations-old dissent that people finally came around to. At the same time, it's still a dissent against the many status quo powers that are fighting against DEI.
[0] By 'systemic', I mean it's a product of a system that nobody quite chooses, but as long as everyone keeps operating it, it produces these results. For example, disproportionate hiring of white males could be because hiring is based on your personal network, which is based on who you work with, etc., and it becomes circular. People don't have to be seeking racist outcomes to produce them.
Conservatives have very little control or influence over libraries, universities, business HR programs, or the broad media (excluding some notable explicitly conservative outlets).
But yes, the ham fisted attempts by conservative politicians to combat purported progressive censorship...with conservative censorship...is equally bad.
Republican legislatures have been banning books from libraries. Libraries are government institutions. State universities are also government institutions. Florida has been forcing state schools, stifling the speech of the faculty on exactly what this article is about.
> Conservatives have very little control or influence over libraries
Conservatives have banned books from libraries across Florida and Texas (and other states)
> universities
Conservatives have compelled universities to reverse hiring decisions (at U. NC and one of the TX schools at least), end programs (e.g., Harvard's disinformation program), driven out university presidents (Harvard, Penn), and much, much more. In Florida they've banned certain ideas, they've undermined entire schools where they didn't like the politics.
> business HR programs
Conservatives have caused a huge pullback in DEI programs in the corporate world.
> broad media (excluding some notable explicitly conservative outlets).
That's a major exception: Fox News is by far the most popular news channel in the US; the Wall Street Journal is by far the dominant US publication for business.
> the ham fisted attempts by conservative politicians to combat purported progressive censorship
What does banning books and ideas from education have to do with combating censorship?
As others have said, we all have biases, but it seems that American Conservatives are tripped up by them more in an academic context than other groups.
It is not controversial in academia that the Earth is on the order of billions of years old, animals change over time via evolution, or that carbon dioxide has a greenhouse effect. And yet within the American political context, they are controversial.
Indeed, I am not aware of instances where the left disagrees so ardently with firmly established science. There are certainly some disputes where the science gets a bit more squishy, but frankly there's a reason that I was driven away from Christianity by right-wing ideologues who also denied science.
> I am not aware of instances where the left disagrees so ardently with firmly established science
Let me introduce you to the "lab leak hypothesis", which was decried as racist for years by prominent Democrats and scientists. It lost this reputation around the time that another prominent liberal (Jon Stewart) saw fit to mock its detractors on national TV a while back. This was not firmly established science at first, but those on the left made impossible to even discuss in mixed company, which shut down the conversation and any rational investigations.
For other examples, check out Vinay Prasad's writings. He's a Bernie supporter, a UCSF professor, and the rare progressive who is willing to call out hypocrisy and graft even when it appears on the left.
One firmly-established fact is that it was not unreasonable to consider the lab leak hypothesis. This fact was anathema in progressive circles.
And to me, as a Chinese-American person, it was insulting (and a bit bizarre) to insist that it's "racist" to say the virus leaked from a lab, rather than having spread via an unsanitary wet market. But this was the party line, and many people toe'd it for years.
I have wondered about this, but the most I've come up with is that he is making a name for himself as a heterodox thinker. This would incentivize him to be critical of orthodoxies in medicine/higher education, and could explain why he takes some of the positions he has taken.
On the other hand, it seems that there almost zero medical professionals on the left who are interested in debating him and showing how he has been wrong about various topics. He calls for universities to host debates on these topics of public concern, but pretty much no one is willing to do it. This makes me think it is somewhat less likely that he is just completely wrong, and more likely that he is the one saying that various (naked) emperors have no clothes. I'm sure he's not always right, but much of what he says seems quite plausible to me (a fairly well-educated person with some understanding of statistics).
I'd love to know where folks have mounted successful critiques of his work, or if he has any conflicts of interest that he doesn't mention.
I have seen a number of pieces claiming that there are no biological differences between men and women that would lead to men having a clear cut advantage in athletic competitions.
I remember reading something like that in The Atlantic which was roundly criticized because it was stupid. August thought The Atlantic may be, I don't consider it a scientific publication; what articles are you referring to?
There are many people in my life (that I care about and respect) who believe in young earth creationism; I do not believe it’s actually a fringe belief in the US.
That said, I do not believe they would do well in a science/academic role because it shows a clear disregard for many separate academic disciplines at this point. And these religious views are not evenly distributed across the political spectrum.
I think one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who claims there are no significant differences (at some point, the question reduces to one of definition).
The argument is over what those differences are, how much they matter (i.e. a 1% difference in the mean? Who cares), and how malleable they are given modern medical science.
(And that's before one gets on the topic of whether those differences should imply a societal structure that pigeon-holes people based on their biological sex).
I’ve never met anyone who has said this, and I’ve worked in quite left wing spaces for a long time. I believe you may have fallen for some caricature or other of the left. I’ve no doubt someone has said that, but I think you’d find that belief in bigfoot or flat earth is more common, because it’s quite apparent to most that there are indeed differences between sexes. I think what tends to trip people up are what I call “dude looks like a lady” situations where people, either through accident of birth or other means, appear androgynous; it seems gender is more of a bimodal distribution rather than a strict binary. Again, this seems rather apparent to me just having met some people who don’t exactly fit the mold, but apparently this is also something of a political controversy.
To be fair, the way I read what Yale is trying to do, we would get rid of the deluge of nonsensical garbage that we've been subjected to for the past few decades. Peer review would be reinstituted in its original form. The bar gets wayyy higher. And your activities become activism when you don't have the independent replications to back up your assertions.
This could be a Godsend with respect to stopping the assault on science. Conservatives would be very unlikely, for instance, to get their "studies" independently replicated by non conservatives.
> It sounds like Yale's instead engaging in curriculum by controversy avoidance
This isn’t my reading of the situation at all. They aren’t seeking to avoid all controversy, but rather to allow students and faculty to discuss even controversial issues from multiple sides.
Can you point to the language that makes you think they’re trying to avoid teaching controversial subjects?
All teaching? So which position am I taking when I teach students how to compute the determinant of a matrix?
Of course I can imagine that, say, constitutional law might currently be a bit more difficult to teach. But I still do not see what concretely the Yale administration is called upon to stop doing.
> So which position am I taking when I teach students how to compute the determinant of a matrix?
That how to compute the determinant of a matrix is not only worth knowing, but worth prioritising over other things. It's an eminently reasonable position, but there's an opportunity cost to learning about determinants.
This is a really good example of assuming that topics as things in themselves have the essential characteristic of neutrality. Which is itself a position. The opposite of which is that things don't have an essential characteristic of neutrality.[1]
Sorry, but there's no escape hatch in the hard sciences; there's only one level of indirection.
For any topic, I can generate a frame[2] in which it takes a non-neutral position. That's why neutrality doesn't exist.
> It sounds like Yale's instead engaging in curriculum by controversy avoidance, which incidentally is one of the worst ways of designing a curriculum and most certainly "taking a position" - the position of trying to avoid controversy.
I don't see the phrase "taking a position" in the OP, and your point seems to rest on that phrase.
But to your point, you're interpreting "taking a position" to be so broadly that it's meaningless. There's definitely a phenomenon of activists trying to co-opt prestigious institutions to further their activist goals, but that has a way of debasing the institutions' other goals. It seems like these measures are meant to counter that problem.
Activists tend to have a kind of monomania, where they're so focused on their activist goal that most other good things lose their value in comparison, so they're willing and eager to sacrifice those things. That's often a warped perspective, and the people who value those other good things need to labor to keep the activist impulse in check.
The educating someone on a topic can be distinct in both process and outcome from simply converting them to a position.
conversion is a primary goal of activism, and education can be counterproductive to this goal.
Selective information, misinformation, and intentional generation of bias are all ways to convert someone to a position. You can often see these tools utilized by activists of all types.
Teachers will always have positions given that they are human. However, not all humans deploy the same intellectual honesty.
For example, if someone is teaching about a subject where they have a position, they can present the strongest or weakest counter position, or none at all.
A classic example of this is how basically every country depict their national history in schools.
I started writing a similar comment at this, but then figured that the situation is not so black-and-white. Some activists are using disingenuous practices to undermine science. Undermining science by itself might be a noble cause in some areas, but please just use the legal or political systems to accomplish that. Do not attack individuals directly.
Education is indoctrination, no matter what form it takes. Even telling students raw "non-political" facts is indoctrination into the worldview "people born to your station ought to be knowledgeable". You cannot "learn" anything without being indoctrinated into whatever view of reality your teachers take, so the idea that you could teach without "activism" and only focus on "transmission of knowledge" seems unachievable to me.
Many conservatives (a word which I call myself) seem to take this view that it's possible to "teach without activism". However, when you examine what is entailed as a part of "teaching without activism", they are almost always arguing that schools should teach according to a social or informational standard that was considered "radical activism" anywhere from five to fifty decades ago.
I suppose my overall point is that a faculty group calling to "teach without activism" should drop its "apolitical" façade and instead openly advocate for teaching according to whichever principles they think are most desirable for good societal outcomes. In this case, it seems like the subtext is that they'd like to see more socially conservative or "right-wing" filters applied to what is taught and how it's taught, and these filters are out-of-alignment with the standard progressive/communist/leftist/etc. spirit which is quite common on college campuses (and has been for decades, if not centuries).
I suppose this would result in many of them being publicly and embarrassingly fired by their overwhelmingly left-wing donors and students, but if their ideas are good enough they should be able to seek funding by right-wing donors and open competing universities dedicated to "instruction" over "activism", whatever that means to them. There is a demand for a service like this right now in the US that theoretically could be met by sufficiently motivated actors. I don't see this happening, though, as in the US the "right wing" is held in the pervasive grip of an anti-intellectual movement that started a long time ago.
The goal of "teaching without activism" should be to force students to assess ideas on their own and present good arguments for what they believe to be true. And to occasionally be persuaded and change their opinions.
The ideal teacher would leave students at the end of the semester not knowing what their personal position on a controversial issue was, as they present arguments for different opinions and challenge all those opinions as well.
I have a very close friend pursuing an advanced degree in sociology. They're an excellent student, highly intelligent, from a well-off background having benefitted from extremely good schooling their entire life - yet seem barely capable of critical thinking. They often talk about how research is just "food for thought" and has little use in any endeavor the requires decision making or informing policy and that truth as a concept is "frowned upon". These are paraphrased points this person has made to me on several different occasions. I want to understand their perspective but it's frankly shocking the conversations we have. The farther I've explored what this person believes the more bleak it gets. They argue that all perspectives are valid yet have extremely specific beliefs and perspectives on all sorts of things. These beliefs and perspectives are also exactly in-line with what you'd expect from a sociology department at a major US university. Seeing these topics at least being broached gives me some small amount of hope.
Isn't that the job of universitities... to shape minds. I remember being surprised in undergrand that it took merely 2 semesters for architecture teachers to convert/indoctorinate most students from primarily enjoying traditional/classical designs to being fully being on the post/modern hype. Most people are passive recipients.
>from primarily enjoying traditional/classical designs to being fully being on the post/modern hype
Can you elaborate on this process? I'm a fairly serious artist, and the more my skills grow, the harder it is to understand po/mo as anything but the emporer's clothes.
Unstructured writing/rant: This was over 20 years ago, and maybe specific to context of the time, I guess more accurate to say many quickly converted to contemporary architecture (it was era of starchitects/Zaha/BIG/OMA/Gehry/sustainable design, less postmodern but still some). But everyone shifted away from traditional/historic styles.
I would say 80% of 1st year class (this was undergrad program) didn't know much all about contemporary/modern/post modern architecture. Most get into architecture due to exposure to classic vernacular/buildings. Step1, get exposed to history/theory classes, learn about non traditional buildings and their theories, and start to "get it". Enough to work with it. Step 2. intro classes to drafting... this was tail end of pen+paper and CAD transition, as in everyone had to learn CAD but you still had to do a few courses on traditional drafting. No one wanted to waste their time drafting classical columns/orders. Like who wants to daw a Corinthian capital by hand. Then came the projects and model building. Step 3. Tight enough deadlines and sleepless nights and no one even considered doing anything but simple modern massing volumes and techtonics. Rendering was "hard", most didn't know vray/max etc. Step 4. Designs with "concepts" gets praised, more discussion. No one's going to turn in a boring ass Federal style building without an original "twist". Step 5. Once building science get introduced, it's over, building techniques and materials limit what can realistically be rendered, I mean anythings possible if you put enough effort, but easier to copy+paste sections/building details of a modern wall where control barriers / notation is all figured out.
The amazing thing is there isn't a process. Non of the faculty ever said you don't do traditional/historic. It's just something you learned not to do. And ultimately, everyone simply adopted modern architecture styles because it was easy when you need to hand build models and it was what everyone else did, and you need to present design with an novel idea. Wasn't until 4-5 years later in masters / M.arch program, when we got 1st gen 3D printers, laser cutters that people started doing more ornate work. But even then, ornamentation/detail is something reserved for those with both desire, energy and time to pursue. I mean I guess that kind of reflects reality, who has time for ornamentation when there's economical mass produced materials and modern building techniques.
I also attribute most architecture students starting off being kind of... hacks. If they had talent (of serious artists) to express whatever they envisioned, they'd be in art/design school doing concept art where imagination is the limit. Most of the good artists I knew went to art school. Architecture students who are also good artists are rare. But most are very mid artists and a few years of long nights, and learning building codes and everyone kind of just naturally settles into modern design because it's easier on the homework deliverables. Just like building in real life. Maybe things are different now, kids grew up using video game engines to design enviroments and have access to 3D printers. I don't follow the space (academia) anymore, I don't know trend thesis projects are being explored. But in many ways, for architecture it doesn't matter, because most are stuck doing contemporary architecture in the office because that's what the general construction workforce is trained for. There's limit to imagination once you introduce the practical side of architecture/building.
I think it's the job of universities to shape minds. Somehow all these universities seems to shape minds into the exact same dysfunctional shape. The seeming uniformity of shape is what's surprising.
I think it's only natural, politics within department drives conformity/uniformity among faculties that filters down to student bodies. Usually a few "schools of thought" dictate the discussion, then networking between these groups spread ideology amount tertiary elites between generations. IMO same dynamic behind fandom culture, except winner takes all since winner gets to run the classrooms and set broader cultural agendas. Except when the agenda they set clashes with broader culture, people not getting "modern architecture" vs actively against controversial topics being taught in in socialogy is going to manifest in society in different ways.
> They often talk about how research is just "food for thought" and has little use in any endeavor the requires decision making or informing policy and that truth as a concept is "frowned upon".
Sounds like a reasonable perspective towards sociology research?
There are an inordinate number of people in sociology that undermine truth as a concept to reduce the possibility of ever being incorrect about anything. This is obviously completely anti-scientific. Almost miraculously, many of these people hold extremely specific viewpoints that inherently amount to truth claims. I'm all for "food for thought" research in complex fields where truth claims are tenuous at best - but what I'm referring to isn't that. It's rhetorical strategy to make implicit truth claims then fend off criticism by undermining the concept of truth itself.
Seems to be some form of "category mistake" which could be easy to address.
There are different contexts in which we can reason about truth. For metaphysics and related philosophical activities it makes sense to doubt any form of truth. To improve a train schedule in a small country, there is little sense in doubting that time exists.
Is your friend able to fathom these kinds of ideas?
Plato specifically rails against this idea of 'relativism' via Socrates, that all ideas are valid interior to that person (Aristotle then goes on to flesh it out more).
I'm no philosopher, by any means, but it was my impression that the foundations of western civilization (and maybe others, I need to study them more) are that relativism is a dead end. That we're to try (and usually fail) to find out what is actually true, what the actual facts are.
The whole point of academies and universities is to defeat relativist thought, to rail against it. At least, that was my understanding of the philosophical grounds that they were founded under. I'm very likely wrong though!
This sounds similar to the phd student in anthropology I had as a friend nearly two decades ago. It’s been the dominant view in social sciences for a long time and it comes out of critical theory [0], which stipulates that truth is a function of power, rather than empirical observation. It was incredibly frustrating when I would mention basic scientific observations to my friend and he would respond with a kind of polite, but detached acknowledgment, as if I told him my preferred flavour of Skittles candy.
>They often talk about how research is just "food for thought" and has little use in any endeavor the requires decision making or informing policy and that truth as a concept is "frowned upon".
If this person really believed any such thing, they would of course never take any form of policy or political action themselves. After all, all those ideas are just for playing with, right? The concept that there exists a truth you could act upon to change things is frowned upon, no?
They do take political action though. They act from the same diluted dialectical materialist frame many highly educated academics in the social sciences tend to act from. When I try to point out that their actions implicate specific truth claims - they seem to reliably misunderstand what I'm saying. They don't see this as contradictory at all as far as I can tell. It's fascinating and I don't know what to make of it. It makes me worry about my own mental health.
What you choose to teach and how you choose to teach is innately a form of activism. It's impossible to separate teaching from activism. The problem with activism in universities isn't with the professors, it's with the administrative staff.
What yale and other institutions need to do is adopt a neutral stance and protect freedom of speech. Which used to be the standard when I went to school.
A neo-nazi, a zionist, a christian, an atheist, etc should have a right to study, teach, opine, etc in an american university. People need to feel free to be a 'devil's advocate' in any academic institution. The problem is that the lunatic fringe has coalesced together and taken power not only in academia, but corporate america and government.
As for limiting donor influence, I think we can all agree on that. It's crazy how a few despicable billionaires were able to take out the leaders of harvard, penn, etc.
I agree with some of the sentiment here but not the detail/presentation -- in particular I find it very frustrating to see an argument that we should embrace nazis as teachers built on the implication that that's the only way to have a "devil's advocate" perspective. I have met many many many people who can think critically and effectively consider/debate multiple angles of something without embracing nationalism or racist hatred as an identity.
Yes let's ensure we have the best opportunity to learn from, debate, and critique each other. No let's not excuse or embrace outrageously hostile behavior.
Or simply the fact that in the normal course of my life I have encountered plenty of racists, neonazis, colonialists, IQ fetishists, wannabe eugenicists etc etc. I considered these ideas already.
They all suck and there is no value in further consideration of them, either for me or for our society. These ideas need nothing more from us but to be pushed out of the main stream of intellectual discourse and the people who support and endorse them are offering nothing useful to us by doing it.
>> adopt a neutral stance and protect freedom of speech.
Neutral stances sound all well and good, but in reality they are fraught with difficulties. What is the neutral stance on anthropomorphic climate change? What is the neutral stance on the age of the earth? Or its shape? Adopting pure neutrality means giving voice to the fringes. While students can certainly benefit in principal from hearing such voices, I would have walked out of Geology 101 had we been tested on "alternative" religious-based models of geology. I went to university to learn about reality. I can get enough of the non-reality from the internet.
You're not actually arguing against what the GP said. The argument being made is that administrative staff should stay out of these sorts of debates. They should have no position on climate change. That's the faculty's job, especially faculty whose expertise is in climate science.
If faculty is teaching religious-based versions of these sorts of topics, then students are free to either a) enroll elsewhere, or b) engage in activism with the goal of having these faculty members removed from teaching positions.
The administrative staff should be responding to the wants and needs of students (and faculty, to some extent), not pushing their own views on them.
Of course, there's usually some overlap. Some (many?) university departments will have dean positions that rotate among teaching faculty. But pure administrative positions should maybe sit back and listen rather than pushing their own agenda.
> How do you suggest limiting donor influence, as a practical matter?
Harvard, Penn, etc is far more important than bill ackman, trump, etc.
> How can they be forced to donate to organizations whose actions they oppose.
They don't have to donate. And their children don't get special privileges to these institutions. Besides, as I said, the organizations should take a neutral stance.
I agree with your toplevel comment in general, but I'm not sure I understand how they should avoid the outsized influence of a few donors. Is the idea that institutions should adopt policies that ensure that no one donor (or a small group of donors) consists of too much of the donations pool? Or should they actively be rejecting donations based on some sort of subjective evaluation of the donor? The former seems reasonable, but the latter sounds like the opposite of an org taking a neutral stance.
I do think there are some cases where orgs should be actively disqualifying specific donors; the Epstein junk seems to be a good example of why they should be picky.
Can you elaborate on why you believe this is the case? Your comment as-is lacks substance, and it would be helpful to describe what of Popper's ideas you agree with, and how and why they apply to GP's comment.
Nobody actually bothers with Popper today, especially liberals themselves.
"Historicism is bad" -> "Trump/Bolsonaro/insert random right wind populist have rhetoric similar to early Hitler, we must stop them to prevent Nazis/fascists rising up again"
"History is not our judge and historical success does not prove anytihing" -> "Here is my Whig historiography identifying me, the open society enjoyer, as the descendant of Union soldiers/ US soldiers landing in Normandy / etc."
>"Here is my Whig historiography identifying me, the open society enjoyer, as the descendant of Union soldiers/ US soldiers landing in Normandy / etc."
Yes, I've noticed lately a rise in this bizarre form of Union Army cosplaying (such as threats to repeat Sherman's match on the South) by certain terminally online leftists. The implication, of course, is that ideological opponents are naturally the Confederates, and thus racists (and also Nazis/fascists/etc. The bogus history is beside the point.)
>is that ideological opponents are naturally the Confederates, and thus racists
They are literally, purposely, as it's "their history", flying a damn (historically inaccurate no less!) battle flag of the confederacy! A rebellion that took less time than Game of Thrones the television show!
Seeing as the confederacy was openly about protecting slavery as the SINGULAR issue separating them from the Union, choosing the fly a flag that represents a short rebellion (and open treason) against the US is definitively choosing to represent yourself as a confederate.
Seeing as the confederacy was openly about slavery, and southern US slavery was openly about a broad belief that black people were lesser than white people, and savages that god gave them dominion over, you know, racism, it should not be controversial to call someone flying a confederate flag a racist. That flag represents nothing else.
People who are giddy about doing another Sherman's march sure are weird though. Sherman himself didn't even like it. Arguably it wasn't some all out massacre save for one city that "supposedly" the boys got too roudy with, but he wasn't exactly proud salting the earth so aggressively that you can still see it flying over the area to this day. There are plenty that consider themselves "liberal" or "progressive" even, that happily adopt violence as a means to their chosen end. There's always someone willing to bend their interpretation of reality to a form that "requires" they violently act to be the hero. I wouldn't exactly call the left the originator of this violent rhetoric however. "Democrats should be shot" isn't exactly a rare thing to hear from conservatives in the US, and not in jest, and it is not new.
>Seeing as the confederacy was openly about protecting slavery as the SINGULAR issue separating them from the Union, choosing the fly a flag that represents a short rebellion (and open treason) against the US is definitively choosing to represent yourself as a confederate.
I am in no way denying that slavery was the cause of the South's secession from the US. My point is that if one calls himself part of the "boys" of the "Union army" today, then obviously one's political enemies are thus the Confederates, and thus ipso facto racist, and thus must be the evil/wrong side.
I think this quote from Julia Adams, one of the signers, is relevant:
> "The concerns articulated in the FfY formation statement pertain to universities — and not their members! — as activists."
There's no problem with individuals within academics being activists, but the institution itself should remain neutral. Its goal should be to foster an environment where ideas can be shared freely and considered by anyone.
> There's no problem with individuals within academics being activists, but the institution itself should remain neutral. Its goal should be to foster an environment where ideas can be shared freely and considered by anyone.
Not all ideas are created equal. We have a long history of ideas, including sciences, that are discredited to a degree where they are, frankly, beneath consideration. Subjects like phrenology and eugenics, the creation theory for the origins of the universe, etc. IMO continuing to permit debate on some of these is not only harmful because the science itself was, in itself, harmful, but it's also a waste of an expensive institution's resources. At some point, further inquiry on a given subject just does not merit the time and energy of people who have far better work to be doing.
I don't think anyone is asking institutions to spend resources on ideas which have been discredited. I believe the ask is for academic institutions to avoid creating an atmosphere where ideas are abandoned before they can be evaluated because they run counter to the activist ideas promoted by the institution.
EDIT: or an atmosphere where certain ideas are favored because they support the activist ideas promoted by the institution.
That is the general idea of modern education: progress through study and research. We can of course go back to the old model: preservation through study and repetition. But I like modern technology. I also like modern ideas. I like to vote, and that other people are allowed to vote too. We should continue that progression.
>> something people consider beneficial, progress.
Lots of people don't want progress. Returning the country to a perceived previous state is a cornerstone of "make American great again". A large part of the country actively wants to undo progress and return to what they believe was a more simple and understandable world.
Many academics lean left, but some of the biggest academic impacts on the real world came from conservatives. The Chicago-school economists were behind the Neoliberal turn -- directly causing the overthrow of Allende, the market shocks after the Cold War. And the NeoCon academics in foreign policy & history were behind interventionist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Education is about helping students know more about a subject after they take a class than before. Activism is about convincing others of something, or, failing that, to punish them.
Is it proper for an atheist to be able to earn an "A" in a religion course? Yes. The professor should say at the beginning of class, "You do not have to be a believer. I will not judge you or grade you on your beliefs or lack thereof. All you need to do is learn and accurately show that you know what it is that people who do believe would say."
Is it proper for a creationist to be able to earn an "A" in an evolutionary biology course? Yes. The professor should say to such a student, "You do not have to change your beliefs about creation or evolution. I will not judge you or grade you on your beliefs or lack thereof. All you need to do is learn and accurately show that you know how biologists calculate and reason about evolution."
It is certainly true that opinions and beliefs can change as a result of education. But if that goal becomes the primary purpose of a university (as opposed to a possibly-beneficial side effect) then that university has corrupted the ideal of higher education.
> Is it proper for a creationist to be able to earn an "A" in an evolutionary biology course? Yes. The professor should say to such a student, "You do not have to change your beliefs about creation or evolution. I will not judge you or grade you on your beliefs or lack thereof. All you need to do is learn and accurately show that you know how biologists calculate and reason about evolution."
My bio teacher took this tack. He said I don't care what you believe; on my test, I ask you what someone who believes in the big bang would say about the creation of the universe.
> Activism is about convincing others of something, or, failing that, to punish them.
I have unfortunately had professors who took this tack. I was too naive at the time to understand that they would demand unadulterated ideological fealty, though perhaps it saved me the ethical dilemma of pretending to believe something I thought was wrong, for the sake of a grade.
Given that we already have distinct forms of organizations for activism, corporations and other forms of non-profits should “use their platform” to tell activists to pound sand
But if mainstream economic theory is anything close to being correct, denying Marx was correct is like denying gravity. It’s just so clear based on the literature that the rate of return on investment exceeds the growth of the real economy. Anything else is conservative activism not grounded in experimental reality.
the modern university education lacks exactly the same thing that your 1 paragraph of letters does – nuance. "Anything else is …" is the crap we need to see less of, if we are to respect academic research and publishing at all.
> the modern university education lacks exactly the same thing that your 1 paragraph of letters does – nuance
Where do you get that? My experience is very much the opposite. What I see from university educations is far more nuanced and sophisticated than what I see anywhere else - far beyond HN, fwiw.
I’m not even going to take a specific stand or call out the specific things that make me loose hope for the future. But if you don’t notice that activism and books praising activism (as opposed to seeking knowledge and revealing truth, or even just having deep knowledge of craft, like medicine), are a large part of modern academia, then we live in two different worlds.
How do you define activism? I think activism is very much about the truth - it's a means of putting a challenging truth on the agenda when otherwise it would be ignored.
MLK said that people don't change their minds (maybe not exactly his term) in the absence of tension. There's plenty of history that they will ignore things for generations if they can. Look at what's happening with climate change, for example - and instead of acting to stop the problem, many in power are acting to deny it and to suppress anyone who points out out.
> if you don’t notice that activism and books praising activism (as opposed to seeking knowledge and revealing truth, or even just having deep knowledge of craft, like medicine), are a large part of modern academia
What in academia do you have experience with? Any at all?
>But if mainstream economic theory is anything close to being correct, denying Marx was correct is like denying gravity. It’s just so clear based on the literature that the rate of return on investment exceeds the growth of the real economy.
Putting aside that I quite like Marx and Marxism as objects of study, Pikkety's "r > g" is simply not any of Marx's empirical theses in Capital. You are perhaps thinking of the "tendency of the rate of profit to fall", which many people considered to hold empirically in the 19th century but which came into greater dispute through the 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...
As one of the many millions of people that moved to the west to (successfully) elevate our lives compared to every place where Marxism has been attempted -- what?
I suspect they were just not clear about what they meant specifically. Distinct from political or economic marxism, dialectical materialism is a thoroughly mainstream technique in history and the philosophy of science and certainly other disciplines as well.
It's funny how this doesn't happen at state schools (Evergreen State excepted) but apparently Yale students are supposed to be a more important class of human than the rest of us.
Your comment gives the impression that the faculty at Cal is particularly conservative. Apparently it’s about 10:1, in favor of democrats (Stanford is 7.6). [1]
Cal (and Stanford) may have more conservative faculties than other elite institutions, but I’m sure there are many schools in other states that are not this democrat-heavy.
A quick google shows that Princeton and Columbia are roughly also 10:1, so I’m not sure I’d say Berkeley's faculty is especially conservative for an elite institution.
That being said, these students are the most listened-to class on the planet. Their awful mass media-drenched suburban backgrounds along with the race for interesting opinions that they engage in to try to distinguish themselves from those backgrounds is lowering the quality of education in general.
The premise here is that the status quo beliefs are knowledge, ideas that disagree are 'activism' - political activity - and are not knowledge. It's fundementally a higly conservative framing that, obviously and intentionally, protects the status quo power.
Once you accept the premise, everything else follows - assuming X is political activity, and school is for learning, not so much for political actitivty, then obviously .... The effective means is not to make an argument directly for the premise - that makes the premise an issue on the table, something to debate. Instead, assume it in your argument: Stop this politicized liberal activism! See how that works? Even people who disagree have to figure out what they disagree about and construct an argument.
In reality, neither idea is more political than the other, and the university, of all places, is where to explore and develop new ideas. Teaching the status quo idea is just as much indoctrination as any other idea - maybe more, because it doesn't raise the question of challenging itself. The real question is, how are they taught. And regardless, I trust the students at Yale are smart enough not to be so easily manipulated - just like the people on HN, of course, who know so well what's good for the students.