Interesting I didn't know the reputation.

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]

[1] https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/colleges/university-of-ca... [2] https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/colleges/claremont-mckenn...

> 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.

I guess it’s only common knowledge for people who read book reviews.

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].

[1] https://rankings.thefire.org/rank

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson%27s_Bakery_v._Oberlin_C...

CMC's FIRE ranking dropped off a cliff a couple years ago — they were #1 not that long ago. [1]

This blog post claims the change was due to methodological changes that don't necessarily make sense. [2]

1: https://www.cmc.edu/newsfeed/cmc-ranks-best-free-speech

2: https://www.cmcforum.com/post/cmc-under-fire-behind-the-rank...

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.