An article of faith among conservative critics of American universities has been that liberal professors politically indoctrinate their students. This conviction not only fueled the culture wars but has also led state lawmakers to consider requiring colleges to submit reports to the government detailing their progress in ensuring “intellectual diversity,” prompted universities to establish faculty positions devoted to conservatism and spurred the creation of a network of volunteer watchdogs to monitor “political correctness” on campuses.
Just a few weeks ago Michael Barone, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, warned in The Washington Times against “the liberal thugocracy,” arguing that today’s liberals seem to be taking “marching orders” from “college and university campuses.”
But a handful of new studies have found such worries to be overwrought. Three sets of researchers recently concluded that professors have virtually no impact on the political views and ideology of their students.
I’m sure this news will be a great comfort to Larry Summers and those denied career opportunities in universities because they do not confrom to the group think, as well as all those students who were gyped out of portions of their education by listening to the politcal rants of their professor day after day instead of learning about the subject matter they were supposed to learn.
“I’m sure this news will be a great comfort to Larry Summers”
Summers, an extraordinarily talented person, has a history of rudeness and arrogance. If people had disliked him less, he’d have survived the flap over his comments.
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That said, PC-type ideological discrimination in academia is a legitimate and significant issue.
[blockquote]Summers, an extraordinarily talented person, has a history of rudeness and arrogance. If people had disliked him less, he’d have survived the flap over his comments.[/blockquote]
That’s ridiculous. More than a small percentage of the university leftist radicals I know are rude and arrogant. Many are outright monsters. [i]They[/i] have not been hounded out of [i]their[/i] positions. Why are civilty and modesty standards the left– many of whom actively [i]derogate[/i] universals– can apply to the right which the right cannot apply to the left?
“More than a small percentage of the university leftist radicals I know are rude and arrogant. Many are outright monsters. They have not been hounded out of their positions” —Marion R [#3]
But if they were university presidents, they might well have been. That fact is that rude, arrogant leftists rarely become university presidents.
As many of us learned in kindergarden, people will give you a lot more leeway when they like you than when they don’t.
I’d have to see the actual report, but isn’t there a bit of a false dichotomy at play here? I mean, the peers and parents that affect their conservative fellows have willing support from liberal faculties, even further isolating conservative students.
From my own experience, I remember more than a few classes I had with conservative fellow students (we were in the minority) where our opinions were frequently denegrated, and then denigrated even further by the liberal majority outside of class.
Sure, the professor had a minor role in the direct alteration of people’s views, but they provided a great deal of support to those who were directly affecting others. Quite simply, if you are left with no intellectual support at all for your conservatism, it is very difficult to maintain it, as it is difficult to maintain Christina faith in the face of opposition if there is no undergirding spiritual and intellectual support coming from the Church.
The difficulty with studies like these and their use by ideologues of the left and right is that they suggest “political indoctrination” is a evil of the political “left”, and that the political right deals loftily with truth and objective processes for achieving truth. Having taught for nearly 16 years at both a liberal arts college and a large state university, I’d suggest that ideologues politically indoctrinate no matter whether they are of the right and left. When I taught, I was grateful for (but often uncomfortable with) the skepticism of my students – it made for interesting discussions and personal engagement with them. (Unfortunately, all too often, they didn’t carry their skepticism into the churches they joined or the politics they embraced.) The “bad guys” in academe come from both sides. Unfortunately, for the leftists, the wackos tend to make the headlines. Deservedly, I might add.
[blockquote]Summers, an extraordinarily talented person, has a history of rudeness and arrogance. If people had disliked him less, he’d have survived the flap over his comments. [/blockquote]
I’m thinking that Summers was purged for failing to kowtow to Cornel West.
#7 – the feminist/fascist Professors played a role too – remember that Summers dared suggest there were differences between men and women. That’s a no no on college campuses.
Here’s a look back at that fiasco:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/sommers200503220754.asp
So, does this mean that a priest’s liberalism isn’t contagious, either?
[blockquote]That fact is that rude, arrogant leftists rarely become university presidents.[/blockquote]
Remarkable. And out of 3000-4000 U.S. Colleges and Universities at that.
Do you suppose it’s because rude and arrogant people rarely become University Presidents, because leftists rarely become University Presidents, or because leftists are rarely rude and arrogant?
“Three sets of researchers recently concluded that professors have virtually no impact on the political views and ideology of their students.” — utter hogwash. These “studies” should be carefully placed in the “circular file” where they belong.
“Rude, arrogant leftists rarely become university presidents” —#4
“Do you suppose it’s [1] because rude and arrogant people rarely become University Presidents, [2] because leftists rarely become University Presidents, or [3] because leftists are rarely rude and arrogant?” —Marion [#10]
Some combination of 1 and 2.
Well, I looked, saw that this article in is the NYT – and didn’t bother to read it. I know their agenda inside out. I know it, because the small liberal (arts) New England college I attended was well and truly falling into the grip of the same agenda when I attended it 35 years ago, and it was what we were fed in English class, Geography class, Psychology class, through foreign language teaching – never mind the arts which I never took a class in (though sang in the choir) – and of course not forgetting Economics 101 class. This was in part why I majored in a science, hoping the liberal agenda would have to abandon me at the doorway to those classrooms.
Well, not quite. Although it was harder to inject a leftist philosophical bent into the math and science course material there was no shortage of opportunities for professors to talk it up and model it in the intimate student/professor interaction that small colleges are renowned and desired for. And, once liberal-educated, I learned eventually that not having established any credentials or mentoring relationships outside the cozy liberal Northeastern US academic world, nor critiqued its point of view, I was strictly on my own if I could not in good conscience buy into that agenda. And if there is a single word to describe the essence of said agenda I would say it is anti-Roman Catholic, though that may not resonate with others even with similar experience.
I don’t quite understand why these comments turned into reminiscences of Larry Summers at Harvard, when there are educational institutions aplenty throughout the USA where “political correctness” of one kind or other offends against the tradition of learning to think for one’s-self with open eyes and ears and mind. By the way, the smartest students always learn to play the game with biased instructors of returning course papers and exam answers with regular sympathetic regurgitation, albeit insincere, of the instructors’ biases. Right wing or left wing, atheist or evangelical, it makes no difference; a biased university professor teaches little more than his or her own foolishness.
Tacit, you (and others here as well) will appreciate Alan Sokal’s satiric acedemic paper where he argued that gravity is socially constructed [i]and[/i] had it published in a leading academic journal (where no one saw it as satire!)
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html
Ah, the Sokal Affair. A true classic.
As I recall, the rather lame defense the journal editors offered for publishing his “paper” after he had revealed that it was a joke, was that of course they saw that it wasn’t up to the usual rigorous standards of the journal but they thought it was just so adorable that a scientist would think he could publish a paper on the philosophy of science that they went ahead and published it anyway. (I paraphrase, but seriously, that was the gist of it.)
#11, you are absolutely correct. I spent four years in undergraduate work at one of the small, liberal colleges of the midwest; and then I spent about 15 years, working to get my head screwed back on straight. To suggest that liberal professors do not impact their students in the area of political ideology is completely ridiculous; I am not the exception to the rule, I am certain.