Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal? | Hacker News Reader

Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

nytimes.com

49 pointspaulpauper104 comments

To start off, "liberal" is hard to define, really. I identify as "classically liberal," but that can greatly differ from modern liberal, progressive, etc.

Friedrich Hayek tried to answer this in the 40s, when "intellectuals" were into communism and eugenics (this video is not from the 40s obviously.)

http://cafehayek.com/2014/10/hayek-on-intellectuals-and-soci...

To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking.

In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion.

I do think there is a bit of a shift happening and that's many professors, etc standing up against "safe spaces" on campus. The irony of course is that many young people vouching for these areas often identify as liberal, but yet suppressing the ideas of others is anything but. So...you really have to be careful in how you define "liberal," as it appears the title is shifting a bit due to millennial deposition.

I admit I don't understand the protesting against safe spaces. My university is probably one of the largest of my state and we have a safe space called the "wellness office". It gives out free tea, lip balm, hand sanitizer, and fruits. In the evenings it lets specific people from the LGBTQA+ spectrum come and talk about things. E.g. "Bisexual and pan sexualities" or "Queer men" or "LGBTQ People of color" would all have their own weekly schedule to meet.

I've actually been to a few to see what exactly is going on and what I found was that those meetings tended to talk about issues that are very specific to those groups and therefore there couldn't be much in the way of discussion for people not in those groups. It's not too dissimilar from a meetup of people who want to discuss specific algorithmic proofs in that it's a "safe space" for people in that field and in that education and the quality of conversation would be less productive for the people there if someone not in that field or education arrived and joined in with a bunch of confusion or lack of education about what algorithms are.

I really am confused because I've yet to encounter a "safe space" in which I felt that there was a plan to censor people or order people that they can't say certain things. Meetings hosted by the "safe space" at my university have come off to me as a space to intellectually discuss topics more or less pertaining to a demographic who would otherwise not have as productive a conversation if they had to explain what sexuality is. I've also experienced similar environments in editor's meetups in literature and research groups in STEM.

Could you provide me with a study or article regarding how the existence of an isolated space for the discussion of topics is wrong or bad? I don't mean to attack you or say that "safe spaces" are a good thing. I just don't see the difference between "safe spaces" for minorities differs from spaces of intellectual discussion in STEM.

In a meet-up I can actually call out the BS of the presenter or at least thoroughly ask honest questions. In a safe space, even if my question is honest and to the point, its validity is determined by the state of mind of the responder. So, that is there. The concept of safe space is nothing new, people usually call it home or club. But to impose safe space in the center of town square is the problem.

edit: also safe spaces promote acceptance of dogma over free thinking, which Universities claim to be centers of.

Interestingly enough at the safe space I went to, there was heavy discussion over whether BDSM should be allowed to be considered an alternative sexuality comparable to homo/bi/pansexuality. There was heavy disagreement and productive debate over this topic in a "safe space" for bi/pansexuals at the university.

I don't understand how there was dogma over free thinking in this context. I keep trying to understand where my experiences with things labeled "safe space" align with a rather big voice on the internet and within my peers that "safe space" meetups are somehow oppressive or regressive to ideals and communication. I wouldn't be offended that there exists literary workshops that I cannot attend or that there are physics conferences I wouldn't be welcome in because I know nothing of physics.

Could you suggest a "safe space" for me to enter and observe for myself that would better align with this issue? I understand there aren't any serious surveys or academic study listing experiences of "safe space" and their repercussions so I've been trying to seek out and gather my own data.

Have you ever been to a safe space and tried to participate in discussion? I think the grandparent comment is spot on. Honest questions in good faith are honored, even when they come from ignorance. What's not honored is people looking for a debate that involves "calling out BS". It's not the safe space's responsibility to educate you on social issues. The whole point is to exclude people who deliberately lack context and understanding so that the discussion can be had on more complex topics.

Also, as a straight, white person myself, I understand that there are some discussions where my opinions are irrelevant and unwanted because I simply haven't experienced what others have and am unable to understand and empathize as intimately. Excluding my opinion isn't a slight against free thinking, it's a shortcut because I have nothing to contribute.

"The whole point is to exclude people"

That's pretty much it. Also to actualize through the echo chamber.

Well, yes, if a prestigious research team in MIT excludes people who don't do computer science at all to participate in their research, is that also an actualization of an echo chamber? Should it also be protested?

This is silly. If anyone not trained in computer science and not at MIT still found a way to submit evidence or proof invalidating a hypothesis by said research team, they would not only embrace the evidence, they'd probably be pretty happy about it.

Here is an example, A woman who is an apostate of Islam was heckled in a prestigious University in England while giving her presentation, and the Muslim students claimed that the University is a safe space and that she should not allowed to speak. You know the best part, the University's feminist group concurred with their Islamic brothers over this poor woman's right activist who happens to be an apostate. So, there you have it. I could care less, where there about Muslim Student Association, where they sit in dorm and practice in peace, but they extend the definition of safe space to ENTIRE University and anything that is "offensive" to them cannot happen in the campus. That is the problem, I am stating.

Or in other words, outside perspectives are never useful? All the advice about having papers / presentations proofread by people not involved, about looking to outside sources to check if you're stuck in a rut, about the value of diversity of backgrounds and opinions, is all bullshit and worse than useless?

The concept of safe space is nothing new, people usually call it home or club.

I was going to jump in and say this. Basically everyone has a "safe space" that they go to every day, but students often don't, especially the freshmen in residence randomly assigned roommates.

To designate a space on campus where students can go where their ideology will be respected no matter what just compensates for the fact they don't have a home that they can kick people out of.

The problem is that the safe space attitude spreads to the rest of the campus, which isn't OK, but it happens because of faculty attitudes and risk of litigation, and it would happen even if no designated safe spaces existed.

The way I see it, designating a safe space is a good way for universities to keep dogma out of classrooms.

I admit I haven't tried to research the "safe spaces" issue very much, but my very, very general understanding is that there quite a few different understandings of what a safe space is. Some people want their classrooms to be safe spaces in the sense that they'll be warned in advance and possibly allowed to opt out if certain uncomfortable things are discussed. This can become very awkward for professors who are teaching topics (think civil rights history, civil rights law, topics related to abuse or sex crimes, etc) that may be uncomfortable to some students.

In some sense, it's a bit like "political correctness". I doubt that the people who rail against political correctness and the people who encourage political correctness are talking about exactly the same thing.

Oh I see. I can understand that if a student is disrupting a class saying its too upsetting, there might be some issue with that. I've been to classes where a fundamentalist christian held up an entire lecture because he didn't agree with evolution (in a class called "evolutionary biology"). Is that a similar disruption happening in civil rights history/law classes?

I haven't specifically heard of that kind of overt disruption (which is not to say it doesn't exist). I do, however, know some professors who are currently nervous about teaching certain topics, even though those topics are fairly fundamental to their curricula.

They often are, but talk past each other, in what's known as a Motte and Bailey[1][2]. A mens rights group doesn't want to ban all women from holding positions of power, just the incapable ones. Who's a capable woman? Well, they haven't found one, but if they did they'd surely let her into their club. Their core argument sounds like it might meet you halfway, but they never do.

Variants along this argument come up all the time. It's pretty much the entirety of political speechwriting; Even Trump's most outlandish statements are forms of it. He'll proclaim to ban all muslims, back up to 'well, just enhanced screening', but darned if it's not going to be racist anyway. But on the opposite side, nearly every gun control argument ends up this way, with someone asking that just 'assault weapons' with 'no sports shooting value' be banned, and then their list of assault weapons is based on whatever the most common rifle is at the time.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_castle [2]http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch#Motte_and_baile...

Political correctness is correct as long as it is not directly related to the required class material. For instance, you can't teach history without talking about slavery. If that upsets a student, then that is definitely her problem, not anyone else's.

The controversy seems to have been sparked because some students want more control over the content covered in their classrooms with a particular emphasis on triggering content. This is a distinct but related issue.

There is also the not new issue of students protesting speakers they think have objectionable views worth protesting on campus. This bothers some free speech advocates even though it is an expression of free speech. Something something totalitarianism, slippery slope, etc. I find it an overreaction from the right. In my personal opinion, speech is free when it is free to be in conflict.

So really there are very many issues developing right now on college campuses and they are all conflated together because the point is to have an enemy to hate ("SJW's" or "the regressive left"). So diverse issues and points of views are agglomerated into one ball of evil to hate. Some people refuse to allow college students, barely adults, to be wrong or misguided and learn from their mistakes. Also those same people like to pretend college students have immense power to censor speech at a scale that threatens what they find good in society.

There's also a certain zealotry in defense of the status quo which is probably older than history itself.

> There is also the not new issue of students protesting speakers they think have objectionable views worth protesting on campus. This bothers some free speech advocates even though it is an expression of free speech.

Citing free speech, to protest someone exercising their free speech, is... I dunno, there seems something backwards there. Someone is missing the point, at any rate.

This is not a study, but provides an example of "safe space liberalism" gone too far in a university. In here, students heckle the speakers trying to introduce dissenting opinions on that "safe space liberalism". It's 1.5 hrs long, but you might want to begin at the 2 min 45 sec mark to see the worst of the heckling begin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCcp36n2cDg

Your topic is broad; but as a precursor, I have a bias, in that I'm a free speech absolutist.

There's a difference between having a meet-up or speech on campus on specialized topics and blocking all dissenting opinions because of feelings (not logic mind you.) Well before "safe spaces" were a thing, when I was in school, I could go to speeches that had minority opinions...no one ever disrespected the speakers; even if we had topic of disagreeing. I went to a viewing of a trans documentary, there was no "safe space," there was a good discussion afterwards. There was no need for a "safe space," because we were all adults, we aren't children.

What you are essentially describing is a forum about specific topics. That's not a "safe space," it may have been one but that's not quite an accurate representation.

One example of a "safe space" gone wrong has been the banning of certain speakers (that were already booked) from speaking on campus, because it violated student's "safe space." This has happened to a number of people, including Bill Maher and Condoleezza Rice. If you can't listen to the views of those you disagree with, you are not going to be a tolerant person. It encourages uniformity of ideas, the opposite of what academic inquiry should be about.

Then, we have things like "free speech zones" on campus, designated areas on campus where you are allowed to speak freely, displaying free speech on other part of campus can get you expelled. (read more about these on thefire.org.)

Anyhow, here's an op-ed from Michael Bloomberg and Charles Koch (not example bed fellows) http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-free-speech-matters-on-campu...

I do really encourage you to read the thefire.org, campus practices on free speech are often awful. You can look up your own school on their site and view their score on free speech.

To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking.

I'd say it's more that they think they know better than tradition. They have the best reasoning skills and the most formalized evidence, which are of course better than generations of trial-and-error and heuristics and stacked biases.

In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion.

With the history of things like women having to write under male pseudonyms and people with the wrong opinions getting shut out ("scientific progress happens one funeral at a time"), this probably comes from somewhere else. I'd say it got fashionable somehow and then got stuck in a positive feedback loop.

> In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion.

or it comes from being smart enough to see the illogic of religious belief and to hold more complex thoughts than simple prejudices.

This probably has something to do with it. I'd think, although perhaps I'm wrong, that the note highly educated, the less likely to be very religious (on average).

smart enough to see the illogic of religious belief

A lot of religious people don't take their beliefs literally. It's more stories that they know are just stories (or just don't care if they're literally true or not), but that illustrate some important point and provide a shared context for talking about it.

Like how it doesn't matter if the "640k should be enough for anybody" quote is actually true or not, or Paul Bunyan and John Henry and the rest of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion , or the Story of Mel the Real Programmer, or the 500 mile email, etc. They illustrate important principles and shared cultural values, and strict historical accuracy isn't actually that important to their usefulness.

hold more complex thoughts than simple prejudices.

The annoying thing about prejudices, is they're often not so much flat wrong as deliberately under-fitting the data for performance reasons or bootstrapping a model for a new environment with data from an old environment. For example, there's a lovely article about how affirmative action quotas encourage racism here: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/05/12/the-amazing-1969-prop... .

So Newton, Leibniz, Maxwell and Tolstoy weren't smart enough? I don't find this credible.

>To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking.

At a general level is that not the point of education? If people who have studied economics dont understand economics, the benefits and perils of different economic policies and activities, better then those who have never thought about it, then surely there's something seriously wrong?

> In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion.

This is actually testable, physics, maths and other "hard" sciences gain nothing from including minority opinions (or any opinions) so by your logic science academics should be less liberal then social scientists or liberal arts professors. I doubt that's true though.

I suspect that the better educated a person is the wider their experience or people from other backgrounds and the wider the experience the more the acceptance. But that's just an educated guess ;-)

> At a general level is that not the point of education? If people who have studied economics dont understand economics, the benefits and perils of different economic policies and activities, better then those who have never thought about it, then surely there's something seriously wrong?

Yes, but the people who are are often for "progressive/liberal" economic policies (not to be confused with neoliberal economic policies) are often not in the field of economics.

Krugman and most in the Keynesian school, a "left leaning" school, knows the value of free trade. Yet if you go to other intellectuals in other subjects, such as Philosophy, etc, you will find little tolerance for the ideas of free trade. Honestly, I don't know if Krugman or even Galbraith fit under the "liberal" spectrum anymore, economically speaking, because the rise of Warren and Bernie are not inline the universally accepted ideas of 99% of economists.

Really outside of the school of business on campuses, you will find that everyone completely disagrees with everyone in the school of business about economics.

So no, it isn't because people are "specialized" in a subject and believe they can leverage that on other people's lives or policies. I'm pretty sure that's not quite what Smith had in mind when he spoke of specialization. I believe it is an elitist mindset they the educated are -better- people and -should- run the lives of others, etc through "progressive" policies. That doesn't mean they know anything about the subject of economics or know anything about other people's lives.

Do I agree with some of those policies? Sure, but if you talk to some people on campus their world view is completely paternalistic and illogical.

I don't buy this piece's claim that the American left follows a "culture of critical discourse": There is a disturbing trend in the modern American left of suppressing and punishing people whose opinions do not confirm to the liberal consensus. Free speech law blog Popehat is a good source of concrete examples [1] [2] [3] [4].

I recently saw an article here on HN which did an excellent job of expressing this concern [5]. Sadly it didn't get very many upvotes.

[1] https://popehat.com/2015/12/08/no-safe-spaces-for-conservati...

[2] https://popehat.com/2016/04/22/how-inanely-censorious-can-co...

[3] https://popehat.com/2015/09/23/lets-applaud-wesleyans-studen...

[4] https://popehat.com/2015/09/14/a-market-solution-to-academic...

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11545169

I stopped reading once he suggested renaming political correctness to neo-stalinism.

Is everyone on "that side" of the debate so completely incapable of keeping things in perspective? Or do they genuinely feel that much of an existential threat from the kids these days?

College liberalism is - and has always been - an extreme form of liberalism. Safe spaces and censorship on college campuses is not a reflection of the real world.

It definitely spills over some, but it's hardly representative. That's probably why that article didn't get much love. Many here identify as liberal (like me) but not at all with the ridiculous censorious behavior and right to not be offended found in many of your examples (also like me).

A variation of a common refrain these days that I found funny and a little insightful is that: "Reality has a well-known center-left technocratic recovering-neoliberal bias."

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/703722154815156224

Much of what comes under "liberal" in the united states is often our best response to evidence of what works mixed within a more general western liberal political tradition broadly enabling through both negative and positive liberty all public/private behaviours unless harm to others can be clearly demonstrated by evidence. And much of what comes under "liberal" within in the United States is the centre ground in Western and Northern Europe.

I suspect this is more of a signalling game. Elites became socially liberal to distinguish themselves from the unsophisticated middle class, in a time when wealth wasn't a good signal. Now that everyone has a bachelors, the middle class is dying, and liberalism is trendy among those who would previously have been part of the not-college-educated middle class, I expect elites will become more conservative.

Though we really need to define our terms here, there are many dogmas associated with liberalism that are just as antiscientific as conservative dogma, denying the predictive power psychometric tests, the very, very large role of genetics in life outcomes and education, the implications of this on class, the obvious benefits of nuclear power and genetic engineering, the importance of modern agriculture over "organic" alternatives, the dressed up faith-healing that is alternative medicine.

Hasn't nuclear power proven to be extremely dangerous? It doesn't seem worth the risks.

Educate yourself http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...

-1 for the utterly superfluous T in deaths/TWHr

> uneducated middle class

The very idea that the middle class might be uneducated is... odd.

Factory workers in the 1960s were not college graduates and often not highschool graduates. I've edited this to be more clear.

It is very much an American phenomenon calling factory workers Middle Class. Elsewhere in the world the middle class refers to members of the professions - doctors, lawyers, academics, politicians, senior civil servants, successful managers of medium and large businesses. To be middle class refers to working people of usually very high non-manual skill, high cultural and societal status, and usually university educated. The middle class might not own the country, but they certainly run it.

A factory worker in say France, UK or Germany is member of the working class, and in terms of their skill, status, and economic and political power aren't really distinguishable from a US factory worker.

Factory workers would be working class. The middle class are people like shopkeepers, doctors, accountants, teachers, large farmers, and so on.

You can have blue-collar workers without college educations that make close to or more than $100k.

It's a useful distinction in the context of this discussion.

Well, except it's not true. Reality is "red in tooth and claw". Academia exists in a bubble created and protected by some iron-clad rules and forces.

Everyone has different views on what Liberal vs. Conservative means, but if you were to use these definitions:

Liberal: Promote group-oriented solutions to address economic disparities and historical social injustices.

Conservatives: Promote individualist-oriented solutions to create wealth and entrepreneurship.

... you'd start to see that the author's argument is a little circular.

'Education', in the author's sense of the word, refers to group-oriented institutional education (e.g. traditional universities).

So really what the author is asking is 'why do people educated in group-oriented educational institutions promote group-oriented political solutions?'

I think it would be interesting to know where 'self-taught learned people' sit on the political spectrum?

After pondering self-described conservatives and liberals for decades now, I've recently concluded that they're more or less the same. Both groups seem to highly value their families and seek to promote their interests and protect them from threats.

The only thing that seems to differ is the definition of 'family'. At one end, the definition is more strict and exclusive (with a family of one being the most extreme), and on the other end, the definition is less strict and inclusive (with a family of everyone being the most extreme).

That's a pretty big difference, though.

Or, why do people who live in society tend to believe in the value of society?

The era of the independent family on the frontier is nearly all gone from planet Earth.

This is a bit of a flippant piece. Steven Pinker has a much better analysis. He talks about the 5 realms of morality, and how they play into political life (referenced in the blank slate, and our better angels, but i'll link to you here in an NYT article):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.ht...

>The exact number of themes depends on whether you’re a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture.

The politics comes in here:

>The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

I think this is a better illustration of how the topic should be approached then just talking about the politics.

"there’s ample evidence of the professional class using its economic and educational capital to preserve its advantages"

i do think that this is a part of it. degrees and certifications are largely an exercise in compliance. that's not to say they aren't hard work, but that hard work is often busy work. what makes it hard is that it's not interesting nor informative and thus is kryptonite to the intellectually curious.

people who have spent considerably and pushed through that menial task of compliance have bought into the system that tells them that they are now more useful to society and, therefore, deserve elevated status in our cultural and literal hierarchies.

part of left-leaning ideology is a belief that the smart and well-educated (the intelligensia) are better able to make decisions for the body politic than the chaotic "invisible hands" of various complex systems left to their own devices.

with that in mind, the question can be re-phrased "why are people who have spent a large amount of time and money to increase the perception of their own value to society more willing to give authority and power over to those who spend a large amount of time and money to increase the perception of their own value to society?"

There is a whole book on this phenomena with a kitchy title: http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/d...

The book was really enlightening and went through some of reasons of the rise of Donald Trump. The one in the forefront being liberals have removed all protections from the working class in the form of NAFTA and other measures like welfare reform. Instead of champanioning New Deal style policies and safety nets they champion more education putting the responsibility on the individual.

Also from my own view, liberals seem more concerned with transgendered people and global warming than families with no opportunity torn apart by opiate addiction and deindustrialization. The hatred of liberals in those circles seems to come from a rational place.

Education doesn't translate to intelligence and being "liberal" is a pretty wide catch all bucket. There are big differences between socially liberal and fiscally liberal.

I'm not sure the term "fiscally liberal" describes a consistent set of beliefs as they're held by a group of people in the United States. For that matter neither does "fiscally conservative."

For example, why do a lot of "fiscal conservatives" support wasting trillions of dollars for decades in wars with no goal?

I think that's the trouble with so-called "fiscal conservativism." It holds that government should only be spending money on "the important stuff." What comprises the important stuff is anybody's guess.

because most people are not super smart, and don't think carefully about words, and get their thinking hijacked by powerful special interests.

Because you see where blindly following your instinct judgment, (even when conservatives glued arguments to them) got us. It might have been a good survival trait for ten thousand years - but the last 200 years, they almost got us killed. So you become liberal- because you know your limits, you know how little you know, how wrong you can be, and how easy it is to stomp what could feed your family tomorrow into the ground - just because they didnt liked the color.

And yes, there are conservatives "technology investors" who dip there toe into tested tech and distribute it. But they are never the guys to fling themselves out into the void without safety net.

The reason why i have become a liberal - though raised by extremely conservative parents- is because i was so wrong, so often back then. Its not the usual youth rebellion to conservative realism dichotomy, quite reverse, the longer i live, the more i realize how destructive one can be with how little - and all that just for some retarded irk in my guts, that kept a monkey alive 20000 years ago? Better control that irk and let that strange guy in my neighborhood build his steam machines in the middle of the night.

you know your limits, you know how little you know, how wrong you can be

This really doesn't describe the liberal mindset, which is absolutely certain of its own righteousness.

That's everyone, sir. Conservatives calling liberals righteous is some inappropriate first-stone-casting.

It's because once you are highly educated, you realize that you are no longer in competition with your fellow humans for resources: you'll get a job pretty easily, and it's no longer a matter of survival.

I would disagree. If one is highly educated in a specific period of history, or literature, or some other field with poor job prospects despite being highly educated, there's still high competition. Also, given that so many people with phD's want to become professors, the competition for those positions is extremely fierce with the "publish or perish" mindset that academia has been in.

I don't think its just a lack of competition that causes people to become more liberal. Academia is highly competitive.

I didn't say you could get any job; just that you could get a job, so it is no longer a question of survival.

Did we enter a post-scarcity era when I wasn't paying attention?

The problem is that religious fundamentalist, xenophobes, racists, misogynist, and bigots took over conservative movement. It is not that republicans and conservative thinkers endorsed these people but they made them comfortable under "conservative tent". But slowly they took over everything: and Trump is result of that.

So maybe the right question should be: what happen to conservatism in US?

It's a funny thing, when you want the votes of a demographic but you don't want to have to represent that demographic.

I would pay so much money to watch a version of John Oliver that presented a conservative viewpoint without the xenophobia, bigotry, etc. But I guess that would be a libertarian John Oliver then.

Or maybe those things took over because of lack of opportunities for healthy identity in terms of meaningful contribution to society.

Ship away everyone's opportunity for self esteem building work in locations with little wealth for self esteem building side projects and they cling to something to preserve identity.

a party is not the same as a movement. The party is a mesh bag -- it has some structure and permanence, but defines very little. The movements are the goopy fluids that fill it and flow in and out of it, giving is temporary meaning.

The southern strategy was a deliberate move by the Republican Party to gain support by actively appealing to racists in the southern states.

People have a disposition toward being either narrow-minded and bigoted, or open-minded and generous. Among those who are not educated, those who are not naturally narrow-minded or bigoted can nevertheless fall into the trap of that kind of thinking anyway. When they become better educated, they can change. Some of those who are predisposed to narrow-mindedness and bigotry by nature will use higher learning only to entrench it deeper. I suspect those whom education improves in this regard are more common, so it appears that education liberalizes, on the whole (even if not in particular cases).

The highest result of education is tolerance - Helen Keller

Let's remember that tolerance is not an absolute good. Indeed that phrase is almost meaningless unless qualified.

. . . presumably those downvoting will tolerate just about anything and leave their discriminatory faculties to rot. That's pretty much how many folk behaved in Europe earlier in the 20th century and look where that got us.

In her essay 'Optimism' Helen Keller provides the context for her oft-quoted statement. The retailing of phrases outwith a context then presented as some kind of ultimate truth is strangely disingenuous.

Let's be honest - this is a fluff piece written to make NYT readers feel good about themselves. It doesn't belong here because there's no actual point to debate.

It's because the education systems are liberal. Before anyone but the wealthy were able to afford college, most institutions had a conservative slant.

Do you have any evidence for this? I've not heard anyone make this claim before, and I'm curious how much validity it may have.

That's a circular argument. Why are education systems liberal?

And where's your evidence that earlier "most institutions had a conservative slant"?

I understand how a circular system can sustain itself, but then how did it turn from conservative to liberal?

A public, tax-funded university exists by coercion. This is going to attract the people who are results-driven and be repulsive to an ideology-driven person. Therefore, it can reasonably be expected to suggest coercion as an allowable tool for solving any problem.

Under socialist ideology all universities are public and tax-funded.

Related, what sort of effects does this cause?: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/05/10/academe-is-overrun-by...

Seems to me it's the other way around. Liberalism was born in academia and has spread from there.

That's seems to be a common refrain from conservatives. I used to be far more conservative, but I never bought that argument.

What is it about people with MA and PhD programs that fosters a liberal environment? Your answer just reinforces the question OP asked.

There more education I've received (high school, BA, then MA, now MA+45) the more liberal I've become (mostly on social issues I'm more moderate on fiscal issues). And I was raised in a fiercely conservative family with conservative grandparents.

So, there is something to this!

Oh, and many of my teachers were also conservative (religious private schools for BA and some MA), but I still ended up more liberal.

Could you provide some sources or suggested reading regarding this topic? I haven't encountered this opinion before and I'm quite curious how this came about.

Nietzsche's whole opus documents this quite well. You can google him or look him up on amazon maybe.

Does Nietzsche record the spreading of liberal views from academia to the greater mainstream and confirm liberal views were born in academia first and foremost?

Because modern American conservatism is strongly aligned with anti-intellectual sentiments: the pathos of nationalism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, "traditional views" on religion and the role of science, and a craving for simple categorization into Manichean good or bad, male or female, okay-to-say or not-okay-to-say, us or them, yours or mine. Onto this we lay a matrix of Ayn Randian property-rights-fetishists and aging anticommunists & libertarians (the previous generation's right-wing intellectuals, now bought off or shouted down), as well as the remnants of the the-Confederacy-should-have-won enthusiasts, dressed up in strict constructionist clothing. Driving the parade is an endless stream of corporate lobbyists trying to get a return on investment in the simplest way possible.

These sorts of stereotypes are observations about the net behavior of large groups of conservatives rather than being ubiquitous in individuals, but occasionally I talk to a certain flavor of conservative friends about such topics, while taking care to avoid being dismissive of their chosen tribe. They become viscerally infuriated not so much at the positions, but at acknowledgement of the nuances ("But they're Muslim. They're at war with us. They say they're at war with us.") and the notion that improving everyone's situation ("How the hell can you say it doesn't matter whether they deserve it") could be a goal of all of us. They are looking for politics to simplify, not to complicate, their thinking. It's not complete ignorance of the tricky bits, it's a desire to disregard them.

This is not the stuff that a career as a lifetime thinker is made of. The letters 'PhD' stand for 'Doctor of Philosophy', and appreciating complexity has to be a part of extended research in any field. An explicit disavowel of 'experts' or or 'academics' or 'scientists' is quite common on the right, usually with airquotes to indicate that the speaker disbelieves these people's expertise and doesn't consider them worth the speaker's time, because the speaker is busy Doing things (necessarily simplifying reality) and they merely Think about things.

The best of the GWB Administration:

"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.""

People who are highly educated are also more likely to be well-off.

Indeed, the article should say more likely to be limousine liberal.

The conclusion of the article isn't anything new -- progressives have been saying this since at least 2004. (Read the article itself, please. It's not actually about the question in the title.)

Why Are the Fish So Wet?

Because they're highly educated?

Boom!

Understanding of stochastic nature of the Universe, fundamentals of genetics, biology, actor model, evolutionary strategies and competition, equilibrium-based self-regulated adaptive systems (ecosystems, markets and societies), cultural and social conditioning of intellect (languages, religions), philosophical systems of Buddhism and existentialism, etc.

The article doesn't mention one of the most important factors – in the US, Conservatism often comes with a heavy side helping of religion. As a result, highly educated people tend to move away from conservatism even if they may be generally for Conservative policies, because they don't want to be associated with people who believe the earth is 5000 years old and that anyone who isn't a Christian needs "saving".

The current Republican primaries are showing that this link may be weakening, with Evangelicals no longer being a heavily significant factor in deciding the vote. So maybe the highly educated won't be 100% liberal in a decade or two.

'side helping of fundamentalist religion' would be more accurate than 'side helping of religion'.

In the U.S. most liberals are religious, though the percentage is lower than among conservatives. For example, the Pew study below indicates that religion is 'very important' or 'somewhat important' among 59% of self-described liberals who lean Democrat.

source: http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/im...

It wasn't so long ago (Carter) that Evangelicals were a major liberal constituency.

Basically what happened is the Republicans rounded up the evangelical leaders and said "those dem's are weak on communism, vote for us or Russia will kill God" and it worked.

One of the 'interesting' side effects is that when Republicans decided to become anti abortion to get Catholic votes it forced a bunch of previously pro choice or neutral evangelical groups to become virulently anti abortion out of percieved duty.

There's also the idea that evangelism is mostly a southern thing, and Republicans tend to play heavily into the sort of racially charged politics that resonate with southerners.

Well from what I understand this was largely started concurrently with the southern strategy which was when that particular play started.

It could also be because in the US there is no alternative. You do have the Republican party that calls itself conservative but is so only in name. Conservative means cruelty, hate, and stupidity in America. These are people who pride themselves on being stupid, who hate the idea of anyone but themselves getting anything out of the government, and espouse cruel values like support for torture and oppression of minorities. Of course highly educated people do not want to affiliate themselves with cruelty, hate, and stupidity by their very nature and definition.

The article acts like this is some great mystery when it's incredibly obvious. Actual climate scientists do not seriously take the views of idiotic climate deniers. Actual doctors who care about their patients do not seriously take the views of anti-abortionists or their incorrect claims about life. And in general, though not exclusively, educated people do not support the cruelty of torture or racism. These are the things supported by conservatives in the US. Is it any wonder that people with half a brain abhor these horrific ideas?

Consider the economic model of academia - you apply for a grant, you do some work, if you get a useful outcome or not no-one really cares, you apply for another grant and if you play the game right you get a sinecure. In addition in many academic fields there are no right or wrong answers anyway.

Nothing like that really exists in the corporate world, which is results and return-on-investment oriented. You produce, or you're out. Such a world seems like a nightmare to someone who is used to the safe, cosy academic world.

Of course the elephant in the corner of the room is that academia only exists because of wealth generated by grubby commerce...

>Nothing like that really exists in the corporate world

coughpitch deckcough

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