No, Professors Aren't Discriminating Against Conservative Students | Hacker News Reader

No, Professors Aren't Discriminating Against Conservative Students

psmag.com

32 pointslnguyen33 comments

Study results demonstrated that the grades after 4 years for conservative students were not lower than for liberal students. There is a material difference between proving the former and proving that conservative students aren't discriminated against for espousing conservative ideas.

Their data did not capture whether these conservative students kept their ideas to themselves and adopted the socially acceptable positions and beliefs they would assume their professors were seeking in order to get the grades. Why rock the boat when a college degree is an economic instrument and not some kind of political debate?

"Over the phone, Woessner stresses that, in the end, he and his co-authors had 'to engage in speculation, trying to map our possible explanation ranging from discrimination to skills to interests. [Conservative students] may be not as engaged' when it comes to the humanities, whereas 'liberal students are much less happy with their math classes.'"

Nonetheless interesting study, but headline writers once again drawing conclusions beyond the scope of a study. Yay social science journalism. We'll all continue on agreeing with headlines that conform to our echo chambers and dismissing out of hand those that do not, regardless of what the actual study truly demonstrated. Let's just infer explanations that makes sense to us and interpret our findings the way that suits our agenda.

I'm prepared to believe that unconscious bias or systemic discrimination is preferentially benefiting liberal students. What alarms me about this idea, and the related one of group privilege, is not that they are necessarily wrong (they quite possibly aren't), but that once you've convinced somebody that they are subject to being unfair in a way that is invisible to them, it's not hard to pull them around by the nose in whatever direction you like.

For that reason, if there's some activity or structure that discriminates against someone who is acting in good faith, it should be addressed specifically. In other words, it should be possible to clearly explain what a problem is and how it functions, rather than tossing around vague accusations of unfairness. By doing so, everybody benefits, and everybody has a fair chance to be heard.

Pacific Standard's headline is flat wrong: "when controlling for SAT scores and demographics, differences between liberal and conservative students are modest. For example, holding all else constant, the most liberal student would enjoy a 0.16 point advantage over the most conservative student on a 7 point scale. Given our large sample size, this difference is statistically significant." (page 11 of the actual paper)

Modest. And statistically significant.

I'm actually not terribly surprised to hear this. Bret Weinstein may have been (and continue to be) a lifelong liberal, but from what I know about him, I wouldn't expect him or professors like him to discriminate against conservative students. Nor would I expect Nicolas Christakis to discriminate against conservatives, I don't know him other than by what I've seen and heard on the media, but this would seem very out of character. Yes, professors lean left, but these are still, by and large, people who devoted their lives to scholarly pursuits, and often show a very deep and principled adherence to the pursuit of truth, where data and analysis takes you. Professors have long been further to the left of mainstream society and their students, but until very recently, conservatives and republicans, in polls, have viewed universities as having a very positive effect on society. The collapse and political divide is recent. It is driven, to an extent, by a effort to associate liberal professors with the very worst attributes of "cancel" culture. Unfortunately, while I continue to feel positively about universities, I can no longer agree that this narrative is entirely fabricated, either.

My understanding is that college administrators tend to run more left wing than college professors, and they may contribute more to the campus climate than professors do - their ranks have swelled considerably in recent years. I also suspect that professors self-censor, and that students do this as well - not just conservatives, but moderates and liberals. I brought up Bret Weinstein for a reason - liberal professors giving conservative students bad grades simply to punish politics they don't like would be reprehensible, but I don't think this is the elephant in the room.

> My understanding is that college administrators tend to run more left wing than college professors, and they may contribute more to the campus climate than professors do...

We have 15% women in STEM, and we're told that it's because of residues of the oppressive patriarchy. Well, we have less than 15% conservatives among the faculty of social science departments, and that's because... ?

Well, since female is something you are, while conservative is something you think, I imagine the reason for the latter discrepancy is probably quite different from the reason for the former.

Is that what you were going to say? It looks like you forgot to conclude your point.

> I imagine

Well put.

So you think it's wrong to not hire someone because they're female, but it's fine to not hire them because they're conservative? That's where you draw your lines? And if so, what is your justification for drawing them there?

I think GP's point is that ideas are more fluid than gender. Professors can be influenced by their environment and change their mind. Most people do. By contrast you don't become male by being surrounded by men.

Also, ideas influence your life choices. That there would be few pacifists in the army doesn't prove that the army discriminates against pacifists. Maybe pacifists are just not interested by these kinds of careers.

That doesn't prove that there is no discrimination against conservatives, but it shows that there is a difference between an ideological minority and a physical one — GP's point I think.

I'm sure you're correct that ideas are more fluid than gender, and this is a major aside... but I'm not convinced ideas are quite as fluid as they seem. Have you felt life would be a lot easier if you didn't believe something was true?

I've read that some students and faculty on college campuses feel like "closet" conservatives (this certainly isn't the only place where people feel at risk for their ideas, and it certainly doesn't always go in this direction).

But I'm not sure people are 100% in control of what they believe. Sometimes, you look at the data, you consider the analysis, and you reach a conclusion that you know would harm friendships, alienate you from your community, and so forth. This often happened in religious contexts - for example, I'm sure a lot of people who were/are atheists in environments where this is a socially abhorrent idea aren't pleased with their conclusion, and keep it very close to their chest, revealing this only to very trusted and close friends and family. But this sort of belief isn't really voluntary - it's more mutable than many other traits, but it's not entirely fluid, either.

In short, I think that ideological minorities may have something in common with minorities in general - though not everything in common. For instance, it's a lot easier to hide, though being forced to listen to and agree with things (either explicitly or through your silence) actually does take a psychic toll after a while.

> So you think it's wrong to not hire someone because they're female, but it's fine to not hire them because they're conservative?

If you can show me where I said that or admit that you're putting words in my mouth, I'd be more than happy to continue this conversation. Otherwise, (I'm sorry but) I have a policy not to invest real effort in discussions with people who are either incapable of or not interested in reading what I've actually written, or are simply not arguing in good faith.

I'll say this much: I do think it's wrong to not hire somebody because they're female, and I don't think it's necessarily wrong to not hire somebody because they express some arbitrary opinion that I think is bad. For instance, if somebody told me in an interview that "women should be legally considered property, without any rights of their own," I would not hire that person.

Is that a real conservative opinion held by a substantial number of people? In some parts of the world, to a first approximation, I think the answer is yes! "Conservative" and "liberal" are quite overloaded these days, wouldn't you agree?

Anyway, just food for thought. Refer back to the first paragraph of this comment if you want to continue this.

I thought the conclusion to my first post (which you complained was missing) was quite obvious - that if we conclude, in the case of male/female imbalance, that it's because of residual sexism (prejudice/discrimination), then in the second case (liberal/conservative), it would be reasonable to conclude the same. And (tying it back to geebee's comment that I was replying to), it's probably discrimination on the part of college administrators, who lean even more liberal.

I thought that inference was pretty obvious - so obvious that I assumed you understood it when you made your comment, and that you therefore just didn't want to admit the point. The alternatives were to assume the worst of your honesty (the course I took), to assume the worst of your understanding, or to assume the worst of the clarity of my post. In charity, I should have chosen the last, but... I didn't.

At any rate, you said:

> Well, since female is something you are, while conservative is something you think, I imagine the reason for the latter discrepancy is probably quite different from the reason for the former.

The "discrepancy" we were talking about is differences in the rate of hiring. My comment was (trying to say) that, if we suspect discrimination for the male/female imbalance, shouldn't we suspect it for the liberal/conservative imbalance? Suspecting bad faith on the part of your comment, then, you certainly seemed to be saying that it was OK to not hire conservatives, but not OK to not hire women.

But, presuming good faith on your part, then what were you trying to say?

> Well, since female is something you are, while conservative is something you think, I imagine the reason for the latter discrepancy is probably quite different from the reason for the former.

So what do you think the reasons are? How does what you are vs what you think affect the situation? You complain that I didn't conclude my point, but you left a lot to the imagination also.

> I'll say this much: I do think it's wrong to not hire somebody because they're female, and I don't think it's necessarily wrong to not hire somebody because they express some arbitrary opinion that I think is bad. For instance, if somebody told me in an interview that "women should be legally considered property, without any rights of their own," I would not hire that person.

I would hope you would not hire that person! But do you think that the liberal/conservative imbalance in social science departments are because almost all the conservative applicants are deplorable?

> But, presuming good faith on your part, then what were you trying to say?

Nothing more or less than that the trait of being female is fundamentally different from the trait of being conservative, so we shouldn't necessarily expect the relative absences of these groups in certain positions (in the general sense) to have similar root causes.

Frankly I think your conclusion is too obvious to you, to the extent that you aren't considering other (fairly obvious) possible mechanisms, like the one another commenter mentioned (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20578689). I think he or she did a good job of articulating a similar point in a different way.

Would you accept as a possibility that neither of these imbalances is due primarily to "hiring" bias? Or do you have some generally applicable evidence of the "hiring" bias you're talking about in either case, i.e. identity, physical or otherwise, being used to deny applicants access to a position? I'm just saying the question is more complicated than you're making it out to be; I don't claim to have the answer. It seems that you are claiming that, and IMO you're reading between a lot of lines to cast other commenters' words in the form you're looking for.

("hiring" in quotes above because I think a lot of young women are put off STEM while they're still in school, despite the fact that they would not have had any trouble getting into the program(s))

Well, no, I wasn't trying to claim that the STEM imbalance is because of discrimination. (Or, as you mentioned, because of issues in school, which is not the fault of hiring managers.) I was trying to poke at people who claim discrimination for the STEM situation, but see no problem with the social subjects being very one-sided on the liberal/conservative axis. I was suggesting that, if they are so sure that it's discrimination in the gender case, they should consider the same explanation in the conservative case. (deogeo correctly stated my point.)

Do I think that the gender gap in STEM is because of discrimination? My guess is no, or at least largely no, but I'm not sure I know enough to be dogmatic on that subject.

Do I think that the gap in the social sciences is because of discrimination (or at least bias)? Given the liberal/conservative gap in school administrators, it seems to me that it would be almost a miracle if that wasn't at least part of the reason... but I have no concrete information.

Gender and political ideology are very different. They're the same in that they are generally social constructs but the reasons people align with one or the other and how society views them isn't the same.

I don't think AnimalMuppet is saying they're the same, but that, if we were half as motivated at finding reasons why conservatives feel discouraged from some academic fields, as we are for why women are, we'd come up with something.

Especially since the left:right ratios used to be more even [1] (please excuse the source), so it doesn't look like conservatives are intrinsically against academic careers. While as gender equality increases, STEM fields get more gender-imbalanced [2].

[1] https://www.dailywire.com/news/30222/how-politically-biased-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

I'm still confused what the point was bringing gender into it. If he's not saying they are the same they seem orthogonal to me.

I think to highlight that the standard to show that no discrimination is happening is much lower for political orientation, than for gender.

Maybe not grades. However, I've seen and heard from others of their professors routinely berating conservatives of their beliefs in front of the class.

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