Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire | Hacker News Reader

Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

nytimes.com

21 pointscharzom39 comments

As a non-leftist who moves in academic circles, I have to say it's still very difficult. Even in the hard sciences, I find that every social gathering I go to winds up turning into a classic left-wing whine-about-everything, and I have to bite my tongue. More than once I've wanted to get out of academia, just because the lack of intellectual diversity was getting too much for me. And that's leaving aside the direct hostility which I have encountered when I've actually made my views known (which I've avoided doing at the couple of places I've worked most recently).

Of course, it's a vicious circle. If I'm thinking of leaving due to the hostile environment, then surely other non-leftist academics are actually leaving, keeping the environment hostile.

As is usually the case in a New York Times "let's collect a couple of anecdotes and extrapolate a huge trend" articles, the data doesn't back up the conclusions.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html

I think that activism not political is the keyword. As a current college student, within most of the conversations that I have had with other students, they seem to be heavily opinionated and "passionate" about politics and their ideals but lack any real knowledge over the topics or positions they discuss. In a half hour drunken conversation, you could turn a "hardcore democrat" into someone who believes they are actually more libertarian leaning (which I do believe most inherently gravitate towards when questioned over their positions).

Nowadays (even thought I have no clue what it was like in the past), the youth support politics as a fashion statement rather than a representation of their ideals. They seem to fall in line with the parties and mindlessly support the policy that they believe they should. Their knowledge of politics only goes to the extent of what there five minute glance on the news says it should be, which is quite saddening. I am not stereotyping, but the trend I see most is that individuals fall in line with what ever there social groups expected political stance would be, the "frat-boy" types all tend to support republicans because they support the troops and are against gay marriage, the "socially conscious intellectual" student strongly supports democratic principals (or what ever the author of the book they are reading at the time supports) and so on and so forth. Politics for many at the college level seems to just be an extension of their fashion or lifestyle, or simply what they think they should support because of the image they portray.

The truth is very few actually give a shit and will continue to not care until there cushy lifestyle is taken away or they are oppressed in some way or another. Most likely at that point it will be too late. I know I come off as a cynic but sometimes it is just too easy in this world.

I wish people included intellectual diversity in their quest for universal diversity on college campuses. There is a good movie about this: http://indoctrinate-u.com

It's from the guy behind Brain Terminal, whose videos are hilarious: http://brain-terminal.com/posts/category/bt-video/

Thank god engineering departments exist. If they didn't, I'd question the need for most people to go to college. $200K to earn $25K/yr at a non-profit - doing work you could have done in high school.

I went to a tour of Stanford recently. The tour guide mentioned the increases in tuition. I asked what they went to. He didn't know. I know most research labs are funded by a combination of government grants and undergrad tuition. What about the rest?

I think the problem is you have liberals but not actual conservatives. The conservatives we currently have, care more about gay marriage than keeping the government small and having a balanced budget.

An overgeneralization, of course. It's just that those are the ones you hear most about in the media. One could speculate that left-wing media sources are more comfortable portraying the crazy conservatives than the sensible ones (just as Fox News is more comfortable portraying the crazy leftists than the sensible ones).

So, just to be clear: you're saying that anyone who cares more about gay marriage than the government's budget is crazy?

I don't think I'm willing to be trapped into an "anyone who thinks X is crazy" kind of statement.

Ok, but the point is, if you're willing to call people "crazy" because of their political opinions, I doubt that you're as committed to intellectual diversity as you claim to be.

You have to understand where we're coming from on this. The present-day law on gay marriage was changed due to the wording of the original law, written in a time when gay marriage wasn't even being considered, which happened to say something like "two persons" rather than "a man and a woman".

The Republic will not fall because Adam marries Steve. What consenting adults get up to on private property is no-one's business but their own, certainly not the Governments. But it is under threat when law is made through legal chicanery rather than the democratic process. That is why Conservatives are up in arms about gay marriage.

Do you have any data to support that claim? The conservatives I know oppose gay marriage because they consider it immoral, not because of some abstract stuff about the democratic process.

Well, my "data" is the same as yours, people I know (including myself).

what's even worse is people thinking current liberalism and conservatism represents the full range of political thought. the democratic-republicans used to be one party, and this party would have strongly opposed the direction of current politics. In Essence, both modern parties have turned into what used to be called federalists.

The problem is that people who call themselves "moderates" and people who call themselves "liberals" tend to have the exact same positions, and people don't realize that.

Balance is a good thing. Challenging beliefs is a good thing. Variety in political, social, economic, religious, and personal beliefs is a great thing.

This article completely misses the point. Instead of citing outlying cases, maybe it should have dealt with the elephant in the living room:

Vietnam

College students in the 60's weren't "playing politics". They were protesting an illegal, immoral, and unwinnable war. Hell, half the men on campus were there so they wouldn't have to go to Vietnam.

I imagine today's generation of professors would feel a little differently if TV news showed maimed soldiers in Iraq every night, their classes were full of young men who didn't want to be drafted, and their campuses were occupied by armed National Guardsmen who shot unarmed students.

[Prediction: This will be voted up by those who actually experienced the absurdity of the 60's and voted down by those who can't imagine it could have been that bad. Since the average age in this community is probably below 40, this post will end up negative.]

Professors have always been more liberal and left-leaning than the general population. This goes back further than a hundred years in my reckoning. For instance in the 20s and 30s there was a large percentage of academics who thought communism was the best choice for western civilization.

Vietnam has little to do with it.

Interesting (to me) is the tendency for left-leaning progressives to continue to live and fight battles from the past. The recent Iraq war has caused some to try to replay Vietnam. The coming nomination of Obama is very JFK-ish. We're having a very 60-ish discussion on how man is immoral in his treatment of the environment. I always thought the conservatives were the ones who lived in the past, but I think that has changed over the last five years or so.

My opinion only. Do not operate heavy machinery after reading this comment.

Vietnam affected everything in the 60's. The only popular media (TV news) was broadcast from there every night. It changed popular culture, economics, and politics. And it spilled over onto college campuses, the only refuge for young men 18 to 21 who didn't want to go to Vietnam or Canada. This was the environment that produced today's retiring generation of professors cited by OP, which never even mentioned Vietnam.

Vietnam and Iraq have little in common stateside by design. Today's political leaders weren't about to make the same mistake twice. So no TV news and no draft. Amazing how well it's worked, huh?

I don't think it's so much a left-progressive thing as a baby boomer thing. They are about to retire, and want to relive their glory days.

As I recall, it was primarily baby boomers describing Iraq as "another Vietnam!!!" 2 weeks into the invasion. "We haven't won yet? It's a quagmire!"

Oddly, when comparing Obama to JFK, they never seem to remember that JFK stole an election, fought one war incompetently and started another one that turned into a quagmire ("the original Vietnam!!!"). JFK does compare reasonably well to a contemporary politician, but not Obama...

> This goes back further than a hundred years in my reckoning.

Galileo apparently said that some of his best years were those at the University of Padova:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Padua#History

... which, as the article says, had more freedom and less influence from the Catholic church.

However: this strikes me as not really being hacker news.

(PS, check out this guy, who came out of Padova:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin )

Are you really denying that your view on Vietname is a political position, on the basis that you think you're right really strongly?

Not at all. I'm just questioning the veracity of an article from a supposedly credible source that makes conclusions based upon outlying cases while completely ignoring the central issue.

I offer no personal view of Vietnam. I'm just saying that it was the central issue affecting the breeding ground of the subjects of the article.

You say "I offer no personal view of Vietnam." but you said it was an "illegal, immoral, and unwinnable war"

Are you really unaware that people disagree on all 3 of those points? They are political positions.

That was the argument of the protesters, not mine. Sorry. If only I could write prose as well as I could code. :-)

Ah, well all you need is a "what they saw as".

And for the most part, I don't think any of those other points was nearly as important as the draft. It's one thing to think that a current war is a bad idea, it's quite another to know that you might be forced to go and fight in it.

If that was their argument, and it's a political argument, then they were "playing politics". That's all.

In restrospect, it's easy for us to sit on our butts and call it "playing politics". But for many of them, it was literally a matter of life or death. Going to college or fleeing to Canada were their only options (unless you shot your toe off). Makes red states/blue states seem kinda lame, huh?

If you don't want to be a soldier, that isn't playing politics. But as you said, that wasn't the position of most protestors.

If you say the war is immoral, illegal, or unwinnable, that is getting involved politics.

I agree. Iraq is no Vietnam. Iraq doesn't affect anyone in the US except for the volunteer military made up of mostly people who are more than happy to be there, so the harsh reality is that no one cares.

I know if you asked the students at my campus if America was at war, they would probably give you a funny look before continuing on to their frat party. This doesn't mean they are stupid or apathetic to politics in general, but only that nothing is threatening their way of life right now.

People participate in politics for selfish reasons. I would say it's a good thing that college students aren't erupting into protests every day. That means they must be content and happy, right?

Iraq doesn't affect anyone in the US except for the volunteer military made up of mostly people who are more than happy to be there,..

Because there's nothing quite like 2 back to back extended tours in third-world hell while they foreclose on your house back home and kick your wife and 3 year old out on the street to put a smile on your face and a song in your heart. Sheesh.

Emphasis on mostly. I'm just speaking from my personal experience with friends who are marines that describe the Battle of Fallujah as the best video game ever. Don't get me wrong, I respect those who serve in the military. I could never do what you do.

Human beings are political creatures. So politics suffuses everything. Unfortunately, I've met many people who seem to believe that politics is the foundation to everything. If it weren't widely known and ridiculed, I sometimes wonder if these people think that the Indiana state legislature attempt to make Pi = 3 would've worked!

I think the atmosphere of political contention on campuses sometimes exacerbates this.

Agree with Mystalic. I'm probably more conservative than liberal, but I want people to HAVE choices and be able to think critically, even if they make different choices than I do. This is saddening news.

I don't understand. The article seems to be about faculty becoming more diverse in outlook as older professors retire, unless I am misunderstanding something?

From the article: "The authors are not talking about a political realignment. Democrats continue to overwhelmingly outnumber Republicans among faculty, young and old."

I think they are just describing the younger faculty being less activist about their political views. Take a look at the second graph they provide. There is a small increase in conservatives in the social sciences (probably due to increases in the percentage of economists), but little else to support the claim that faculties are becoming more diverse.

Even that, I'll be very skeptical of. At every university I've been to, self identified "liberals" are socialist and self identified "moderates" are merely left wing democrats.

"A seminar on great books at Princeton jointly taught by two philosophers, the left-wing Cornel West and the right-wing Robert P. George."

I'd like to hear that.

Perhaps, but I'd prefer a seminar on great books taught my one really good professor who knew how to keep his own political views from tainting his views on literature.

one really good professor who knew how to keep his own political views from tainting his views

You mean like a math or science professor?

Funnily enough, I was reading Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare last night, and thinking how great it was to have literature explained by a man with a clear scientific mind instead of a mushy literary one.

Unfortunately, the Asimovs of this world are few and far between.

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