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Comment by throwaway1959 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway1959

At the end of the article, the author seem to have listed every diversity criteria, except the diversity of thought. With Democrat to Republican ratio of professors in the leading US Universities being 11.5 to 1 [1], there is a growing danger that Stanford will go the way other universities have gone: lowering academic standards, admitting students based in their identity affiliations (and of course rich parents who could skirt the system), lowering faculty standards in technical departments, etc... The Stanford startups will move towards social engineering, disguised as impact investing. Move towards normalizing the discrimination against Asian and Indian male students and entrepreneurs.

[1] https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-i...

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Are you suggesting that Stanford needs to lower its standards to create reserved spaces for Republicans?

Of course not. I am not actually sure how to solve this problem. I think a good start would be to move back towards encouraging freedom of speech on campus and dialog between people with different opinions.

If one of those sides specializes in ignoring verifiable facts, and is of the "opinion" that entire groups of people shouldn't exist, I'm not sure there's much to be gained by any sort of "dialog".

Are you suggesting that this is fair characterisation of Republicans in a general sense? I'm not sure that all Republicans would agree with this. And I definitely consider myself on the liberal side of the political spectrum.

I can empathise that it's difficult to have a dialog with some individuals who are only interested in convincing you of the correctness of their world view and not understanding others, but inflamatory rhetoric like this doesn't help.

61% of republicans believe the election was stolen and 53% believe Trump is the true president. That is an untenable detachment from facts and reality from a major political party.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/news/pol...

If I mention a sea lion do you understand what I'm talking about?

The only real obstacle to “freedom of speech on campus” is the college Republicans agitating to get an AP writer fired based on her involvement with SJP as an undergrad.

I don't see why anyone should get special treatment, but the OP is suggesting that they do whatever they do for other groups to create reserved spaces for Republicans. There's this whole explanation about how it's not technically lowering-of-standards but I don't remember the details. I think it has something to do with only using their demographic to change your decision if they are equally as promising as someone else with a different demographic.

I think that does make sense.

if reserving slots for republicans == lower standards

to you... ...you're a little prejudicial and ignorant

Touché

They already did that, it's called the Hoover Institution.

Why is diversity of thought limited to Democrats and Republicans, two perspectives that are actually quite close when it comes to economics - do you want a mixed-market economy that tilts slightly more in the direction of free market capitalism or not?

There's just not much daylight between Democrat and Republican economic professors compared to say a Marxian Economist vs Chicago School for example. I think the handwringing over D/R splits really boils down to narcissism of small differences.

I think it works like this: https://seuss.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sneetches

And if the mention of Seuss dredges up culture war nonsense, that's only fitting.

Yeah, because we know republicans are definitely some sort of meritocratic organisation.

Unfortunately, the cult of "meritocracy" is a bipartisan issue (though somewhat slanted towards the Democrats now because of cultural realignment over the last decade).

In my opinion, "meritocracy", where "meritocracy" is defined by a narrow scope of skills the dream-hoarder class possesses and the rest don't know about, is the problem.

Stanford's culture may be liberal. But they do support conservative leaders. The Hoover Institute is at Stanford, there isn't really a liberal equivalent at that university. It's members have worked in both Bush administrations, and the Trump administration. It's currently directed by Condoleezza Rice.

The liberal equivalent of the Hoover Institute is the rest of Stanford. Any organization that is not explicitly right wing becomes left wing over time.

are you suggesting that it is the large slant "left leaning" professors that will cause such issues, or that there is a slant at all?

The Republican Party has abandoned data and evidence driven policy decisions in favor of ideology. The last Republican Party convention had no official policy platform outside of “whatever Trump wants today.” Why would you expect Professors to be excited to join a party that is a cult of personality that incessantly demonizes the very institutions they lead?

The study I cite was published in Sep 2016, so it predates Trump.

The abandoning of evidence and data happened long before Trump. Denying evolution, denying climate change, promoting abstinence only education, etc. Look to Liberty University if you want to see what a Republican institute of “higher learning” looks like.

Have you ever tried showing a Democrat a twin study?

Not sure what you are getting at.

White supremacists like to claim that twin studies prove that black people are less intelligent due to genetics. Apparently Sam seems to think that Democrats refusing to accept the shoddy science behind twin studies (the conclusions of which are often used in service of racist meta-studies) somehow implies that they are also "anti-science". Probably best to just ignore the comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intell...

Wow

Yup. "Scientific" racism has a long history. Some of the various Confederate declarations of secession claim natural inferiority as a cause for slaveholding.

Twin studies are mostly used to show that traits are heritable at an individual level.

Edit: It strikes me that the strawman argument you've constructed is a perfect example of left-wing science denial. The endemic use of the technique in fields like psychology, criminology, biology, is something you prefer to ignore.

Can you link to a specific study that you claim is left wing science denial?

"Heritable" doesn't mean "genetic" or "inherent to a person".

does "genetic" mean "inherent to the person"?

I wouldn't agree with that either, but most people would, so might as well stick it in there.

Let's say it's part of the causal chain, but also your cells don't even have the same genome, it mutates over time, women integrate cells from their children, so it gets messy.

It's not clear to me why this is getting downvoted. This strikes me as a pretty clear description. At this point major Republican figures are getting censured and demoted for saying that lies aren't true. Look at surveys of belief around the election. (Or previously, Republican beliefs on whether Obama is an American citizen.)

If universities are about anything at all, it's about pursuit of truth. At different points in time and space, different political sides have been the one more eager to ban inconvenient truths. Lysenkoism comes to mind, for example, or the Great Leap Forward. But here and now, it's Republicans who have as a group more or less abandoned factual inquiry altogether. And you don't have to believe me on this. You can read prominent dynastic Republican Liz Cheney: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/11/liz-cheney-vows-to-keep-figh...

Don't fool yourself into believing that conservatives at Stanford value diversity of thought. The college republicans have made plenty of efforts to get people they don't like fired. They've also harassed a number of my friends.

You identified the problem, but not the solution. The Hoover institution, of course, is basically a safe-space for right-wing ideologues in America now.

The problem is Stanford and similarly exclusive institutions. You get more diversity of thought out of greater diversities of backgrounds, like at SJSU, CSULA, Ohio State, NC A&T, and Virginia Commonwealth University (to name a handful of non-elite schools).

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