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Comment by matthewdgreen | Hacker News Reader

I think the people concerned about the price of college are basing their opinions on actual contact with the educational system: they generally have kids and paying for education is a serious challenge most families face. I wonder how many of the “college is politically intolerant” opinions are based on actual student dissatisfaction, and how much of that is based on sensational news reporting? (The same news reporting that has half of America convinced that you’ll be cut down by gunfire five minutes after arriving in any American city.)

My experience from having conservative friends with kids in college is that the kids are mostly concerned with work and having a good time, and the parents are mostly concerned that their kids will develop bad thought patterns.

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> I wonder how many of the “college is politically intolerant” opinions are based on actual student dissatisfaction, and how much of that is based on sensational news reporting?

Well, here are some of the findings from a 2021 FIRE report: https://reports.collegepulse.com/hubfs/2021_SpeechRankings_R...

> More than 80% of students report self-censoring their viewpoints at their colleges at least some of the time, with 21% saying they censor themselves often.

> Two in five (40%) students say they are comfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor, down 5 percentage points from last year.

> Two-thirds of students (66%) say it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus, up 4 percentage points from last year.

You make a good point that news reporting tends to exaggerate the frequency of sensational events, which includes cancellations. But that's sort of how censorship and chilling effects usually work: make an example of someone who sticks his head up, and intimidate a hundred others.

> My experience from having conservative friends with kids in college is that the kids are mostly concerned with work and having a good time, and the parents are mostly concerned that their kids will develop bad thought patterns.

That doesn't mean the parents are wrong. "Eat your vegetables" and "Engage with your political opponents' views" are both healthy and possibly-unpleasant things, which it wouldn't be surprising if kids didn't appreciate the importance of.

> how much of that is based on sensational news reporting? (The same news reporting that has half of America convinced that you’ll be cut down by gunfire five minutes after arriving in any American city.)

You’re even less likely to die in a mass shooting event than a random criminal act. Do you think that people who make a big deal about mass shootings and say that it’s extremely important that we address the issue are also being driven by “sensational news reporting”?

https://www.policemag.com/patrol/news/15310860/half-of-surve... Half of Survey's Very Liberal Respondents Believe 1,000 or More Unarmed Black Men Killed by Police in 2019 The Washington Post database says the number was 12. The Mapping Police Violence database say the number was 27.

Absolutely, yes. Especially when you consider that the definition of mass shooting changes depending on the database being used and activists in the anti-gun lobby will shift between them when its politically convenient.

As a parent, my son and I are both mostly concerned with his ability to learn and that he has a good college experience.

Of the two of us, he's more concerned that I am about the indoctrination in some of his required courses. Then again, he's significantly more conservative than I am. And he's also the one who has to go through it.

> concerned that their kids will develop bad thought patterns.

lol. Is this for real? This is an adult in a democracy who needs to develop their own opinions about politics. This is so weird...

The idea that belonging to another mainstream political group is bad and prohibited for your child is just not ok at all.

Have you ever spoken to a partisan before? They believe the other side is legitimately a force of evil.

Read https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/mental-health-liberal-g....

In the last few years, a lot of parents have struggled with children having bad thought patterns that lead to mental health problems. Including me.

I am fine with my kids disagreeing with me politically. I encouraged them to explore the world, and encounter different ideas. I didn't realize the full extent of what they were encountering until the general mental health trends showed up in my house.

A lot of the same bad ideas that are spreading on social media, are also rampant at college campuses. My son is required to take courses that promote ideologies which both of us see as being tied to becoming suicidal and depressed.

And then people like you show up and laugh at people like me for being concerned about the ideas that our children are being indoctrinated with. Next time, do you want to be the one to pick your daughter up from a psych ward after a suicide attempt? How would you like to get a call from the FBI about the self-harm video that your child posted to TikTok?

I've had to deal with both of those things. The next time you feel tempted to laugh, put yourself in my shoes. Ask yourself what I should think of your laughter.

Agreed. The conservative persecution complex is a real thing you see all the time. The media is biased! The justice system is biased! The education system is biased! Big pharma, the UN, social media, big tech, all biased against conservative ideas.

Convincing people that these biases are real allows conservatives to prop up their own purposely-biased alternatives. Fox News and OAN to counter the liberal media. Private Christian schools, home schooling, and for-profit schools to counter the liberal education system. Truth Social and Elon Muskification of Twitter to counter liberal big tech.

There are more than 2 sides here.

Read https://www.thefp.com/p/you-are-the-last-line-of-defense for a perspective from a liberal lesbian Jew who is concerned about censorship and current progressive ideologies. She opposes most of the alternatives that you criticize.

Admitted. That speech was given to a conservative audience. But she remains firmly liberal in the same sense that it was generally understood back when Bill Clinton was President.

Frankly, I can’t deal with the likes of Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Jordan Peterson, etc, who’ve basically cashed in on their “I’m a progressive, bro!” creds to grift conservatives by telling them things they want to hear. They’ve made very successful careers out of both sidesing everything under the sun.

There’s a reason Weiss was invited to talk at a Federalist Society event here. And it’s not because the Federalist Society is open minded to progressive ideas.

I read that as you're so firmly into an us vs them mindset that you slot everyone into one of those buckets. And so anyone with a dissenting opinion becomes either an evil conservative, or a stooge of the evil conservatives.

What does a dissenting opinion look like? We've literally gotten to the point where MLK Jr's "I have a dream" speech would have gotten him kicked off of campuses for being racist. No seriously, https://pacificlegal.org/martin-luther-king-jr-would-have-fa... discusses a legal case which makes that clear.

For my part, I'll gladly stand with MLK. These days, that means I can no longer be a Democrat. I'm obviously not a Republican either, which leaves me as an Independent.

As I said, there really are more than 2 sides here.

Well, as a moderate MLK fan, let me share one of my favorite MLK quotes with you :)

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

Hold that thought, and consider the following.

Since the 1980s, the black-white income gap has been rising. Two contributing causes are racially biased law enforcement outcomes (particularly from the escalation of the drug war), and the abandonment of school bussing.

If you look at https://www.sentencingproject.org/research/us-criminal-justi..., you'll find that progressive states like California are generally worse than conservative states like Alabama.

When I've talked with progressives about the importance of fixing inequities in education, I've generally received excuses about how expensive and unaffordable that is. Yes, it is expensive. But because we choose not to deal with it, the ones who bear the real cost are the blacks who can least afford it. See https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/half-of-black-students-c... for more.

Democratic policies have focused on things like affirmative action, and equity in hiring.

I see affirmative action as virtue signaling tokenism. It is far cheaper to admit a few more blacks to universities than to fix schools.

I see equity in hiring as sheer cynicism. We have chosen to not fix our schools, but we can force companies to treat blacks that we failed to educate the same as whites who did learn. And then we can punish companies again for failing to promote underqualified blacks as fast as qualified whites. If we as a state taught the blacks, and offered them support services for the gaps that we left, then it would make sense to penalize companies for any difference in outcomes. I'd be happy with that outcome. But when it is the state that failed, we are shooting the messenger to penalize companies who notice that the emperor has no clothes!

The state should find ways to fix its own failures. If it did, perhaps it would realize that it's cheaper in the long run to not fail in the first place!

I could go on. For example San Francisco is currently facing the results of the BLM slogan, "Defund the police!" BLM protesters were happy to amplify any black who was willing to repeat that message. But surveys of blacks found that most DIDN'T want the police defunded! I've heard interviews from blacks who tried to say that. They reported that they were shouted down by whites.

Apparently, in the name of recognizing that black lives matter, we're supposed to only listen to blacks who say things that whites approve of?

Now bring that thought I told you to hold back, and re-read. Who sounds more like they have the shallow understanding of MLK's white moderates? Me, or progressives?

Yep there's a baffling disconnect between widespread reporting on college "intolerance" and the reality. "Coddling of the American Mind" has a lot of mindshare but cites stupendously low numbers of "attempted disinvitations" as evidence of widespread left wing intolerance among students while moving the discussion right past actual nazi groups flyering Evergreen College and sending death threats to students.

My alma mater is the University of Virginia. A wealthy conservative was so incensed by a sign saying "Fuck UVA" on a lawn dorm room that he went to campus to physically tear it down. This man was later appointed to the university Board of Visitors by the governor.

My wife is a professor at a different university. There are groups of trained reactionary students who very carefully harass some of her colleagues and friends for being trans, for teaching african american history, and for teaching climate science in ways that ride right up against the edge of legal protection. 18 year olds don't know how to do this without help.

If universities are commie monocultures, then why would these things be happening? And surely if universities were commie monocultures, we'd see the boogeyman departments like history and gender studies getting all the funding they want when what I actually see is these departments being completely unable to hire and all of the growth going to computer science programs.

I think perhaps the grandparent commentator MUST be referencing the right-wing founding of alternative universities due to their anger that their worldview doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Surely they aren't supporting the notion that universities are commie monocultures.

I don't think that's true. The quote says "Republicans registered concern about politics in higher education" and then the post says "I think both parties are right" and then describes "a campaign of political and social indoctrination, and censorship of contrarian views" in parallel construction to the left concern that the "cost of a university education has skyrocketed."

This very clearly talking about conservatives being concerned about left wing political indoctrination on campus. I think that this is blown wildly out of proportion.

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