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Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

The push to mandate an "ideological balance" is indeed a wrong move; allowing the state to determine such matters always leads to rot, examples abound.

It sadly does not mean that universities are laser-focused on seeking truth, and are free from ideological biases, often very obvious. Regarding truth, one of the leading theories in humanities is that of Michel Foucault, which states that there cannot be any objective truth, and what is considered true is determined by power structures.

I'm glad to see though that the four universities are making a stand, and value independence above whatever "federal benefits" the administration may offer. It's sad that these are only 4 out of 9.

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> are free from ideological biases,

you're missing the point.

Universities are free to have their own ideological biases. Some will certainly be biased in one direction. Others in another. Students aren't forced to go to a given university -- there any many to choose from.

But when the gov forces its ideological biases on Universities, then it begins to remove choice for students. It might start with only a dozen, but if successful, it will push on others, until it becomes the de-facto requirement to get government funding.

That is totalitarianism.

Having a bias and pursuing truth can interfere with each other, that was my point.

University research is conducted in pursuit of knowledge not truth. While there are overlaps, there is a distinction. The pursuit of knowledge allows us to question, consider, discuss, analyze, critique, etc, even if (and especially when) we are unsure of the truth or if there isn’t a “truth”to be attained. The pursuit of knowledge also allows us to study why and how something is false.

None of the other universities have agreed yet.

What do you mean by laser focused? Do you have specific policies to address this? If not then this is a natural part of the unfocused nature of knowledge work, and the natural weakness of human organizations.

University research and knowledge work in general is backtracking search, not gradient descent in a friendly loss landscape.

> What do you mean by laser focused?

I mean that universities, like any large organizations, are very not free from internal politics and peer pressure. Also, like any large group of people, they are subject to irrational but powerful phenomena like the intellectual fashion, or religious zeal (which does not take an established religion). These all are impediments on the way of truth-seeking, but are inevitable due to human nature.

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