Liberal bias.

[Augustus]

I haven't been able to work out whether you actually recognize such a distinction, no. Your language does not suggest it, and neither does your sarcastic arrogance on display here, nor the article you cited in support of your argument, which does not make such a distinction either.

In this discussion, its sole use so far has been as a rhetorical cudgel by conservatives fearful of their influence on academia and the education system, so forgive me if I'm not overly hopeful of its power as a descriptive term in a serious analysis of the political situation at modern universities.

Given that I'm not remotely a "conservative", and ceratinly not using it as a "rhetorical cudgel" seems you've made another mistaken assumption that impacts your judgement.

But see, you used the word "Conservative" and I wasn't suddenly unable to comprehend what you were talking about despite it being another imprecise, umbrella term used for brevity rather than accuracy.

I didn't assume your use of it meant you were an idiot who lacks rudimentary understanding of political terminology.

I could even understand your use of the word "leftist", despite its common usage being to refer to the more socialist or radical left, rather than anything "left of centre".

It's not really that hard...

What about Marxist engineers, Marxist biologists, Marxist mathematicians?

Do you believe maths is equally as prone to ideological bias as sociology, history or economics?

What a delightful rhetoric sleight of hand, by you to so deftly equate a university reflecting society with "a just society", and in equal breath to equate both with a university stacked with conservatives.

No, it was an example of an aspirational target.

And as I'm not a conservative and have specifically and repeatedly argued that viewpoint diversity is a good thing, why would I want to see a university stacked with conservatives?

Is it now? Your source seemed to be of the opposite view - that having any leftists of any ideological persuasion was to invite "lynch mobs" and "inquisitions" against poor beleaguered conservatives. They did not distinguish between liberal centrists, social democrats, environmentalists, Marxists or Anarchists in their paper in this manner, or recognize a distinction in any form.

Remember, in a country whose history is riddled with lynch mobs against communists and people of color, it's the conservatives who have to fear the lynch mobs!

As I said earlier, you seem to be inventing another imaginary position to argue against.

If you think it is simply a ridiculous political screed, you can write a letter of complaint to the peer-reviewed journal that published their findings.

A Model of Political Bias in Social Science Research
https://sites.rutgers.edu/lee-jussi...Political-Bias-in-Social-Science-Research.pdf

Truly conservative universities, purged of all those inconceivable liberal thoughts, of those fantasies that women or POC might ever face discrimination in society, of the folly that anything but a total free market (properly managed by men of industry and education, of course) could ever be an expression of freedom - universities, free of leftist thought, are the only proper model of justice - are they not, in your belief?

It is ironic that you are trying to equate conservative thought with the majority of society, when the conservatives who have bewhining their waning influence over academia come from the most privileged backgrounds, and would have to fear the least financial hardships outside their chosen profession.

If you hadn't made the completely incorrect assumption that I am a "conservative", you wouldn't have to invent these imaginary positions you think I'm arguing for and we could have had a more productive discussion.

When I said "viewpoint diversity is good", I meant "viewpoint diversity is good", not "I hope US style conservatives take over the world to the detriment of all"

As opposed to the article of faith that the free market will naturally sort conservative academicians at the top of the academic food chain - unless counteracted by neferious leftist influence, which we can recognize from the fact that leftists are successful in academia!

"And for my next trick, I'll invent yet another opinion out of thin air and assume you believe it"

If you ever bothered to read what I write instead of putting words in my mouth and calling it a day, you wouldn't have to rely solely on your personal confidence when judging my ability to engage with the arguments you present.

I do read your words, that's how I notice you make a lot of incorrect and bad faith assumptions about people

Discussion is getting very boring now, let's call it a day.

 

[Stevicus]

Well, I strongly disagree with that sentiment, and even the foundational premise that there is such a thing as an objective measure of "smartness", intelligence, or whatnot.

I agree, although I've noticed more and more public discourse (and not just over the internet) seems to carry a more strident tone of "I'm smarter than you." There's far less general discussion over philosophies, ideologies, or values, while there's been a greater tendency to make arguments personal.

As for being better educated, I think that depends a lot on what we're looking at. There is no lack of conservatives in elite universities, but I would wager that the people going into a career in academia or the educational system in general tend to skew towards liberalism, if only for the simple fact that people in government jobs would tend to value what conservatives often decry as "big government" as their livelihood depends on it.

It might also depend on the area of study or discipline one is in. Back when I was in college many eons ago, I noticed different trends in different departments. Those in the political science department and the economics department had a reputation for being far-right Ronnie Reagan robots. In fact, I think there was a substantial majority of Reagan supporters on my campus. There were quite a few military and ROTC as well. Of course, I imagine it's changed quite a bit since those years.

I don't consider "better" educated people of more moral worth than less educated ones, by the way, in case that has not been apparent in my posts so far.

I agree, although in addition to intellectual superiority, there are those who claim or imply a degree of moral superiority as well.

 

[Augustus]

I agree, although in addition to intellectual superiority, there are those who claim or imply a degree of moral superiority as well.

This is the thing I see in America, it exists in other places, but seems of an order of magnitude higher in the US likely due to the fact it has long been a more religious place than other Western nations.

For many people, to support 'the other side' is not simply a relatively minor disagreement between people who agree on most things but have different preferences on how to achieve them. It makes 'the other' a genuinely bad person, or even evil.

It is essentially a theological dispute rather than a political one, and the Progressive side is no less 'religious' than the Conservative Christian side.

(I'm not even sure they are much less Protestant than the conservatives, being from the long tradition of evangelical moral crusaders that spans puritanism, abolitionism, missionary zeal, temperance, the civil rights movement, etc.)

t might also depend on the area of study or discipline one is in. Back when I was in college many eons ago, I noticed different trends in different departments. Those in the political science department and the economics department had a reputation for being far-right Ronnie Reagan robots. In fact, I think there was a substantial majority of Reagan supporters on my campus. There were quite a few military and ROTC as well. Of course, I imagine it's changed quite a bit since those years.

If you are interested:

...Gross and Simmons did find conservative-faculty concentrations in business (24.5 percent) and health sciences (20.5 percent), these numbers actually reflect two of the only areas of the academy where some semblance of ideological parity existed, at least as of 2006. For comparison, 21.3 percent of business faculty members and 20.5 percent of health-science faculty members identified as liberal in the same survey, with the remainder consisting of moderates.

Most other disciplines skewed heavily in a liberal direction. Tellingly, liberal views also comprise a clear and sizable majority within the social sciences (58.2 percent) and humanities (52.2 percent), with moderates trailing far behind and conservatives failing to even break out of the single digits. Gross and Simmons’s findings also revealed a sizable subset of far-left ideologies in these same fields. Twenty-four percent of social scientists identified themselves as political radicals, and 17.6 percent identified with the Marxist label, even though far-left identifications had much smaller representations in business and the STEM disciplines.

Opinion | Tenured Radicals Are Real

 

[Rival]

This is the thing I see in America, it exists in other places, but seems of an order of magnitude higher in the US likely due to the fact it has long been a more religious place than other Western nations.

For many people, to support 'the other side' is not simply a relatively minor disagreement between people who agree on most things but have different preferences on how to achieve them. It makes 'the other' a genuinely bad person, or even evil.

It is essentially a theological dispute rather than a political one, and the Progressive side is no less 'religious' than the Conservative Christian side.

(I'm not even sure they are much less Protestant than the conservatives, being from the long tradition of evangelical moral crusaders that spans puritanism, abolitionism, missionary zeal, temperance, the civil rights movement, etc.)



If you are interested:

View attachment 50418
...Gross and Simmons did find conservative-faculty concentrations in business (24.5 percent) and health sciences (20.5 percent), these numbers actually reflect two of the only areas of the academy where some semblance of ideological parity existed, at least as of 2006. For comparison, 21.3 percent of business faculty members and 20.5 percent of health-science faculty members identified as liberal in the same survey, with the remainder consisting of moderates.

Most other disciplines skewed heavily in a liberal direction. Tellingly, liberal views also comprise a clear and sizable majority within the social sciences (58.2 percent) and humanities (52.2 percent), with moderates trailing far behind and conservatives failing to even break out of the single digits. Gross and Simmons’s findings also revealed a sizable subset of far-left ideologies in these same fields. Twenty-four percent of social scientists identified themselves as political radicals, and 17.6 percent identified with the Marxist label, even though far-left identifications had much smaller representations in business and the STEM disciplines.

Opinion | Tenured Radicals Are Real

What happened around 2005 that sees this conservative drop, I wonder.

 

[Stevicus]

This is the thing I see in America, it exists in other places, but seems of an order of magnitude higher in the US likely due to the fact it has long been a more religious place than other Western nations.

For many people, to support 'the other side' is not simply a relatively minor disagreement between people who agree on most things but have different preferences on how to achieve them. It makes 'the other' a genuinely bad person, or even evil.

It is essentially a theological dispute rather than a political one, and the Progressive side is no less 'religious' than the Conservative Christian side.

(I'm not even sure they are much less Protestant than the conservatives, being from the long tradition of evangelical moral crusaders that spans puritanism, abolitionism, missionary zeal, temperance, the civil rights movement, etc.)

I've observed similar trends. In fact, for the most part, much of the public dialogue and political rhetoric centers more on perceived moral differences than any genuine disagreement over facts (or interpretations of the facts).

For example, the debate over immigration and border issues is not really an intellectual or scientific disagreement. It's a debate over philosophy and values. Same with matters of foreign policy or questions of whether we should use military force in a given crisis. In fact, I can't think of any major political or social issue which wouldn't fall into that category.

Even issues which might appear on the surface to be more scientifically rooted (such as evolution vs. creationism), I don't perceive the issue to be really about science anyway. It might appear that way, but I think there's probably some more deeper philosophical issues in play, underneath the surface.

If you are interested:

View attachment 50418
...Gross and Simmons did find conservative-faculty concentrations in business (24.5 percent) and health sciences (20.5 percent), these numbers actually reflect two of the only areas of the academy where some semblance of ideological parity existed, at least as of 2006. For comparison, 21.3 percent of business faculty members and 20.5 percent of health-science faculty members identified as liberal in the same survey, with the remainder consisting of moderates.

Most other disciplines skewed heavily in a liberal direction. Tellingly, liberal views also comprise a clear and sizable majority within the social sciences (58.2 percent) and humanities (52.2 percent), with moderates trailing far behind and conservatives failing to even break out of the single digits. Gross and Simmons’s findings also revealed a sizable subset of far-left ideologies in these same fields. Twenty-four percent of social scientists identified themselves as political radicals, and 17.6 percent identified with the Marxist label, even though far-left identifications had much smaller representations in business and the STEM disciplines.

Opinion | Tenured Radicals Are Real

This chart would indicate that, when I was in school (early to mid 1980s), there was a slow rise in conservatism, followed by a sharp drop. It appears that conservatives reached the highest percentage around 1984, when Reagan pulled off the biggest landslide in US electoral history. Back in those days, Reagan was the Teflon President and conservatives could seemingly do no wrong.

But liberals also shifted to some degree. The success of the GOP in selling conservative Reaganomics, along with the resurgence of anti-communist militarism, seemed to instill in liberals the belief that they couldn't win on those fronts, so they chose a different tack. The peace movement was dead. Even those who had a Marxian bent were ostensibly out of sorts due to a rapidly changing world, where China was turning capitalist and the Soviet Union collapsed entirely (and later turned capitalist).

The liberal ideal of "world peace" was seen as naïve and fundamentally weak, which conservatives believed would embolden America's enemies. Liberals somehow felt the need to answer this, which was encapsulated in the famous video of (then presidential candidate) Michael Dukakis riding in a tank. That was probably the low point for liberalism in America, and I'm not sure they ever really recovered from that.

On domestic matters, liberals were also considered too soft on crime. During the '88 campaign, Bush criticized Dukakis for favoring furlough programs for convicted criminals, with the famous Willie Horton ad which many people today decry as racist. But at the time, the U.S. was going through a major crime wave, with gangs and stories of drive by shootings almost daily. It dominated the culture, so people were pushing for neighborhood watch programs, more police, and tougher laws to put violent criminals in prison and keep them there.

People were growing tired of hearing of liberal notions of "rehabilitation" and ideas that "crime is a symptom of a deeper problem." They didn't want to hear that stuff, as it had already been said for 20-30 years, yet the streets weren't safe and crime was running rampant. It was these kinds of conditions when society became more amenable to giving the police greater powers and enjoining them to become more aggressive in the pursuit of criminals.

Liberals had to shift their focus for the sake of political expediency, since some of their core ideals were falling out of fashion.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Do you believe maths is equally as prone to ideological bias as sociology, history or economics?

If you don't think that engineering isn't values-driven with lots of opportunity for bias to affect one's work, then I trust that you are not an engineer.

 

[Augustus]

If you don't think that engineering isn't values-driven with lots of opportunity for bias to affect one's work, then I trust that you are not an engineer.

All disciplines are values driven to some degree in terms of ethics, methods, priorities, etc. but how much predictive value would it have to know someone was a 'Marxist electrical engineer'? They would really be an electrical engineer who is also a Marxist, not a 'Marxist electrical engineer'.

Marxist historiography or Marxist economics are schools of thought and methodological approaches to the disciplines in question.

Would you agree that if someone is a Marxist historian or a Marxist economist, this would tell you far more about their approach to their discipline than knowing someone was a Marxist engineer would?

 

[Stevicus]

All disciplines are values driven to some degree in terms of ethics, methods, priorities, etc. but how much predictive value would it have to know someone was a 'Marxist electrical engineer'? They would really be an electrical engineer who is also a Marxist, not a 'Marxist electrical engineer'.

Marxist historiography or Marxist economics are schools of thought and methodological approaches to the disciplines in question.

Would you agree that if someone is a Marxist historian or a Marxist economist, this would tell you far more about their approach to their discipline than knowing someone was a Marxist engineer would?

A Marxist electrical engineer would believe in "power to the people." (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

 

[Augustus]

What happened around 2005 that sees this conservative drop, I wonder.

Not sure. Probably a number of things.

Some guesses:

The internet and resulting political polarisation?
Ideological shift of the political parties?
Generational shift?
Shift to people who grew up post-Cold War?
Universities increasingly exploiting cheap grad student labour for teaching making the profession less attractive for people who care about financial rewards?

 

[Kooky]

What happened around 2005 that sees this conservative drop, I wonder.

Neferious leftist machinations, no doubt.

 

[Kooky]

If you are interested:

View attachment 50418
...Gross and Simmons did find conservative-faculty concentrations in business (24.5 percent) and health sciences (20.5 percent), these numbers actually reflect two of the only areas of the academy where some semblance of ideological parity existed, at least as of 2006. For comparison, 21.3 percent of business faculty members and 20.5 percent of health-science faculty members identified as liberal in the same survey, with the remainder consisting of moderates.

Most other disciplines skewed heavily in a liberal direction. Tellingly, liberal views also comprise a clear and sizable majority within the social sciences (58.2 percent) and humanities (52.2 percent), with moderates trailing far behind and conservatives failing to even break out of the single digits. Gross and Simmons’s findings also revealed a sizable subset of far-left ideologies in these same fields. Twenty-four percent of social scientists identified themselves as political radicals, and 17.6 percent identified with the Marxist label, even though far-left identifications had much smaller representations in business and the STEM disciplines.

Opinion | Tenured Radicals Are Real

So the majority is liberal or centrist throughout, with only a minority even in the social sciences and humanities actually identifying with strongly leftist ideologies such as Marxism.

 

[Kooky]

This is the thing I see in America, it exists in other places, but seems of an order of magnitude higher in the US likely due to the fact it has long been a more religious place than other Western nations.

For many people, to support 'the other side' is not simply a relatively minor disagreement between people who agree on most things but have different preferences on how to achieve them. It makes 'the other' a genuinely bad person, or even evil.

It is essentially a theological dispute rather than a political one, and the Progressive side is no less 'religious' than the Conservative Christian side.

(I'm not even sure they are much less Protestant than the conservatives, being from the long tradition of evangelical moral crusaders that spans puritanism, abolitionism, missionary zeal, temperance, the civil rights movement, etc.)

You can always tell it's going to be a "fun" discussion when one side likens the other to religious zealots.

 

[Kooky]

Given that I'm not remotely a "conservative", and ceratinly not using it as a "rhetorical cudgel" seems you've made another mistaken assumption that impacts your judgement.

And as I'm not a conservative and have specifically and repeatedly argued that viewpoint diversity is a good thing, why would I want to see a university stacked with conservatives?

As I said earlier, you seem to be inventing another imaginary position to argue against.

If you think it is simply a ridiculous political screed, you can write a letter of complaint to the peer-reviewed journal that published their findings.

A Model of Political Bias in Social Science Research
https://sites.rutgers.edu/lee-jussi...Political-Bias-in-Social-Science-Research.pdf

If you hadn't made the completely incorrect assumption that I am a "conservative", you wouldn't have to invent these imaginary positions you think I'm arguing for and we could have had a more productive discussion.

Did you actually read anything by the guy you keep citing as a source? Do you have any idea what the article you linked to earlier actually says?

If you produce a source that espouses certain viewpoints in support of your position, then you should be ready to either defend those viewpoints, or disavow them. You have done neither, only trued to distance yourself personally by claiming you're not a conservative, as if your personal political identity had any bearing on your position in this discussion (it doesn't).

It's fine to disavow your own sources, but that leaves us exactly at the start of our discussion, where I pointed out you were talking in platitudes and challenged you to be precise in your argument, and you produced conservative viewpoints to support your argument.

When I said "viewpoint diversity is good", I meant "viewpoint diversity is good", not "I hope US style conservatives take over the world to the detriment of all"

That's what you claim you are argueing, but that's not what you argued, in truth: You argued that viewpoint diversity is good in disciplines that are - and I am using hyperbole for effect here, but this is the sentiment that I picked up - basically just subjective make-believe without any sort of scientific or objective component, while true objective sciences like biology must not be tainted with ideology (despite them being just as steeped in ideological trench warfare as any other academic discipline of sufficient maturity and breadth). Hence, your sharp distinction between what we might as well dub 'unpolitical' sciences (STEM, biology, the works) versus 'political' sciences (social sciences, humanities, everything that's not STEMmy enough).

Do you believe maths is equally as prone to ideological bias as sociology, history or economics?

Of course! It would be ridiculous to believe that mathematicians were depolicitized robots, there is nothing that would make one of them less prone to having political beliefs than the rest of us.

The fundamental flaw in the logic you seem to unfold here is that ideology is something extraneous to scientific thought, only to be found in the 'lesser' human-focused disciplines unless imposed from an external force. But scientists are just as human as everybody else, and they exist in a political environment like the rest of us do.

The subject matter of their work does not change that fact, and why would it? We would not assume that, say, investment bankers have no political opinions only because they deal with numbers all day, now would we? So why would we make that assumption about people in the STEM fields?

 

[Kooky]

All disciplines are values driven to some degree in terms of ethics, methods, priorities, etc. but how much predictive value would it have to know someone was a 'Marxist electrical engineer'? They would really be an electrical engineer who is also a Marxist, not a 'Marxist electrical engineer'.

Marxist historiography or Marxist economics are schools of thought and methodological approaches to the disciplines in question.

Would you agree that if someone is a Marxist historian or a Marxist economist, this would tell you far more about their approach to their discipline than knowing someone was a Marxist engineer would?

The difference here is that, as you just pointed out yourself, Marxist history is a specific methodological approach to the discipline of history, not a political ideology that's extraneous to the subject. A Marxist historian would be no more, or less, "political" in outlook than an Annales school historian, or a Whig historian.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You also have yet to explain why an exposure to a variety of views would necessitate faculty or staff to necessarily HOLD those views.

Best teacher I had, a philosophy teacher, she was so awesome and great at teaching the subject she would argue in defense of things she disagreed with. Most students didn't like her, because she would make you defend answers amd flesh them out, and probe them with opposing viewpoints. Even if something was misogynist, just saying it was bad wasn't good enough in her class and she expected students to explain why in the face of having it justified.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

If you produce a source that espouses certain viewpoints in support of your position, then you should be ready to either defend those viewpoints, or disavow them. You have done neither, only trued to distance yourself personally by claiming you're not a conservative, as if your personal political identity had any bearing on your position in this discussion (it doesn't).

That thinking is how many have thought I'm Conservative, amd while an answering a question from a Evangelical perspective I manage to still do this well enough someone thought I'm Christian.
It's silly when this happens, and it's you who looks silly.

Of course! It would be ridiculous to believe that mathematicians were depolicitized robots,

Math is how we prove things. There is no ideology or bias behind the value of pi. It is a hard fact. Mathematicians aren't robots, and Newton wasn't perfect, but Newtonian physics accurately predicted the existence of a planet, and after this prediction based on math was made Neptune was found.
Amd it gets easier. Such as Ohm's and Watt's laws. Doesn't matter who or where or what, these are laws of physics free of ideology and bias and they remain constant.
Math is the only thing we have that provides us with proofs. Not just our best interpretation of evidence, but an unbiased language that demonstrates things that are true.

 

[Augustus]

You can always tell it's going to be a "fun" discussion when one side likens the other to religious zealots.

I actually likened both sides to evangelical Protestants, not religious zealots.

Also I noted that such moral crusaders have supported both good and bad causes throughout history.

 

[Kooky]

I actually likened both sides to evangelical Protestants, not religious zealots.

Also I noted that such moral crusaders have supported both good and bad causes throughout history.

Who are you specifying as "moral crusaders" in this? Marxist historians?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You can always tell it's going to be a "fun" discussion when one side likens the other to religious zealots.

I frequently draw comparisons between Fundamentalist Evangelicals and PC Liberals. Because they are there to be seen, especially if you come from a background that is deeply entrenched in the fundamentalist evangelicism. Then the similarities look like neon signs that scream their existence, raising barbs of venomous dogma ready to ensnare those who get too close and inject them with an ideology toxin of dogma that enables them to see a world overcome with inherent sin all are infested with, shame held by all, holding the masses guilty just for existing, and a world full of malicious intent out to harm true believers and further evil causes.

 

[metis]

How and when did the news media, the entertainment industry, academia, and science gain a liberal bias?

A combination of intelligence and honesty.