Ah so that's what that smilie is for.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/01/why-do-those-college-students-hate-free-speech-so-much

Every American needs to be sat down and shown this.

And be warned of the pernicious effects of visibility biases and the eagerness to stereotype.

http://news.gallup.com/poll/225761/world-approval-leadership-drops-new-low.aspx



Gonna pull this out, gonna bold it and italicize it just so you all understand what you're dealing with here. The people of earth now regard the United States less than China, and roughly as much as Russia.

Elsewhere:



About this outcome specifically, the former US ambassador to Canada said:



Congrats on successfully rolling back 70 years of diplomacy work, America.

Before any Americans reading this respond with something to the tune of "why should we care about what foreign countries think", I'd like to thank you in advance for your permission to expropriate your nation's capital.

Edit: I've got my eye on a Walmart. Oh, don't worry. I'll still call it that.

Pretty much everyone is a massive hypocrite when announcing values and moral prescriptions.

So people ought to do it less ;-)

I'm hoping someday I can expatriate this country before fascists take total power or whatever is coming soon. And move to the first world.

toxic masculinity is fist bumping some married geezer for giving himself rotdick off of a porn star, instead of berating him for having no impulse control

you know who I really want to lead my country? someone who would betray everybody he loves and cares about to satisfy a biological urge. That's someone I'd like to get a beer with.

"Mr. President, sir! We've detected incoming Russian ICBMs! We have 7 minutes to retaliate -- what should we do??"
"Hang on, I've gotta crank one out and then I'll get back to you"

brings a whole new meaning to "fiddling while Rome burns", iykwim.

Oh FYI, conservatives don't give a ****. They've been attacking "liberal universities" for decades, at least. There's never been substance to their complaints, not then, and certainly not now. Most of them simply parrot the opinions they've been given, never having set foot on a college campus to decide for themselves.

Of course, the pundit who told them what to believe went to Harvard. Their CEO went to Stanford. In fact, that's where he and the COO met and decided to start a company together. Seems like damn near every wealthy, successful, and accomplished conservative person went to university. Huh. Weird. I guess they're just saying not to go because they have so much more experience with universities than everybody else, so they understand exactly why they aren't any good. Oh, but... huh, they're also paying for their kids to attend those hateful, horrible, anti-free-speech alt left brainwash camps. How strange. It doesn't seem fair that rich people should use their voice to discourage people from gaining an education that helped them so much. If only there were some way to make this situation more just. Not legally, but, like, ...socially? Maybe we could call it... social justice? No, that's a ridiculous idea. Besides, they say that if I keep scrubbing toilets eventually they'll recognize my genius and promote me to management.

Woah, conservatives don't like that conservative speakers are regularly disinvited to speak at universities or are interrupted and prevented from speaking, or even violently protested? Stunning, I don't know why conservatives would complain about that! I doubt it's because they see universities as important cultural institutions that are increasingly hostile to them and to conservative ideas. No, surely this is an economic conspiracy to keep the poor poor and to make the wealthy wealthier!

FYI there's this "skills gap" thing in the US, which was a PR plant by Manpower to boost unskilled and low-skilled labor employment. Among others, Charles and David Koch (huge consumers of unskilled labor) have contributed to various outreach and advocacy groups to encourage young people to pursue labor jobs instead of higher education. These PR plants claim there are a fabulous number of unfilled jobs in the US - 2 million, 6 million! - and nobody is willing to take them because they're ~dirty jobs~ (also, yes, Mike Rowe got involved). One of the case studies they used is Sparky Electric, which, while they want to hire many electricians, also pays them laughably bad. Like, minimum wage for a journeyman bad. Most other case studies are the same story.

So, yeah, there is an actual billionaire-funded conspiracy to push young people out of aspirational post-secondary education and into grossly underpaid labor jobs. Labor hungry businesses have been doing this for decades. I grew up in oil country and they even got the government involved to push high school graduates away from university. I'm sure Antony could tell you a similar story from coal country. I don't understand how you are even slightly incredulous about it, it's not a secret. Even a Krugman op-ed in the NYT got into it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/opinion/krugman-jobs-and-skills-and-zombies.html?_r=1

Do you have a point here? Or no?

Also, happy one year anniversary to this thread! yaaaaaaaaay I think we can all agree that this forum is better because it exists and not worse yaaaaaaay

Uh. Obviously.

It's gotten a lot better since you've been shamed into not randomly calling people holocaust deniers anymore, but I can think of a few other ways you can make it even better.

lol i like how at this point you've accused me of abusing antisemitism more times than i've accused anyone of antisemitism

it's good to know that shame doesn't stop you!

what is it?

So what's the appropriate ratio between you concealing your ignorance behind spurious claims of antisemitism, and me accusing you of being the kind of person who casually does that? 1:1? 3:1? Please be as specific as possible.

It's how Republicans "disinvite" progressives from speaking at universities.

nice ninja edit.

I'm not sure why your shame should stop me from shaming you. Can you explain? Or... do you think I should be ashamed of reminding everyone that you've done bad things?

Well, they weren't spurious, and I'm not the only person here who's said something about it. Maybe you should go after them if you have such a problem with "spurious claims of antisemitism".

But either way, you're making a mountain out of a mole hill, buddy, and making yourself look like a jerk while doing it. It's fine, I generally think that being a bully is its own punishment, so I'll just let this play itself out.



Oh. Cool. That'd make some good Facebook content.

's where you belong, dude.

• Doesn't read a linked article talking about how free speech issues on campus are wildly exaggerated, and that university students on average embrace free speech and airing contradictory opinions more than the average public, but responds to it anyway by posting "Republicans are right to hate university students because they hate free speech"
• Has never heard of the skills gap debate, but has a strong opinion about how billionaires actually aren't working to reduce university enrollment anyway.
• Doesn't recognize a photo of the Kent State massacre or understand why it is salient, despite voicing a strong opinion about civil liberties on campus.

And that's just this page. At least I know I'm an *******. You belong on Facebook with all of the other morons who think their **** doesn't stink.

I'm sure Eversor has a great argument for why he isn't an *******, and I'm sure he would explain it if it weren't above my comprehension.

Heh. I'm a moron *and* an *******... Woah. Are there any other names you want to call me, or are you done?

Anyway, again, you've misrepresented nearly every single thing that's happened in this discussion. But, no, it's no worth it writing effortposts to correct your baseless accusations against me, which is why I don't even bother doing it anymore. I fully expect that your ability to keep up your belligerence exceeds my ability to have patience for it.

Next time read the article.

I wasn't commenting on the article. The article is about how students' thoughts about free speech and censorship are caricatured by pundits. I'm sure to some extent that's true, but I wasn't commenting on that at all, as is, you know, clear from what I actually wrote.

They talk plenty about the nontrivial amount of times conservative student groups fought to remove controversial liberal speakers, and people's sentiments towards free speech in general. Did you have thoughts on that?

My thinking about this? Uh. That it's probably true?

But look, I'm not really interested in score keeping. I'm sure informed liberals and conservatives could go on endlessly citing incidents where their side was unfairly censured on campus. Despite all of the recent high profile incidents of conservatives being de-platformed and protested and whatever else, of course people on the left face censorship in universities. I'm old enough to remember the Steven Salaita affair back in 2014, for instance. Scandals happen at universities all the time, and people try to take individual incidents, and use them as an occasion to make larger arguments about civility, or censorship, or free speech, the role of money outside the university on debate inside it, due process, or whatever else. I think the article is spot on, in its most general point. Those debates often involve caricaturing/stereotyping students so that the pundit on whatever side of the aisle can make his/her point. And the debates around campus activism are often a proxy for larger social issues that have nothing to do with students or universities at all (e.g., about to what extent hate speech should be tolerated in a liberal society, etc etc).

Even so, it doesn't change the fact that it's not an exaggeration to say that universities are, by and large, liberal institutions. See, for example, this Washington Post article, which features this chart:



And, from that article:



I think the WashPo article does a pretty good job capturing arguments on the left and the right. TL;DR: professors have increasingly identified as liberal over the course of the past few decades, but the same trend is not exhibited amongst student bodies. Students don't necessarily become indoctrinated by attending four year institutions, but at the same time, negative consequences may follow from conservatives being underrepresented in our institutions of higher learning.

That basically seems right to me. In addition to teaching, universities are also responsible for producing research, and, in the case of the social sciences especially, that research can have an effect on government policy. Are we as a society disadvantaged because liberal scholars in the social sciences don't regularly have to interact with voices that force them to question some of their most fundamental assumptions and beliefs? Are we disadvantaged because because conservatives in departments throughout the humanities/social sciences are often token faculty appointments who are despised and ridiculed by their colleagues? Yeah, I suspect we are.

Maybe it's worth investigating why universities have swung so far left.

I know the right has an answer, and it's conspiracy-laden.

OTOH, as I discussed X pages ago, congress has shifted much further right, and if I was given a choice I'd taken political power over universities but hey.

Don't let that stop you from giving Facebook-tier rants though.

i.e. I think you're attacking the symptom rather than the cause of political polarization.

Do you have an explanation?



I haven't heard any of the right's theories. What are they?



Right now liberals dominate in cultural institutions (media, entertainment, universities) and conservatives dominate other institutions (finance, defense, and, currently, politics). I suspect that the forces driving these institutions to become more polarized are the same as those that are drive polarization generally.



You aren't very creative with your insults. You usually ape whatever insult someone else just threw. Lazy. Oh well.

Oh, there are a bunch of reasons.

- The right has been body-checking the Overton window for decades (an actual conspiracy), so even a static institution would appear to be more liberal now than in 1990.

- Young people are more liberal on average. Universities have baaaaaaasically eradicated tenure track positions, replacing them with dead-end, low paid adjunct and associate professorships. You can only afford to beat on that drum for so long.

- Virtually all scholarship on professor liberalization has been conducted by conservative associations with an explicit goal of proving that professors are ultra liberal, rather than dispassionate inquiry. Meta-analyses have reported significant design problems with this conservative-backed research, such as the use of leading questions intended to make professors appear more liberal than they actually are. While nobody seriously doubts that professors skew liberal, these kinds of studies wildly exaggerate the amount of skew. For example, you wouldn’t expect to see such significant year-to-year, intra-generational changes; people don’t change their political opinions that quickly, and universities don’t have enough turn-over to explain it. That suggests successive studies are being designed to make professors seem more politically extreme, not that professors have become that much more liberal.

- People who self-identify as conservative have much less interest in academia than people who self-identify as liberal. Bunch of reasons, don’t care to explain. The bias is self reinforcing.

You're right. I'm sure that universities are becoming more liberal in response to the skills gap, because that's obviously the most pertinent thing in a discussion about conservatives being frustrated with universities becoming increasingly liberal, a fact that is well-documented and supported by studies. By the way: hahaha.

We understood you the first time. You are wrong, we aren’t interested in discussing this with you, and we don’t care what you think about it. Please stop quoting posts that have nothing to do with your opinion.

I know you struggle having conversations with people you disagree with. I've been watching you drive people you disagree with away from this forum for years, man. You should try having a civil conversation with people you disagree with. You might learn something.

accusing people of holocaust denial = civil discussion
ignoring what everybody else posts = learning something

TIL

.

Look, I don't find much of this back and forth to be particularly edifying or stimulating. I find it pretty tedious, actually. Do you want to bury the hatchet? We can put all of this behind us, make a point of being cautious about insulting each other in the future (i.e., let's stop insulting each other), and ease up on all these personal attacks (the stuff with antisemitism and other things on your side, but obviously I've done my share to aggravate tensions and provoke)? Call it a Russia reset in Eversor-Jon`C relations?