I feel like you say stuff like this more because you want to believe in conservatives, rather than really believing the thought. That legitimating their views will make the world seem okay to you, or something.

Since this apparently wasn’t obvious enough to you, I’ll make it so.

Of course conservatives have a point. They almost always do, and a lot of the time I’d even go along with what they’re saying. The problem is what they believe and what they do isn’t the same thing as the point they’re making.

Do they have a point about universities indoctrinating their students into American “liberalism”? Sure. But they don’t care about the fact that universities are intolerant to other ideas, they specifically care about their own (I.e. universities should indoctrinate students into being ****heads instead).

Do they have a point about the racialization of finance in 19th century Europe? Ya sure did, but they didn’t actually care about that, they only cared about busting heads and raping Belgian nuns.

“Do conservatives have a point” is the closest thing you can get to a universal non sequitur.

The thing is that I was pretty confident when I wrote my original post that addressing this "do conservatives have a point” what quickly going to become the focus of the entire proceeding discussion.

Oh well.

Well if you wanted to discuss the actual report why did you frame it in such a polarizing way?

Posing a speculative question like “what if conservatives actually have a point” is polarizing? Huh. Who knew?

Oh look, it’s time for another exciting episode of Adventures in Statistics with Jon!

Speaking of reductio ad Hitlerum, did you know that in the 1940s the Nazi Party was more popular among Jewish people than socialists? That’s because there were zero socialists in the Nazi party, but there were one or two Jewish people. That means the Jewish average approval rating is slightly higher than the socialist average.

So, I guess the lesson here is to be really careful how you interpret means. Some black people vote Republican. Obviously that means the black average is going to be well to the right of liberal whites.

The [Metropolitan Republican Club] didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on why it has routinely hosted such extremist figures. On Sunday — reacting to outrage over Proud Boys assaulting leftist protesters after the McInnes event ended — the club issued a statement defending its decision to invite McInnes.

“We want to foster civil discussion, but never endorse violence,” club officials said. “Gavin’s talk on Friday night, while at times was politically incorrect and a bit edgy, was certainly not inciting violence.”

But McInnes started his speech at the club Friday by re-enacting the 1960 political assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, a leader of the Japanese Socialist Party, who was sliced open with a samurai sword on live television by a far-right ultranationalist.

..

A short time later, video footage shows dozens of those Proud Boys descending upon a much smaller group of anti-fascist protesters on a nearby sidewalk, punching and kicking them as they lay on the ground. They screamed “******s” during the assault. One of the Proud Boys later boasted of beating up a “foreigner.”

FWIW, I don't get this "university culture" thing. People hardly ever talk politics in either academic department I've been in. Maybe it's a math thing, IDK. Most everyone is liberal, but it's not like we don't have conservatives who we get along with fine.

What strikes me as incredibly concerning though is when you hear people like Jordan Peterson tell Joe Rogan that parents should "send their kids to trade school" rather than university.

Uh, you know, you don't have to major in Women's Studies, ya know? I really begin to question these people's motives (OK, tbf I probably should have been questioning their motives long before this anyway) when they start saying things like that.

I am pretty sure they are talking about the departments that have been taken over by social activists. I mean, liberal professors have been around since basically forever, but I'm not sure they had degree programs where students were explicitly inculcated into adopting their opinions (I mean, they would at least pay lip service to the Euro-centric sort of history that would now be called the "patriarchy" in these departments).

To believe this, you have to believe that departments were taken over, which is already a really dubious claim and one that sounds pretty conspiratorial.. and convenient for cultural conservatives. You've already drank the reactionary kool-aid.

Like, I could ask "when were corporations taken over by psychopaths", but I'm already presupposing that such an event took places. Corporations have always been run by psychopaths.

"Taken over" might not be the right word. Perhaps sprung into existence is more like it (did Women's Studies exist before the 1960's? I'm not sure).

Also, you don't believe that academic departments are subject to the winds of change? Every field has its fads. I'm not talking about storming the Bastille, but simply pointing out what's in vogue. And yeah, you better believe that kowtowing to academic fads are going to play a role in advancing your academic career. Good luck getting tenure in a Women's Studies department advancing the idea that the "patriarchy" is awesome.

And Women's Studies...

Of course there are fads, but conservatives have been whining about thoughts and ideas since ever. There's nothing wrong or bad with the current set, despite how hard they stamp their feet and yell.

(I can see this conversation is making you very uncomfortable.)

I'm interested to know what you think is being taught in these departments? Have you ever taken a class taught by one of these professors? I have, and it was not pretty.

Don't know, don't care, but I doubt it's that bad. Why I do care is I have read historical works by people in women's studies that were solid research. Particularly about history involving women, because historically historians haven't cared that much.

Another thing to consider is that whatever the "culture" of students who gravitate toward things like Women's Studies may be, it's just as possible that a student was already predisposed to hold the beliefs that conservatives disagree with. So I am not entirely sure it's the professors who are to blame for the fact that college campuses contain people who voice opinions that conservatives dislike.

There are lots of true things written about nutrition on mercola.com, despite the fact that it is basically crackpot. That is very different than passing peer review. Scholarship isn't about churning out good ideas, so much as weeding out the terrible ones that spoil the entire batch.

I sure hope he didn't actually tell people to assassinate those professors (but I guess I wouldn't be too surprised if what you wrote was more than just a joke).

Another thing that really bothered me was that he kept chastizing those professors for trying to "start a revolution", that they were dangerous. This makes me think that conservatives are the ones who really don't belong in university departments, tbh... this is really not the way a professor should be talking about his fellow professors: he is basically saying they are too dangerous to continue teaching, which as far as I'm concerned is an attitude that doesn't belong in academia.

What's most disconcerting about the apparent lack of scholarship in these departments. Although I have to say I don't know much about what's really going on besides taking a very ideological survey class--in which we were told that the patriarchy is to blame for the death of some academic writer's son, who died in an auto accident, because cars are a "male" invention, or that a prehistoric matriarchal society in Africa (which has never even been attempted to be shown to have existed through actual anthropological evidence) was wrongly destroyed by the male forces of war and hierarchy, forever damning civilization to suffer at the hands of the patriarchy--it strikes me as hard to believe that one can easily advance their career as a Women's Studies professor being too critical of a lot of this non-sense that seems to just be accepted as fact.

What's most disconcerting about the apparent lack of scholarship in these departments. Although I have to say I don't know much about what's really going on besides taking a very ideological survey class--in which we were told that the patriarchy is to blame for the death of some academic writer's son, who died in an auto accident, because cars are a "male" invention, or that a prehistoric matriarchal society in Africa (which has never even been attempted to be shown to have existed through actual anthropological evidence) was wrongly destroyed by the male forces of war and hierarchy, forever damning civilization to suffer at the hands of the patriarchy--it strikes me as hard to believe that one can easily advance their career as a Women's Studies professor being too critical of a lot of this non-sense that seems to just be accepted as fact.