I’m an academic, in the business for a long time, and I take issue with this article. In my discipline there is one Republican for every 4 Democrats last I looked—not one for every 44—and that’s more or less what you’d expect in any population of educated, upper middle class Americans. It’s likely worse in various ‘studies’ disciplines—gender studies, ethnic studies, etc., but they’re peripheral. And, yeah, there’s a certain amount of posturing and virtue-signaling—land acknowledgements in sig files and pronoun designation—but this is just irritating and has no serious impact on how we do our jobs.
I’m sick of the ongoing rhetoric about the ‘wokeness’ of academia that the Right promotes, which the article echoes. This may be the way things are at Harvard, where simply having been admitted guarantees students good jobs if they get through, so students can entertain themselves playing these games. It isn’t so at other colleges where students go to be trained and credentialed for jobs and can’t afford this nonsense. And where faculty like me have other things to do.
As the adage goes, you’ll find twenty Marxists on an Ivy League campus before you find one at a trade school. But just because it doesn’t infect your pocket of academia doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem worth talking about.
Mine isn’t a pocket of academia—Harvard and a few other highly elite schools are. My university is not a ‘trade school’—it’s an ordinary mid-range college that is the industry standard. Harvard’s problem is Harvard’s problem—not the problem of academia on the whole, which the Folk currently believe it is because the Right continues to harp on the theme. This isn’t a problem worth talking about in the media: let Harvard’s take care of Harvard’s problems.
In 2024, faculty at your school donated 96.5% to Democrats vs 3% to Republicans, presidential and congressional races combined. I'm beginning to suspect another reason you don't see a problem.
And what might that be? He clearly has contempt for wokeness, perhaps the takeaway from the stats you quote is that there remain institutions where to be a Democrat is not necessarily to be a wokie. I myself would say that's very good news. In the same way, there are still Republicans hiding under rocks here and there who deplore Trump, as any believer in democracy should.
Always valuable reading a report like that -- straight from the trenches. Nice if the insanity and decay really are confined to the grand old ivies. I've hear the same from other educators at work a day institutions. If only the sane center would stand up.
What this all points to is the essential weakness of democracy.
Faced with a clear and present military threat from the outside, democracies can be incredibly agile, strong, resourceful, and courageous. The classic example - the first one. Athens, threatened by the most powerful military force in the world at the time took on the Persian empire twice, at Marathon and land and Salamis at sea, and won.
But left to its own devices, democracies have a fatal tendency to turn inward, eating themselves eating themselves allve from the inside out. It is a process upon which we are now all too eagerly engaged.
Democracies must find a balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of the community. When the needs of the community become paramount, socialism becomes the norm and individuals find themselves subsumed into the collective, When individual rights become paramount, the community fractures into scores of little pieces, each attempting to dominate.
In the two thousand plus history of democracy, no democratic state has ever managed to find the right balance. We are not the exception, but we might become the exception if enough of us realize that our Constitution gave us the opportunity to become the most extraordinary, the most crucial, the riskiest, and the most complex ongoing experiment in human society and government ever attempted. Our Constitution, flawed thought it was, challenged us to see if We the People could together find just enough of the courage, the honesty, the compassion, the understanding, the tolerance, the humility, the humor, the wisdom, the hope, and the sheer common sense to rule ourselves from the bottom up with as much justice and eqiuty as is humanly possible. Lincoln was right; we are ‘the last best hope of earth”. But he was also right in understanding that "as a nation of free men, we will live through all time, or die by suicide”
For better or worse (certainly worse), Harvard is a bastion of intolerant, religious, anti-truth thinking these days. Consider two propositions, “sex is a spectrum” and “race has no biological basis”. Neither statement is evenly remotely true. However, 99% of Harvard students and faculty would affirm the “truth” of these statements, at least publicly. Like it or not, universities have become deeply irrational. It is somewhat unclear if the race nonsense or the sex nonsense is more deeply held. This academic insanity is somewhat new (perhaps not, see below). From “Sex is a Spectrum” (https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/sex-is-a-spectrum/) a comment by Spencer
“Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised.”
The converse point is that Harvard and other universities were deeply religious and intolerant even years ago. The famous book “The Blank Slate” was written in 2003. The Summers affair (at Harvard) is from 2006. The Pinker/Spleke debate is from 2005. It was clear then (and still is) that Spelke was/is a liar. Was she ever punished for lying? Of course, not.
Of course, these problems are by no means limited to Harvard. Over at Yale, a talk was given on 'The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind'. The speaker (Dr. Aruna Khilanani) explicitly fantasized about killing innocent white people and then was offended because Yale would not give her the recording. The following is from her speech.
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor. (Time stamp: 7:17)”
These issues are by no means limited to elite universities. At University of Southern Maine, an instructor (Christy Hammer) dared to say that there are two sexes All but one student (21 of 22) walked out in protest. The one student later caved to the fanatics. Of course, Hammer was entirely correct.
Here are two general questions and comments concerning higher education:
1. Are there objective ways to determine the quality of a college education? This is especially important for hiring managers and in view of grade inflation.
2. All colleges and universities, public and private, rely on government funding. There is a cost to this that involves being able to justify the funding to sympathetic and antagonistic government officials.
The article is not really clear as to what her problem was. Specifics are lacking. As a Social Scientist I believe that facts should be the basis of our teaching. For example, it is a fact that Black persons have twice the risk of poverty as White persons. But there has been progress in that 40 years ago Black persons had three times the risk of poverty as White persons. Those facts can be interpreted differently but they are facts. As far as the Universities attracting conservatives, that is unlikely because typically the pay is lower than other options. And now, with universities relying on adjuncts there will be even fewer conservatives.
I’m an academic, in the business for a long time, and I take issue with this article. In my discipline there is one Republican for every 4 Democrats last I looked—not one for every 44—and that’s more or less what you’d expect in any population of educated, upper middle class Americans. It’s likely worse in various ‘studies’ disciplines—gender studies, ethnic studies, etc., but they’re peripheral. And, yeah, there’s a certain amount of posturing and virtue-signaling—land acknowledgements in sig files and pronoun designation—but this is just irritating and has no serious impact on how we do our jobs.
I’m sick of the ongoing rhetoric about the ‘wokeness’ of academia that the Right promotes, which the article echoes. This may be the way things are at Harvard, where simply having been admitted guarantees students good jobs if they get through, so students can entertain themselves playing these games. It isn’t so at other colleges where students go to be trained and credentialed for jobs and can’t afford this nonsense. And where faculty like me have other things to do.
As the adage goes, you’ll find twenty Marxists on an Ivy League campus before you find one at a trade school. But just because it doesn’t infect your pocket of academia doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem worth talking about.
Mine isn’t a pocket of academia—Harvard and a few other highly elite schools are. My university is not a ‘trade school’—it’s an ordinary mid-range college that is the industry standard. Harvard’s problem is Harvard’s problem—not the problem of academia on the whole, which the Folk currently believe it is because the Right continues to harp on the theme. This isn’t a problem worth talking about in the media: let Harvard’s take care of Harvard’s problems.
In 2024, faculty at your school donated 96.5% to Democrats vs 3% to Republicans, presidential and congressional races combined. I'm beginning to suspect another reason you don't see a problem.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/university-of-san-diego/recipients?candscycle=2024&id=D000030688&toprecipscycle=2024&candscycle=2024
And what might that be? He clearly has contempt for wokeness, perhaps the takeaway from the stats you quote is that there remain institutions where to be a Democrat is not necessarily to be a wokie. I myself would say that's very good news. In the same way, there are still Republicans hiding under rocks here and there who deplore Trump, as any believer in democracy should.
Bravo.
He didn't say it isn't worth talking about, he said it's blown out of proportion.
Always valuable reading a report like that -- straight from the trenches. Nice if the insanity and decay really are confined to the grand old ivies. I've hear the same from other educators at work a day institutions. If only the sane center would stand up.
What this all points to is the essential weakness of democracy.
Faced with a clear and present military threat from the outside, democracies can be incredibly agile, strong, resourceful, and courageous. The classic example - the first one. Athens, threatened by the most powerful military force in the world at the time took on the Persian empire twice, at Marathon and land and Salamis at sea, and won.
But left to its own devices, democracies have a fatal tendency to turn inward, eating themselves eating themselves allve from the inside out. It is a process upon which we are now all too eagerly engaged.
Democracies must find a balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of the community. When the needs of the community become paramount, socialism becomes the norm and individuals find themselves subsumed into the collective, When individual rights become paramount, the community fractures into scores of little pieces, each attempting to dominate.
In the two thousand plus history of democracy, no democratic state has ever managed to find the right balance. We are not the exception, but we might become the exception if enough of us realize that our Constitution gave us the opportunity to become the most extraordinary, the most crucial, the riskiest, and the most complex ongoing experiment in human society and government ever attempted. Our Constitution, flawed thought it was, challenged us to see if We the People could together find just enough of the courage, the honesty, the compassion, the understanding, the tolerance, the humility, the humor, the wisdom, the hope, and the sheer common sense to rule ourselves from the bottom up with as much justice and eqiuty as is humanly possible. Lincoln was right; we are ‘the last best hope of earth”. But he was also right in understanding that "as a nation of free men, we will live through all time, or die by suicide”
The choice is ours, all ours.
For better or worse (certainly worse), Harvard is a bastion of intolerant, religious, anti-truth thinking these days. Consider two propositions, “sex is a spectrum” and “race has no biological basis”. Neither statement is evenly remotely true. However, 99% of Harvard students and faculty would affirm the “truth” of these statements, at least publicly. Like it or not, universities have become deeply irrational. It is somewhat unclear if the race nonsense or the sex nonsense is more deeply held. This academic insanity is somewhat new (perhaps not, see below). From “Sex is a Spectrum” (https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/sex-is-a-spectrum/) a comment by Spencer
“Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised.”
The converse point is that Harvard and other universities were deeply religious and intolerant even years ago. The famous book “The Blank Slate” was written in 2003. The Summers affair (at Harvard) is from 2006. The Pinker/Spleke debate is from 2005. It was clear then (and still is) that Spelke was/is a liar. Was she ever punished for lying? Of course, not.
Of course, these problems are by no means limited to Harvard. Over at Yale, a talk was given on 'The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind'. The speaker (Dr. Aruna Khilanani) explicitly fantasized about killing innocent white people and then was offended because Yale would not give her the recording. The following is from her speech.
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor. (Time stamp: 7:17)”
These issues are by no means limited to elite universities. At University of Southern Maine, an instructor (Christy Hammer) dared to say that there are two sexes All but one student (21 of 22) walked out in protest. The one student later caved to the fanatics. Of course, Hammer was entirely correct.
Here are two general questions and comments concerning higher education:
1. Are there objective ways to determine the quality of a college education? This is especially important for hiring managers and in view of grade inflation.
2. All colleges and universities, public and private, rely on government funding. There is a cost to this that involves being able to justify the funding to sympathetic and antagonistic government officials.
The article is not really clear as to what her problem was. Specifics are lacking. As a Social Scientist I believe that facts should be the basis of our teaching. For example, it is a fact that Black persons have twice the risk of poverty as White persons. But there has been progress in that 40 years ago Black persons had three times the risk of poverty as White persons. Those facts can be interpreted differently but they are facts. As far as the Universities attracting conservatives, that is unlikely because typically the pay is lower than other options. And now, with universities relying on adjuncts there will be even fewer conservatives.