We have been discussing the rising intolerance for conservative, libertarian, and Republican students and faculty on campuses across the country. Faculties rarely hire conservative or libertarian professors; journals rarely publish studies from conservative authors. As the number of conservative faculty members diminish or disappear on faculties, schools appear to be carrying out the same bias in student admissions. The Harvard Crimson has finished its annual survey of the incoming class of students and found that the already small population of conservative and Republican students has been cut by roughly half.
The Crimson survey covered over 76 percent of the Harvard College Class of 2024 and found that the class contained 72.4 percent who self-identify as either “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal.” Only 7.4 percent self-identify as “very conservative” or “somewhat conservative.” Likewise, 88.9 percent view President Donald Trump as strongly or somewhat unfavorable with 80.7 percent falling in the “strongly unfavorable” category. Only 4.7 percent view Trump “somewhat” or “strongly” favorably.
Note that over 40 percent of this country view Trump favorably and the vast majority view themselves as holding either conservative or moderate views. Gallup polling shows 37% of Americans identify as conservative, 35% as moderate and 24% as liberal. That is 72% conservative or moderate. Harvard admitted 7%. It is demonstrably absurd to argue that this virtual absence of conservative students is somehow the result of accident and not design.
For years, faculty members pretended that there was not an ideological bias in faculty selection as the number of conservative and libertarian faculty members dropped to near zero on many faculties. Less than ten percent of faculty in all schools identify as conservative and Democrats outnumber Republicans by over ten times on faculties. In some schools this ratio approaches 30 to 1.
Liberal faculties routinely dismiss candidates who advance opposing views as intellectually unsound or simply not as intellectually “promising” as more liberal candidates. The bias is evident on every level. Faculty members tend to exclude conservatives from presentations, publications, and citations. The result is an echo chamber in academia that feeds upon itself.
Now we are seeing the same downward trend in admissions where conservative or libertarian students are being relegated to lower-ranked schools. This bias has also become evident, not surprisingly, in classrooms. A Yale poll found that 70% percent of students said that they experienced political bias and the same poll said that the students believe only one percent of their faculty were conservative. A poll at Pomona found nine out of ten students said that “the campus climate prevents them from saying something others might find offensive.” Nearly two-thirds of faculty members felt the same. Seventy-five percent of conservative and moderate students strongly agree that the school climate hinders their free expression.
Antifa can’t by fascist because their name means anti fascist, my recently college graduated children informed me. Anyone who takes critical thinking in college today will tell you the left can’t be bigoted because anti-bigotry is in their name.
They are anarchists not fascists. Really, it’s off-target to call them fascists. The fasces is a symbol of ancient Roman imperial authority.
You will notice under the hands of Lincoln on his statute, are fasces
Congress has fasces on either side of dais.
Fasces was on our dime for 30 some years.
Fascism is many things, historically, some very bad things. But it never was a form of anarchy. Anarchy is the lowest form of government ideology at all, because it is a negative of law itself.
All due respect to you and your “moderate” kids, Turley. But is it any wonder in the younger generation that there is a strong progressive shift? What’s been proven in Trump’s term is that the Republican party is only able to provide tax relief for the very rich and to squash any mechanisms of dissent they can. Well, they gignapped power in the Supreme Court, squashed as much environmental legislation as they could and have steadfastly stood for going to bat for insurance companies in their quest to not have to insure anyone they don’t want to as well. Throw in active jailing of immigrant children at the border, the torching of American foreign policy status, yet another smoldering economic wreckage at the end of a republican turn in the executive branch, a mystifying lack of further stimulus in a pandemic and voila…
There wasn’t much evidence previous of the republican party being capable of anything but that.
You’ve got a “conservatism” that is completely incapable of facing world challenges in a way that puts America in any sort of leadership role. Now this is okay for our closet (and not so closet on this blog) budding authoritarians, enough of them to knock trump’s approval up to 40percent anyway…, but this in no way reflects what the vast majority of the young want, almost need, to have in envisioning their future.
A case can be made that the “moderates” are the ones most responsible for letting America drift into authoritarianism by not speaking enough truth to power. Not saying it’s a good case, but to a young mind, it sure the f^&k looks that way. Which probably leaves only the conservatives who somewhere learned that the best way to hide that conservatism is to masquerade as moderate (gee, I don’t know anyone who’d fit that description, do you Jon?) who would voluntarily not put themselves in the progressive camp…
Odds are, sometime in the not so distant future the U.S. is looking at a President AOC. A more seasoned AOC. But likely her as president. Buckle up, Turley…, if you’re still in the zeitgeist then, Koch industries will have you working overtime in disseminating their message. Party on.
Nailed it USB.
Thanks, Fish.
Yes, they perfectly nailed the stereotype of a braindead, non-thinking, utterly compassionless (and by extension passionless), ideological robot. Great job impersonating an algorithm!
Great job impersonating a frothing at the mouth troll who struggles intensely with staying within the bounds of essential context!
Your response perfectly illustrates the problem. You cannot distinguish your own perspective from objective fact. You conflate the two, and then proceed to say that liberals are ‘right & good’ and that conservatives are ‘wrong & bad’ and that people who are ‘right & good’ should populate the universities, and that the wrong & bad conservatives should hide their views.
But at least the answer is obvious – ram admission & hiring quotas down your throat or lose funding.
No, your response perfectly illustrates the problem.
It’s always a dead giveaway of dog-whistle indoctrination when Koch Industries is mentioned as such a boogie man. Compared to the billionaire limo libs like Soros (especially Soros) and loser felon-vote-buyer Bloomberg, Koch is super small potatoes. But that’s pretty much the most visible rich conservative, if not the only one. Liberal mountains to conservative (Koch) molehills.
The problem is cultural and social-psychological. Why do certain attitudes get to be delineators of in groups and out groups in certain venues? That’s the question. Why do you have blockheads like Jeffrey Silberman?
“Jeffrey Silberman” is a Dunning-Kruger exemplar.
Okay, I’ll bite- who is Dunning-Kruger?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
The annual fall auctioning off of another pile of worn out rocks, what are they worth now?
Oh & my how might GW has fell, was it 17%?
The question is as always who among us won’t survive this years party smack down. lol
& yet Ozzy is still standing, for a while.
Oky 50 years and a week since the LP PARANOID was released, an absolute masterpiece of rock
There are some simple antidotes to the problem in question.
1. Stop allocating to the professoriate the function of sorting the labor market.
a. Repeal employment discrimination laws. This will allow employers to use more economical means of assessing their workforce, free from the second-guessing of lawyers. You could leave two residues in place: (1) things happening in workplaces of a nature similar to the common crimes of harassment and extortion could be defined as torts for which individual employees and (more selectively) employers could be held liable and (2) incorporated enterprises employing people in multiple states would have to issue an audited statement each year on the stock and flow demographics of their workforce.
b. Reconfigure the architecture of degrees. Eliminate associate’s, baccalaureate, and master’s degrees.
i. In academics and the arts, you could have a set of 30, 60, 90, and 120 credit degrees in a discrete subject, with research degrees awarded to those who have completed the 120 credit degree and a dissertation.
ii. In vocational subjects, you could have short certificates, 30 credit degrees, 48 credit degrees, 60 credit degrees, 90 credit degrees, and 120 credit degrees. Doctorates would require the 120 credit supplemented with a clerkship, internship, residency, or fellowship. The 48 credit degree, achieved with a calendar year worth of study, would be the mode.
iii. Have a system of preparatory certificates and custom course sets for aspirant students in demanding professional schools (i.e. medicine, peri-medical occupations, law, engineering, architecture and planning, and veterinary medicine). The certificates would be between 25 and 70 credits in duration.
c. Reallocate resources at the secondary level. (1) longer school year; (2) students sorted into high schools specializing in basic education, vocational-technical education, and academics and the arts, with some students cross-enrolled and following a mixed program. Distribute your teaching manpower about evenly between them. More secondary education, less tertiary education.
d. Focus at the primary level. (1) longer school year, (2) tracking, and (3) for the average student, study reading & writing and mathematics until age 10, then add civic education consisting of the fundamentals of American history, geography, and government.
e. Have timely examinations to fill nearly all public sector positions.
f. Permit people to take occupational licensing examinations absent formal degrees.
The modal pathway would be for students to master basic education, then learn a trade. Tertiary schooling would be atypical and predominantly vocational Employers would make heavy use of paper-and-pencil tests to screen their workforce.
2. Eliminate BS programs at state colleges by statutory law. Some are academic (victimology), some vocational (social work).
3. Stop subsidizing private higher education. They get not one thin dime.
4. Eliminate tuition at state schools. Distribute vouchers to students admitted. The vouchers could be had by paying a fee to the state treasury which would be contingent on a student’s residence history in the state in question. The school would take the vouchers and submit them to a dedicated state fund in return for cash to finance it’s activities. The dedicated funds would be financed by a special income tax and collections would be fixed for all time at x% of discoverable personal income. The schools themselves would have donation and endowment income (and some fee-for-service income) but would impose no mandatory charges on students and would receive no ongoing appropriations from state or federal legislatures. Fix the size of the public higher education sector in relation to the rest of the economy.
5. Place nearly all higher education under the supervision of boards elected by alumni or by local residents. The elections would be administered by the state board of elections (if the voters were alumni) or the county board (if they were local residents). Trustees would serve four year terms and be subject to rotation-in-office restrictions and mandatory retirement.
6. Replace tenure with renewable multi-year contracts for faculty.
7. Distribute berths in public higher education by a system of examinations. Allow private institutions admit whoever they care to, but require they publish audited figures on their demographic stock and flow, and report the mean scores and standard deviations of scores on standardized tests for the course demographic categories of students admitted.
8. Subject philanthropic enterprises to sales or value-added taxes on a par with commercial enterprises.
Make higher education less consequential, make programs of study briefer, allow alternative means to sort your applicants, and put higher education under more intensive supervision. Problem not solved, but problem contained.
Perhaps some sort of affirmative action is necessary. Harvard should allow enough conservatives in to set an example, that regression is important and racist, bigoted, values are to be explored and debated. This will encourage young bigots to study harder and stop taking survival courses in Idaho.
“This will encourage young bigots”
What encouraged your blatant bigotry when you were young, Isaac?
Liberals equate liberalism as anti-bigotry. Thus anyone who opposes a liberal must be a bigots. In that logic any injustice or bigotry is justice and anti-bigotry. Burning businesses in political coercion is anti-fascism.
Isaac is projecting…. just because someone is conservative doesn’t mean he or she is racist and bigoted.
This very well may be the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction from a few generations ago when the situation was reversed. Universities have always been the crucible for dissent and minority views. Turley would carry more weight in his ‘exposes’ if he included by comparison the conservative universities where only conservatives are admitted and those where if you’re not a bible thumper, tough luck. Perhaps these conservative few today are the dissenters, the protesters, the savaged minority. There is also the self admitted stance of conservatives to regress, to make America great again-or return to the past. Universities, at least the great ones, have always been progressive, looking to the future, challenging the status quo. Unfortunately the liberal, progressive stance is now becoming the status quo in these few examples Turley has cherry picked. However, think back to when the conservative, regressive stance was the status quo or visit those universities where that remains and see the difference. All that the world is in terms of achievements is the result primarily of progressive liberal thinkers and doers. What holds mankind back is the conservative regressive status quo. Pick your poison.
What is particularly “progressive” about the left? Identity politics and censorship don’t seem like “progress” to me.
Both the left and the right extend to distasteful extremes. However, compare the right’s extremes of Neo-Nazi, White Supremacist, racist, bigoted, anti Semitic, etc expressions with the left wing extremes which tend to be responsive and chaotic or frustrations of the moment. The left wing extremes tend to be calls for freedom and equality albeit done improperly. The right wing extremes seem to point to the past of humanity’e most distasteful moments. Pick your poison.
The right wing extremes are mostly relegated to the far corners of the internet. They have no institutional power. The left wing extremes, however, are well integrated into politics, the media, hollywood, and our institutions of higher learning. Congrats to conservatives for boxing out the racial extremists on the right. Liberals have failed to take responsibility for the extremists on their side, perfeing to make excuses for them or outright deny the problem exists.
You don’t know your history. Most modern human atrocities are the result of one socialist system or another trying to ram their vision of a utopian society down an unwilling populaces’ throat. And spare me the “Nazis were conservative” nonsense. In their own words, they were socialist revolutionaries who believed their version of socialism was superior to the communists’.
You mean like Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, etc? All right wing fascists and dictators. All closet champions to the likes of Trump, Putin, Erdogan, etc.
In other words, Issac, the fact that Universities are disproportionately liberal is a result of Natural Selection. There would be even fewer Conservatives in higher education were it not for- dare I say it- privileges extended to certain academically sub-par groups, e.g., athletic scholarships, children of conservative Alumni, etc.
“the fact that Universities are disproportionately liberal is a result of Natural Selection”
Congrats Jeffrey. You just proved that you don’t understand the difference between Natural Selection and Artificial Selection. JT is clearly addressing Artificial Selection, not Natural Selection.
“privileges extended to certain academically sub-par groups, e.g., athletic scholarships”
Now that would be an example of Natural Selection based solely on physical attributes and athleticism, in some cases, but not all.
So you are wrong again, and you just displayed your cognitive bias, as well as your inherent lack of knowledge.
Wrongo Rhodes.
“privileges extended to certain academically sub-par groups, e.g., athletic scholarships”
‘Now that would be an example of Natural Selection based solely on physical attributes and athleticism, in some cases, but not all.’
This is an example of artificial selection. Universities are the realm of the mind, not the body. The inclusion of sub-par groups based on athletic prowess in an institution that depends on cerebral performance, is entirely artificial and American. It may have its positive attributes but it is artificial and in some extremes perverse. A 6′-4″ 300 lb line backer that can barely spell and count takes the place of someone more deserving because he helps fill the stadium on the weekends. Universities were never intended to be this; only in America.
“This is an example of artificial selection……..A 6′-4″ 300 lb line backer”
No Isaac. As it relates to physical size and athletic prowess, whether on a football field, or competing to mate with other males for available females, that is a classic example of Natural Selection. But your bigotry (cognitive bias) makes you incapable of understanding that reality.
(BTW, a 300 lb linebacker that could also run a 4.4 – 40 would be welcome on any NFL team).
“he helps fill the stadium on the weekends. Universities were never intended to be this; only in America.”
Do you have any idea how many academic scholarships are made available as a result of the millions of dollars Universities make from their football programs?
I hate to be a buzz kill but the fight is over, the left has won. They just need to run out the clock; if Biden wins it happens next year, if not it will happen when the next generation takes the helm. The entire educational system has been taken over by leftist crazies. The 1619 lie is curriculum in school systems. The military prioritized social justice, diversity, climate change and critical race theory over national security. California and New York, two of our largest states encourage lawlessness with sanctuary and no bail policies. Even in cities where police are respected recruiting is impossible for this low pay, dangerous profession. One party rule is entrenched in most large cities and two of our largest states. The “woke” rich are migrating out of the Socialist Republics of New York and California and taking their “wokeness” to NV, AZ, and TX. As soon as dems take over welcome four new lefty Senators from D.C. and PR; and say goodbye to the electoral college. Energy and transportation cost will be so high us ordinary folk won’t be able to escape even for a weekend. In 2032 President AOC prediction will have come to true, the world (as we know it) will have come to an end.
There’s no greater “artificial selection” than affirmative action. If it admission was based on “natural selection” then Asians would be swamping these schools. But we can’t have that, after all, they’re the “wrong” minority group.
Affirmative selection is an artificial strategy developed to assist in correcting an even greater artificial abomination called racism, bigotry, or the status quo of the time. The truer expressions of natural selection can be found in European countries where grades are the bottom line for admission. In the UK a candidate for Cambridge or any of the other top schools is admitted on academic performance, rarely taking into consideration athletic prowess. An academically high scoring candidate that might advantage the rugby team of a college might have an advantage but would never make it to being considered at all unless coming in over the top academically. The imbalance in European schools where the wealthy can treat their offspring to a higher K-12 preparation via costly private (known as public) schools does exist. The average wealthy offspring will thus be better prepared academically, however, perhaps not in spirit. The nurture of class, higher quality education, and connections still play their roles. Leadership in European countries still depends on on advantage, but the average person has a greater opportunity to attend schools of higher learning without the financial duress found in the US. That has something to do with socialism as socialism has something to do with all countries. The US is perhaps no less socialist than European countries. The difference is that European countries recognize socialism for what it can and can’t do and define, refine, and incorporate it into their overall capitalist, free enterprise, and liberal fabrics. In the US half the population treats itself to the myth that this country is not socialist and must fight to remain Danial Booneish. Ignorance and rejection of the natural order of things is the greatest obstacle that lies in the path of America. The refinement of America necessitates challenging of the status quo. If that status quo appears to root itself on the left then it must be challenged. However, the US is still in the dark ages when it comes to recognizing and realizing the advantages of socialism, equality, and truth.
Turley would carry more weight in his ‘exposes’ if he included by comparison the conservative universities where only conservatives are admitted and those where if you’re not a bible thumper, tough luck.
Why don’t you help out the good professor and list a few, along with the evidence to support your claim? I’m certain if the facts are there to support it, you’ll have conservative support to end the practice.
Ready. Go.
Right after Turley lists some others besides Harvard, along with evidence to support his claim.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
IOW, you can’t even list a few examples to support your specious claim.
You’re all show, and no go. That puts you at an extreme disadvantage from a Natural and Artificial Selection perspective.
I’m not the person who made the “specious claim,” idiot.
Celui qui n’est pas républicain à vingt ans fait douter de la générosité de son âme; mais celui qui, après trente ans, persévère, fait douter de la rectitude de son esprit.
– usually attributed to Batbie, but also to others
. . . and while the source remains unknown, the sentiment is remarkably accurate. At least in my personal experience because for my first presidential election upon coming of age, I voted for Jimmy Carter and have subsequently voted Republican.
That said, early this year I changed voter registration to Democrat. This, expressly to support Senator Sanders’ campaign for when the circus rolled into Central Florida (despite Medicare For All not kicking in for me no matter what, I approved of his idea). Thus, putting life on the line by voting in person (COVID-19 risk – old, fat, asthmatic), I saw only my usual cohort voting (basically zero youngsters – confirming the political wisdom ‘the young don’t turn out’).
Anyway, Biden doesn’t persuade me so I will vote for the hated orange man once again Why? It’s because like in a race where whomever intentionally trips another runner is punished for cheating, I will not reward Democrats for their blatant disregard for my mores of fairness. This President never got a fair shot.
Carter never got a fair shot either. If it weren’t for the tragedy in Iran and the subsequent failed rescue mission, all of which resulted from previous administrations, ie Republican, Carter would have had a second term and more likely than not addressed the economy. Reagan juiced the economy as did Bush and Trump. The result of all three Republican administrations was recession. Last summer the economy was retracting/flattening. Trump did nothing more than continue the upward moves generated by Obama. Study the graphs. Trump did nothing but spout, lie, and grandstand. The real tragedy here in the US is that so many Americans can’t see past the tip of their nose.
Your reply is predictably typical – when something goes wrong for a Democrat, it’s really the fault of a Republican. The embassy takeover was largely fueled by Carter, not some Republican, giving refuge to the deposed Shah (which was the right thing to do). But his inability to handle the outcome was all on him. He simply wasn’t up to the job.
As opposed to Reagan selling cocaine to make money to buy missiles to give to Iran in exchange for them releasing the hostages. The hostages would have been released anyway, eventually. If any died, the US would have wiped out Iranian military bases, etc. The hostage incident was primarily embarrassment for the US. Perhaps America should spend more time with its mistakes: deposing an elected government and putting in the Shah, slaughtering 3 million Vietnamese, stupidly invading Iraq and bungling the entire thing, bungling Afghanistan, etc. Somehow, ‘It can’t happen here.’ ‘Might is right.’ ‘We can do no wrong.’ etc seem to be the root cause of America not evolving. Perhaps it is the human condition but how can the West stop China, Russia, Turkey, etc from ‘colonizing’ their surroundings unless the US, UK, France, Germany, etc own up to their involvement in the tragedies that result from replacing governments, etc.; above all simply lying to one’s self.
Who said they bungled Afghanistan? Consider what the objectives may have been. For real not just propaganda.
It seems that certain things were achieved. They denied Al Queda a safe haven and secured a green zone in Kabul and got the air base at Kandahar and probably some mineral concessions too.
I think we should have pulled out years ago, I favor a peaceful withdrawal now, and I pragmatically recognize the Taliban probably can’t be defeated. or not at a reasonable cost. Seems like it was mission creep and way too much to me. I approve Trump trying to pull out. But, its questionable that it was not a success, if we define it more narrowly than the mass media does. They would have us think that the measure of success is girls going to college and women voting. Those were never the war aims in the first place, just fantasies that the mass media offered liberals so they would approve.
See if you think the mass media just lies to conservatives, and not liberals too, you are naïve
The CIA overthrew the Taliban in 90 days. There was the objective. The rest of the time and effort has been spent trying to get many constituencies to be governed by one arm of government. Failing just as much now as when the Russians tried it. Better yet, there were many voices saying this would be the case before the U.S. even entered the fray.
But there was the pipeline to Karachi, an actual Enron project, to contend with.
rare earths dude
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-minerals/trump-ghani-agree-u-s-can-help-develop-afghanistans-rare-earth-minerals-idUSKCN1BX06G
gotta break the grip the PRC has on them. plenty of money to go around.
and after all the USA is the biggest customer of the poppy, so, them Talibs will want to keep that trade moving
It was called the graveyard of empires before the US gave a swing at it.
I think there were many objectives. There is rarely just one thing behind a big push.
Im all for pulling out, long overdue. I sense the Taliban will strike a deal that allows the US some continuing access. That might even help them not get swallowed up by Pakistan. There’s plenty of angles to work in a deal if the US stays flexible. I project a deal by the blue moon of Halloween
Alexander the great had the devil of a time with it. Then he got smart.
He took a princess named Roxanne as his wife, paid off the tribal chiefs, declared victory and moved out
Freedom requires tolerance of others. These intolerant views are a bigger threat to our freedoms than China and Russia combined.
Conservatives by and large are religious. Many believe in such nonsense as Creationism. They refuse to accept Scientific evidence. They prefer blind faith instead of rationality. My guess is that you would find even fewer conservatives at MIT and the California Institute of Technology. Thank goodness. Universities should discriminate against accepting students who are not good candidates for higher learning.
Jeffrey Silberman wrote, “Conservatives by and large are religious. Many believe in such nonsense as Creationism. They refuse to accept Scientific evidence. They prefer blind faith instead of rationality. My guess is that you would find even fewer conservatives at MIT and the California Institute of Technology. Thank goodness. Universities should discriminate against accepting students who are not good candidates for higher learning.”
That sir is open bigotry.
I am not discriminating against people. I am discriminating against illogic and superstitions. You would not admit a delusional mental patient to a University no matter how conservative he is. I don’t care what a person’s politics are. I would gladly admit Scientifically-minded Conservative Never-Trumpers.
Jeffrey Silberman wrote, “I am not discriminating against people. I am discriminating against illogic and superstitions. You would not admit a delusional mental patient to a University no matter how conservative he is. I don’t care what a person’s politics are. I would gladly admit Scientifically-minded Conservative Never-Trumpers.”
You doubled down on your own ignorance.
Bigotry: intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.
Yes Jeffrey, you are engaging in open bigotry. It doesn’t matter one bit if you agree with me or not, it’s still bigotry. Own it, learn from it, and change your ways.
So Jeffrey Silberman explains liberal’s logic in a nutshell. We are not discriminating, however, anyone who disagrees with us is inferior by definition. Liberals are tops. Never Trumpers are tolerable and full-blown MAGA supporters must be burned out, which is not violence but “anti-fascism.”
It’s unscientific to generalize from a single person to a group. He represents his own views. He doesn’t represent liberals as a group.
ha ha silver man let me tell you the story of a physics professor for oregon state university who resigned his tenure to become a certain sort of political activist…
oh wait on second thought, not
Silberman, I speculate, It’s not just evangelicals, really, you think any kind of observant Christians are irrational. Am I right? Do I speak truly?
“Art thou contented….What dost thou say?”
Jeffrey, is belief in man causing climate-change a religion to you? Because it’s not “settled” science. So those who put faith in that shouldn’t be able to go to Silberman University either. It will be a lonely campus.
Like liberals are any better. I’ve watched them for years ignore the science around gender differences in favor of their own religious faith on the topic. They’ve been lying about the wave gap for as long as I can remember so let’s not pretend that the left has some monopoly on intellectual honesty.
I agree that Liberals can be as delusional and irrational as Conservatives. No one’s beliefs are sacrosanct. Criticizing someone’s beliefs as irrational and harboring superstitions is not a moral judgment about the person. He may be a fine and upstanding individual- just not suitable for a career in science. Such conservatives would do well in a vocational school where they can be trained to use their hands and not their heads.
Jeffrey Silberman just wrote, “Criticizing someone’s beliefs as irrational and harboring superstitions is not a moral judgment about the person”
HOGWASH!!!
No sane person would write such nonsense.
Anyone with half a brain would do well to go into the trades and avoid University. The universities are mostly robbing kids of their futures, strapping them with incredible debt, and in return they get safe spaces, lectures about microagressions and ideological echo chambers.
I work in the trades with a lot of conservatives. I often find them better at critical thinking than many of the well educated liberals I know.
There are religious people throughout the political spectrum. Some refuse to accept scientific evidence and others don’t. There are plenty of conservatives who accept scientific evidence (as well as those who don’t, including creationists), and there are plenty of liberals who accept scientific evidence (as well as those who don’t, including anti-vaxxers)
Some exceptional scientists have been religious, both historically (e.g., Galileo, Francis Bacon) and currently living (e.g., Francis Collins).
Universities should accept strong students and should support them in learning across the disciplines.
there would be neither science nor universities without the Catholic Church.
whatever the pinnacle of systematic natural knowledge was in the ancient Greek, Hellenic, or Roman world, it was gradually lost to Western Europe and then reborn through the work of priests, monks, and theologians who did this:
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism
see also the Sorbonne and Aquinas
https://www.sorbonne.fr/en/the-sorbonne/history-of-the-sorbonne/la-fondation-de-la-sorbonne-au-moyen-age-par-le-theologien-robert-de-sorbon/
yes yes I know they did not just conjure it up all alone, there was science and advancement of learning continuing during the socalled “Dark ages” among the arabs and jews, Averroes and Maimonides, and the byzantines, etc, but it is the Catholic Church in which we we see the actual origin of universities themselves
and yet today we see the Western universities infested with the type of bigots like Silberman
You seen to imply that you think conservatives are a monolithic group. They aren’t and most do not go to the extreme, just as most ‘liberals’ do not go to the extreme. I have known those that are politically conservative (ie., believe in the Constitution as written, not as “living”), socially moderate (ie., believe that Roe was wrongly decided and have no problem with same sex marriage), and fiscally conservative (those who think that money does not grow on trees and congress does not handle our money very well). The extremes would be blind faith view of Creation vs the Atheistic view that God does not exist. The one thing as a whole conservatives believe in is personal responsibility and there is no such thing as a “free lunch”. It seems that in the liberal culture of today everyone is a victim and what ever their lot in life is is someone else’s fault. Conservatives believe in a meritocracy, not trophy by participation.
SIlberman you should watch Lex Fridman’s videos on youtube and see if your bigoted views about religion are so smart after all. You’re very narrow minded.
Go figure out who Lex Fridman is on your own, I don’t care if you live in an ideological straightjacket or not.
while you’re at it, if you dare, tell me the difference between “Creationism” and “Simulation theory.”
Jonathan Turley wrote, “As shown in the Harvard survey, “diversity” at many schools now runs along a spectrum from extreme to mainstream liberal views with a statistically inconsequential number of conservatives or libertarians. This has been a uniform trend for many years in both the selection of faculty and students.”
I don’t like political polls much but the “hive mind” trends we’ve seen on college campuses in the 21st century is a clear sign of a society that’s loosing or has already lost its footing in the Constitution, freedom of expression and basic ethics & morality. There does appear to be a concerted verifiable bigoted effort in colleges across the United States to shut down anything considered a conservative view. The 21st century political left in the United States is becoming more and more open about their anti-conservative bigotry and they’re leaning very heavily towards becoming fully consumed ideological totalitarians. This is a genuine cancer to society’s building blocks, it’s as if these totalitarian bigots truly want to fundamentally transform our society and lead us away from the United States Constitution.
Jonathan Turley wrote, “It is a mockery to pretend that this is the result of anything other than systemic bias in academia.”
That statement sounds a little like the systemic racism arguments coming from the social justice warriors these days. The difference between the systemic racism arguments from social justice warriors and the systemic academia boas arguments is that social justice warriors can’t support their arguments with logic and facts where systemic bias in academia is completely verifiable because the political left is quite proud of their anti-conservative open bigotry and their “brown shirt” styled intimidation of Conservatives.
Steve, it’s ironic that you complain elsewhere about bigotry but make claims like “The 21st century political left in the United States is becoming more and more open about their anti-conservative bigotry and they’re leaning very heavily towards becoming fully consumed ideological totalitarians.” I doubt that’s any more true than the claim ‘The 21st century political right in the United States is becoming more and more open about their anti-liberal bigotry and they’re leaning very heavily towards becoming fully consumed ideological totalitarians.”
Do you have actual evidence that liberals exhibit more anti-conservative bigotry than conservatives exhibit anti-liberal bigotry?
Seems to me that it’s a mix on both ends of the spectrum: some people are bigots and other people aren’t.
CommitToHonestDiscussion wrote, “Steve, it’s ironic that you complain elsewhere about bigotry but make claims like “The 21st century political left in the United States is becoming more and more open about their anti-conservative bigotry and they’re leaning very heavily towards becoming fully consumed ideological totalitarians.” I doubt that’s any more true than the claim ‘The 21st century political right in the United States is becoming more and more open about their anti-liberal bigotry and they’re leaning very heavily towards becoming fully consumed ideological totalitarians.””
There is nothing ironic in my statements, nothing. Maybe you meant to say something other than “ironic”.
CommitToHonestDiscussion wrote, “Do you have actual evidence that liberals exhibit more anti-conservative bigotry than conservatives exhibit anti-liberal bigotry?”
Did you just ask that question; seriously?
For one example just look at what’s been happening on our college campuses in the 21st century; it’s not the Conservatives that are trying to silence Liberal points of view or literally shouting down Liberals on campus or protesting to keep Liberal speakers off campus so they cannot be heard, it’s Liberals trying to do these things across the USA things and they’re quite proud of their efforts. I don’t see Conservatives in the USA constantly trying to silence the opinions of Liberals, I do see a lot of Liberals constantly trying to silence Conservatives. Furthermore; the political left on social media is becoming a echo chambered hive mind that blocks anyone that doesn’t agree with their point of view. I’ve lost about 40% of my Facebook friends over the last 10 years because how dare I have an opinion that differs from the hive mind and I’m willing to state my opinion. The political left is so in-your-face that there was an entire book written about it, it called The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech written by a life long Liberal named Kristen Powers – it’s an enlightening good book. The evidence that the political left is openly intolerant, openly bigoted and openly anti-conservative to the point of it being “open season” on Conservatives is self-evident.
I simply don’t see the same kinds of blatant intolerance for opinions that the bigoted political left is showing, especially over the last four years. That said; it’s not all of those that consider themselves Liberals that are trying to silence the Conservatives but it’s clearly a majority percentage and the rest seem to enable the behaviors with their complete silence and virtue signaling. Now if you want to talk about progressives, I’m bold enough to say that all progressives want Conservatives silenced. I haven’t met a single modern progressive yet that isn’t openly intolerant, openly bigoted and completely adverse to any facts that happen to contradict their opinion. Progressives appear to be fully consumed brainwashed totalitarians, almost cultish.
CommitToHonestDiscussion wrote, “Seems to me that it’s a mix on both ends of the spectrum: some people are bigots and other people aren’t.”
On this point we agree. The difference I’m seeing is that the political left is far, far more likely to engage in irrational, unethical and immoral behaviors based on their intolerance and open bigotry, in fact it’s almost trendy right now for political left activists to act outside societal norms for the purpose of intimidation.
No, I meant “ironic.”
“Did you just ask that question; seriously?”
Yes.
“For one example just look at what’s been happening on our college campuses in the 21st century. it’s not the Conservatives that are trying to silence Liberal points of view or literally shouting down Liberals on campus or protesting to keep Liberal speakers off campus so they cannot be heard, it’s Liberals trying to do these things across the USA things and they’re quite proud of their efforts.”
First, I don’t know what we would find if we took a large random sample of educational institutions. But even if your conjecture turned out to be true, it’s not the only relevant evidence. To show that (a1 + a2 + a3 + …. an) > (b1 + b2 + b3 + …. bn), it’s not sufficient to show that a1>b1. You actually have to calculate the sums and compare the sums.
One can find examples of both liberals exhibiting anti-conservative bigotry and of conservatives exhibiting anti-liberal bigotry. We see both in the comments on this blog, for example. I don’t actually think it’s as simple as you think to gather all of the relevant evidence and figure out how to weight each bit in order to be able to add things together.
“Furthermore; the political left on social media is becoming a echo chambered hive mind that blocks anyone that doesn’t agree with their point of view.”
Again, the question is whether that’s any more true than the political right on social media becoming an echo chambered hive mind that blocks anyone that doesn’t agree with their point of view. I see some people on the left and right doing this, and I see other people on the left and right not doing it.
“I’ve lost about 40% of my Facebook friends over the last 10 years because how dare I have an opinion that differs from the hive mind and I’m willing to state my opinion.”
And for all I know, they’d say that they’re losing friends because of the hive mind on the right.
“I’m bold enough to say that all progressives want Conservatives silenced”
I consider myself progressive. I don’t want conservatives silenced. So I’m a counterexample to your belief.
“it’s almost trendy right now for political left activists to act outside societal norms for the purpose of intimidation.”
No doubt that’s why the people who went to the MI capitol armed were conservatives and why the FBI has flagged domestic terrorism by white nationalists.
Again: it’s certainly possible to present a few examples on one side or the other, but I don’t think it’s actually that easy to identify and add up all that’s relevant.
BTW, I’m not sure if you saw these responses to you the other day:
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/09/17/opus-dei-anyone-laurence-tribe-attacks-barrs-religious-beliefs-in-latest-diatribe/comment-page-1/#comment-2001836
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/09/17/opus-dei-anyone-laurence-tribe-attacks-barrs-religious-beliefs-in-latest-diatribe/comment-page-1/#comment-2001838
I shudder when I see the term “top schools”. From my experience, your location of education has nothing to do with your productivity and attitude and ability to make the world a better place for others. Take your “top schools” term and throw it away.
Does sort of remind you of this.
Former Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork, under Reagan, wrote a prophetic book in 2003 which cites the downward spiral of American’s freedoms since the revolutionary students of my generation in the 60’s and 70’s. He brilliantly surmised the outcome to be exactly where we are today.
This may not be solely these schools filtering out conservatives. Conservatives may also be filtering out these schools. I am one (at least potentially).
My oldest son achieved a 1560 on the SAT and on that basis received unsolicited from Harvard application information. They wanted him to apply but we did not even do so. Of course, there was no guarantee he would have been accepted but we did not find out because I knew I did not want him to go there. I know their extreme bias.
Sadly, Mr. Turley I did the same with the University of Chicago, your alma mater.
In theory, this is self limiting to my son, but I know in practice he would be fine. His personal development is of far greater concern to me than theoretical advancement opportunities that a Harvard would bring.
Eleazer wrote, “This may not be solely these schools filtering out conservatives. Conservatives may also be filtering out these schools.”
That is a fair point; however, you have to consider the reasons that Conservatives are choosing to filter themselves out of colleges like this, it’s because open bigotry directed at Conservatives on these campuses is completely acceptable behavior and that behavior is enabled and sometimes encouraged by staff and administration which leads directly back to Mr. Turley’s point of the colleges as a whole are filtering out Conservatives at a systemic level. It’s self evident, based on their actual words and actions, that the anti-conservative teaching staff, the anti-conservative administrations and the anti-conservative student bodies won’t tolerate Conservatives on their campus! As the campuses grow more and more intolerant based on their bigotry they turn into a ideologically isolated echo chamber or hive mind.
So Eleazer, your point is fair that Conservatives are choosing not to go to these colleges but their reasons for choosing otherwise actually support Turley’s thesis.
Agreed.
University is the place you go to get trained as an activist. I bet you can probably get better intellectual training listening to Joe Rogans podcast for a couple years.
If I would not admit anyone into my University who supported Trump if they are too stupid to see this man for the chronic and habitual liar that he is. Recently, Professor Turley called President Erdogan a “liar.” Though he has condemned some of Trump’s statements to be sure, he has never called Trump a liar, correct me if I am mistaken. Let’s see if Professor Turley will comment on Trump’s latest statement that the only way he loses in November is if the Democrats steal it. In other words, he will not recognize the legitimacy of the election unless he is declared a winner. I hope Turley will not avoid addressing this real threat to the peaceful transition of power by condemning this statement in the strongest terms.
“If I would not admit anyone into my University who supported Trump if they are too stupid to see this man for the chronic and habitual liar that he is.”
I wouldn’t admit anyone who was too stupid to see that 99% of all career politicians are “chronic and habitual” liars.
So, you definitely wouldn’t make the cut, Jeff.
There’s a great deal of artifice in public life. Commonly, no deception is achieved and on occasion it’s not even intended. Someone like Joseph Biden – who went so far as to pass off Neil Kinnock’s family history as his own – has an inclination to mendacity that I suspect was unusual in Congress among his contemporaries. Nor do I think you’re going to find too many members who have close relatives so given to massive and shameless rent-seeking. And, of course, the honor culture and courtesy culture has seen a secular decline. Odd as Anita Hill may have been, no one doubted she’d worked in the same office with Clarence Thomas for three years. Fast forward 27 years and they’re willing to try this gambit with a woman who could marshal no evidence she and the two men she accused had ever met.
I wouldn’t admit it in a public survey at Harvard. I might as well throw myself out my dorm window.
Better be careful Johnathan or you may go the way of Alan Dershowitz…..
How many truly are but know better than to admit it on such hostile territory. They might as well just sew on a Star of David onto their clothes.