> I don't know how you could be aware of what's going on in academia and believe this.
This talking point is the epitome of filter bubble bias.
First, this is usually characterized as a somewhat recent liberal attack on speech. But the most blatant and egregious examples of speech restrictions at colleges and universities in the USA all come from right-wing christian evangelical colleges. If you think being a conservative at Berkeley is bad, try being liberal (or even conservative but non-christian) at Wheaton or Hillsdale. The only examples I know of students actually expelled for blatantly political reasons all happened at christian colleges.
Second, nearly all universities are infinitely more supportive of free speech -- in policy and in practice -- than other employers or businesses.
This is especially true for private secular universities, who often embody the values of free speech without any legal obligation to do so. MIT can tell anyone they want to "get off my property" but in practice allows, hosts, and even encourages an extreme diversity of viewpoints.
You can probably build a case against my assessment if you spend all day scouring the past decade for counter-examples. In fact, that work was (literally) already done. But "cat everything | grep 'my view point'" does not a preponderance of evidence make.
Religious colleges are restricting speech mostly due to the religious nature of the institution though. A church isn't required to give equal time to atheists in its pulpit, and it's not "political" if the expulsion is due to differences in religious doctrine.
I wager that many of the expulsions at those colleges are due to said liberal holding a position counter to religious doctrine; like homosexuality is not immoral, or premarital sex is okay.
Let's try this: "liberal-leaning institutions are restricting speech mostly due to the (choose:political OR diverse OR learning-focused OR religious!) nature of the institution though. A private entity of any sort isn't required to give equal time to people it disagrees with in its space."
> and it's not "political" if the expulsion is due to differences in religious doctrine. I wager that many of the expulsions at those colleges are due to said liberal holding a position counter to religious doctrine
See, you've already conceded the only viable response to my above rewriting. Most all controversial differences in religious doctrine ARE political. Your distinction is one without difference. The political nature of these difference in doctrine is what makes them worth firing over in the first place!
Unless you want to point me to the Mathematics professor who got fired for critiquing the finer points of the Church's justification of its position on transubstantiation. (This century, please :-) )
If you want to critique Hillsdale AND Harvard et al, go right on ahead.
This is delusional. How many colleges are out there like Wheaton (?) or Hillsdale. Is the ration less than 1000:1?
And anyway it doesn't address the point. Restrictions on speech at Hillsdale don't come from rules against "hate speech". The real problem with "hate speech" is it doesn't actually mean anything. You can keep redefining it until only speech you like gets spoken.
> How many colleges are out there like Wheaton (?) or Hillsdale. Is the ration less than 1000:1?
Yes. In fact, I even said so in the post you're replying to. In the very next paragraph, I state that "nearly all universities" are extremely welcoming of free speech.
In other words, most places are great, and the vast majority of places that aren't great wrt free speech are cloisters of conservative christiandom, not liberal utopias.
My point is, if you go through each universities and evaluate its attitude toward controversial speech acts on a case-by-case basis, you'd be hard pressed to make the argument that the data set, in aggregate, supports the "liberal censorship on college campuses" narrative.
In other words, the only way to reach this conclusion is by living in a filter bubble where you a) ignore the vast majority of circumstances where universities -- especially non-public universities -- welcome controversial speech; and also b) ignore the fact that the most obvious examples of educational institutions which do not welcome controversial speech are all staunchly conservative.
Stop and think for a second. How many actual concrete examples of censorship on college campuses can you think of? 10? 20? 100? There are literally millions of political speeches and politically charged courses every semester on college campuses.
Taking millions of data points and filtering out 10 or 100 of them, and then generating a perpetual outrage machine out of your teeny tiny artisinally crafted sample set, is the definition of a delusional filter bubble.
> Restrictions on speech at Hillsdale don't come from rules against "hate speech"
1. Why in god's name does it matter what you call it? A restriction on speech is a restriction on speech. Either you value free speech or you don't.
2. Here's one plausible definition of hate speech: "behavior that -- on the part of individuals or student organizations -- violates the bounds of common decency and civility... or that disrupts the climate of academic reflection and discourse proper to serious study."
Guess which college categorizes this behavior as a valid reason for expulsion.
How many instances does Evergreen rate? How many instances of self censorship do you think such an atmosphere creates? Do you think actions like this only result in one person being afraid to speak up? Does it only matter if someone is willing to go to a journalist and make themselves a target?
> I guess you could go through the case log of FIRE.
As I stated above,
>> You can probably build a case against my assessment if you spend all day scouring the past decade for counter-examples. In fact, that work was (literally) already done
In that comment, I was referring to the FIRE database.
So I already addressed the rest of your argument:
>> But "cat everything | grep 'my view point'" does not a preponderance of evidence make.
And in the post after that:
> There are literally millions of political speeches and politically charged courses every semester on college campuses. Taking millions of data points and filtering out 10 or 100 of them, and then generating a perpetual outrage machine out of your teeny tiny artisinally crafted sample set, is the definition of a delusional filter bubble.
I'm glad organizations like FIRE exist!
I agree places like Evergreen have bad cultures.
But the "liberal threat to free speech on college campuses" is 1) extraordinarily over-blown to the point of absurdity; and 2) places undo emphasis on liberal institutions when the most heinously anti-free-speech institutions are all conservative.
You still haven't explained what a "preponderance of evidence" looks like. You keep doing blanket refusals that the liberal threat to free speech is overblown.
The claim at hand: "colleges are restricting conservative speech".
I make two counter-points:
1. Writ large, Colleges remain some of the most liberal institutions when it comes to free speech.
2. The emphasis on "liberal" is misplaced since all the best exemplars are religious universities. (I think we agree on at least the second part of this claim).
Regarding 1, I'm not sure what a "preponderance of evidence" looks like for this claim, but I'd eat a shoe if even 0.001% of controversial speech acts that happen on college campuses result in any action, let alone something that actually effects anyone's life in any material way.
Combining FIRE's cases and disinvitations lists, I have something far south of 1000 total data points. People talk about controversial things a lot at colleges and universities.
Delusion definition[1]: an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.
Note that GP chose to describe "filter bubble bias" which is a neutral observation, whereas P chose to describe GP's idea as "delusional" which carries the connotation of a mental disorder.
Both definitely support your point that for holding different views than the majority, people were attacked and/or suppressed. Here's the thing though: Wheaton is an evangelical college. Is it expected that an evangelical Christian college is going to be open to or supportive of a professor saying that Muslims and Christians worship the same God? Or that marriage is a union between more than just a man and a woman? I think that's kind of like going into r/The_Donald and then posting pro Hillary comments. It's not the kind of venue that is established for dissenting views. They're built for proselytization. Furthermore, association of evangelical universities and academia as a whole seems like a mismatch considering how specific their focus is.
On the other hand, one can argue that secular universities such as Berkeley and MIT have a much different expectation. It's easier to argue that as they are secular universities (and in the case of Berkeley public and home of the FSM movement), they are meant to represent a much wider set of views.
But when you see dramatic shifts in the political leanings of professors, then followed by conservatives being attacked on campuses that are dominated by liberal thought you have to wonder. I'm not sure what qualifies as a preponderance of evidence in this case according to your words.
That being said, I would also argue that there is plenty of persecution of liberals in deeply conservative areas as well. It's not really about conservative vs liberal, so much as it's about how majorities operate and deal with minorities.
> Furthermore, association of evangelical universities and academia as a whole seems like a mismatch considering how specific their focus is.
This is just tautologically false. IDK what else to say about this particular quote.
I don't really understand the rest of your first paragraph. Why does MIT have a special duty to respect the speech of e.g., neo-luddites or young earth creationists where Wheaton has no reciprocal duty?
I believe free speech is imperative to higher education. I also think the current hysteria about liberals attack free speech on college campuses is 1) ridiculously overblown at 99% of institutions; and 2) hilariously misdirected given that the worst offenders are conservative christian institutions.
> On the other hand, one can argue that secular universities such as Berkeley and MIT have a much different expectation
Berkeley absolutely does. They are publicly funded. This muddies the waters some because Berkeley almost certainly allows some speech -- on the left and the right -- which, if not for constitutional necessity -- it might prefer to silence.
So the comparison is unfair both to Wheaton and to Berkeley. Unfair to Wheaton because it doesn't have a legal requirement to allow speech. And unfair to Berkeley because it can't quietly turn people away (if leftist-Milo wanted to give a speech at Wheaton we would never hear about it, but Milo can generate an entire news cycle out of Berkeley because they're obligated to not turn him away.)
This is why I put special emphasis on a private secular vs. private evangelical comparison. It's fair to both sides.
I'm not sure why MIT has any special obligation to allow free speech that isn't shared by Wheaton. Care to explain?
> But when you see dramatic shifts in the political leanings of professors, then followed by conservatives being attacked on campuses that are dominated by liberal thought you have to wonder. I'm not sure what qualifies as a preponderance of evidence in this case according to your words.
Look, secular universities just don't discriminate on the basis of political belief. Outside of a few very niche, very tiny, very not-influential departments, this just doesn't happen either explicitly or implicitly. When it comes to hiring new professors, teaching matters. Research matters. Personal political beliefs do not.
EXCEPT conservative christian colleges, which uniformly want a whole damn essay dedicated to convincing them candidates christian enough and conservative enough to work there.
Liberals are over-represented on college campuses and in the faculty. There are a lot of reasons for this. (I conjecture that one major factor is the 5-7 year pledge of poverty that precedes an academic career. But again, lots of reasons.)
But IMO there is a very important difference between not correcting for an existing bias in your hiring pipeline, and actively and explicitly introducing political bias into your hiring pipeline. I assert the latter rarely if ever happens at liberal-leaning universities, but is absolutely part of the explicit hiring policy at many conservative-leaning universities.
> It's not really about conservative vs liberal, so much as it's about how majorities operate and deal with minorities.
My personal experience -- and I think the evidence backs me on this -- is that liberal universities are far more welcoming to conservative viewpoints than the other way around.
> This is just tautologically false. IDK what else to say about this particular quote.
Re: the rest of your first paragraph, this seems like a huge double standard. Would you be happy with MIT throwing out every climate skeptic and neo-luddite if only they wrote "advancement of science and technology" into their charter?
Not really. Religion as in organized religion exists to promote a specific belief system. Science has a much different mission in it's search to describe the world accurately. A dissenting view there can potentially be the truthful path.
If MIT threw out every scientist who opposed global warming, they'd be little better than a religious college.
> This is why I put special emphasis on a private secular vs. private evangelical comparison. It's fair to both sides.
I'm not sure why MIT has any special obligation to allow free speech that isn't shared by Wheaton. Care to explain?
MIT has an obligation if it wants to present itself as a college that promotes education in general. Wheaton is there to teach people about a Christ filled life. MIT makes it clear they value innovation and groundbreaking ideas and discoveries. There no way to do that effectively without considering as many points as possible.
> Look, secular universities just don't discriminate on the basis of political belief. Outside of a few very niche, very tiny, very not-influential departments, this just doesn't happen either explicitly or implicitly. When it comes to hiring new professors, teaching matters. Research matters. Personal political beliefs do not.
Freddie has written a lot on this subject in general. In fact he's been routinely attacked and DDOSed for critiquing the liberal culture both on campus and in the institution. He's posted some really controversial stuff about how bad the research is in the liberal arts. It's also worth noting that he's hardly a conservative and is quite soundly a liberal.
Money quote:
"And while I think conservative students can mostly get by fine on the average campus, I really can’t imagine going through life as a conservative professor, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Is that a problem? That depends on your point of view. But if it’s happening, shouldn’t we talk about the fact that it’s happening?"
> "My personal experience -- and I think the evidence backs me on this -- is that liberal universities are far more welcoming to conservative viewpoints than the other way around."
I don't know how to measure the merits of explusion/suspension vs. social ostracization. I also have known a fair amount of conservative people at Berkeley due to my efforts to outreach to other point of views in my student days. I don't think "welcoming" is the word that they would use when it comes to liberals and conservative viewpoints.
> MIT... science... There no way to do that effectively without considering as many points as possible.
Respectfully, exactly the opposite is the case. Ask any mathematician at a top university how many crackpot letters they have to throw out every year. Ask any biologist how much Real Work they would get done if they had a department half-full of young earth creationists.
Universities are bastions of free speech, but they are also inherently exclusionary. And places like MIT regularly let down that exclusionary guard to invite speech that explicitly interferes with the efficiency their institutional truth-finding mission. An admirable thing, IMO.
At universities, free speech serves a political purpose far more than it serves a scientific purpose.
I don't buy your distinction between Wheaton and MIT. Free speech pre-dates the scientific method and exists independently of scientific inquiry.
Also, at places like Wheaton and Hillsdale, politics are part-and-parcel with religion. Demanding religious belief, while allow a broad spectrum in which to express that belief, is one thing. But the divide between politics and religion at these places is tenuous at best.
> I really can’t imagine going through life as a conservative professor... particularly in the humanities and social sciences
In the sciences no one cares. Except Wheaton et al, who are afraid of the liberal atheist branches of mathematics or something...?
Humanities and social sciences vary by field. IDK a lot about most of them them. But the one person I know from purdue -- where Freddie is from -- is in the humanities and very conservative (and doesn't hide it or anything).
Maybe Freddie should've taken a leaf out of your book and talked to more people while at Purdue -- the unimaginable was right in front of him ;-)
> I don't think "welcoming" is the word that they would use when it comes to liberals and conservative viewpoints.
Sure, "more" is relative and being a minority always sucks.
Still, MIT might make you feel alone. Hillsdale will just expel you.
> I don't buy your distinction between Wheaton and MIT. Free speech pre-dates the scientific method and exists independently of scientific inquiry.
You can publish your research that challenges the status quo so long as Free Speech is respected. Do you think it's a coincidence that Socrates challenged the physicists in Athens? (Granted that was one of the reasons they executed him) Or Aristotle? I can't think of better examples of early science and those came up under the first place we know of that did direct democracy.
> Also, at places like Wheaton and Hillsdale, politics are part-and-parcel with religion. Demanding religious belief, while allow a broad spectrum in which to express that belief, is one thing. But the divide between politics and religion at these places is tenuous at best.
Again. They're evangelical colleges. What do you really expect?
> Humanities and social sciences vary by field. IDK a lot about most of them them. But the one person I know from purdue -- where Freddie is from -- is in the humanities and very conservative (and doesn't hide it or anything).
Maybe Freddie should've taken a leaf out of your book and talked to more people while at Purdue -- the unimaginable was right in front of him ;-)
Yes, one person is a preponderance of evidence. Not countless articles of students and professors being harassed and attacked for their conservative views in an environment that is supposed to be about higher truth. And some of those views that are becoming less and less conservative over time.
"For years and years I have denied the idea that campus is a space that’s antagonistic to conservative students. I thought Michael Berube’s book What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? was the last word on the subject. I still reject a lot of the David Horowitz narrative. But as a member of the higher education community I just have to be real with you: the vibe on campus really has changed. I spent years teaching at a university in a conservative state recently and I was kind of shocked at how openly fellow instructors would complain about the politics of their students, how personal they go when condemning their students who espoused conventional Republican politics. I encounter professors all the time who think that it’s fine for a student to say “I’m With Her” in class but not for a student to say “Make America Great Again” — that’s hate speech, see — despite the fact that both are simply the recent campaign slogans of the two major political parties. Yet those profs recoil at the idea that they’re not accepting of conservative students.
I hear people say that they won’t permit arguments against affirmative action in their classes — hate speech, again — despite the fact that depending on how the question is asked, a majority of Americans oppose race-based affirmative action in polling, including in some polls a majority of Hispanic Americans. The number of boilerplate conservative opinions that are taken to be too offensive to be voiced in the campus space just grows and grows, and yet progressive profs I know are so offended by the idea that they could be creating a hostile atmosphere, they won’t even discuss the subject in good faith."
"The idea that we need any intellectual diversity at all invites immediate incredulous statements like, “you’re saying we should debate eugenics?!?,” as though the only positions that exist are the obviously correct and the obviously horrible. The idea that you’re supposed to read the publications of the antagonistic viewpoint has been dismissed as a relic. People call for conservative books to be pulled from library shelves; they insist that the plays of conservative David Mamet have no place in the contemporary theater;"
> Sure, "more" is relative and being a minority always sucks.
Still, MIT might make you feel alone. Hillsdale will just expel you.
I don't think forced resignation and expulsion are much different.
I've already conceded that most universities are majority liberal and that being in a minority is always uncomfortable.
The rest of your anecdotes are just that. So one guy has some bad coworkers. BTW, my response is more than just any old anecdote -- It's a refutation of the single anecdote that you're offering. Same time, same place.
Do people get harassed and fired for political beliefs? Absolutely. And the fact that organizations like FIRE fight back when this happens is great.
But the "liberals attacking free speech on campus" thing is a bunch of politicized bullshit. At most non-religious universities, this isn't happening in any meaningful sense.
Let's put this in perspective. FIRE has less than 1000 cases over the past decade that I can find on their website. Literally millions -- probably tens of millions -- of controversial speech acts happen on American campuses every year.
Universities are still bastions of free speech. If you're conservative, you might find a lot of people who disagree with you. But the odds are extraordinarily small that you'll be silenced in any meaningful way. Like literally a one in a million+ shot.
I'm not saying that it's OK when it happens. I'm just saying the whole "liberals shut down free speech on campus thing" is over-dramatized echo chamber bullshit, that you only notice because there's an entire cottage industry generating outrage every time that 1/1000000 event happens.
this reply probably doesn't matter since this thread is a few days old, but here goes anyway:
> I encounter professors all the time who think that it’s fine for a student to say “I’m With Her” in class but not for a student to say “Make America Great Again” — that’s hate speech, see — despite the fact that both are simply the recent campaign slogans of the two major political parties.
here's the thing: "Make America Great Again" is a dog-whistle slogan, pining for a time that was racist. it is, to a lot of people (myself included), an inherently racist slogan. so, the problem is that a statement which was "simply the recent campaign [slogan]" of a major political party was, in fact, racist. i know it seems crazy to some people, but one of our major political parties ran an overtly racist candidate, on a (barely) covertly racist platform.
EDIT: sometimes the platform was overtly racist too. though it tried it's best to make it palatable for people who wouldn't want to identify as racist.
I don't know how you could be aware of what's going on in academia and believe this.