While many professors are liberals, some conservatives contend they are indoctrinating students into liberal ideology and that conservative students fear to speak freely within the ivory towers. Some also claim that professors are not always perpetrators of the crimes of political correctness, they are sometimes the victims.
One scenario in which professors are presented as victims is when they are required to write statements of their commitment to diversity when applying for tenure (and in some other cases). Another matter is the effort of certain schools to monitor professors for signs of bias in the classroom. This monitoring is not the sort proposed by Florida law makers which is to check professors for signs of bias against conservatives and in favor of liberal ideology. Instead, this monitoring checks professors for their sensitivity to diversity and their cultural awareness.
From a neutral standpoint, this puts professors between the Scylla of conservative fears of liberal dominance and the Charybdis of liberal fears of a lack of sensitivity to diversity. If a professor expresses and enforces sensitivity to diversity in their classes, they would appear to be indoctrinating students in liberal ideology and silencing conservatives. If they do not express and enforce sensitivity to diversity, they can run into trouble in their academic advancement and employment.
Those who think professors are indoctrinating students and silencing conservatives will tend to favor laws, executive orders and policies that purport to protect conservatives from such alleged oppression. They will also tend to oppose laws, executive orders, and policies that purport to protect women and minorities from oppression in the classroom. As such, one might suspect that they do not care about freedom of expression and oppression in general—they just care about their own group.
It could be objected that they do care about freedom and oppression in general, they just think that their orders, laws and policies protect freedom while those of the liberals do not. To the degree that such orders, laws and polices defend freedom in general, this claim is plausible—to the degree they do not, the claim is implausible.
Those who favor orders, laws and policies that aim at sensitivity to diversity will tend to see the conservative orders, laws and policies as attempts to take away the protection of oppressed groups while providing protection for conservative students and faculty who lack sensitivity to diversity. Roughly put, the conservatives will be seen as trying to roll back the clock on campuses to a time when straight, white men were able to express and act on their prejudices and biases with relative impunity and to the detriment of oppressed groups.
Opponents of these liberal orders, laws and policies can argue they are aimed at oppressing conservatives, silencing dissent, enforcing a leftist ideology, and suppressing free inquiry. The main argument would tend to involve the claims that the talk of sensitivity to diversity is simply cover for these efforts at ideological hegemony and that the liberals do not really care about freedom, except the freedom of their side to indoctrinate and to silence conservatives.
The defenders of the liberal orders, laws and policies can counter this by arguing that they do support freedom and oppose oppression in general and not just for their own side. To the degree that these things protect freedom and limit oppression in general, this claim would be plausible. To the degree that they do not, this claim would lack plausibility.
Some defenders of these things might acknowledge they do restrict the freedom of some. To be specific, they are aimed at preventing professors from creating hostile classrooms and protecting students in groups that have long been oppressed or marginalized. In contrast, they contend, the conservatives want to allow for classrooms that are hostile to these students and want to protect groups that have long been oppressing and marginalizing others. These claims do have some merit but should not simply be assumed to be true.
My own view is that the liberals and conservatives seem to be right about at least one thing: the other side often endeavors to protect their side and the motivations can stem more from love of an ideology than a love of freedom. A possible solution is to craft orders, laws and policies that do for real what the ideological versions purport to do, namely protect faculty and student freedom while also ensuring that classrooms are not hostile environments. While this might seem idealistic, it is something that most faculty already do reasonably well.
I have no idea where to start with this.
First, separating out “Conservatives” and “Liberals” as cohesive groups of course leads to an oversimplified model. (Also, I am not comfortable with the current American meaning of “liberal”. I don’t like its repurposing, and I’m not sure I quite grasp the exact intent.)
The threat to free expression is not one-sided. I recently came across a Yale survey which indicated about half of conservatives were at least sometimes afraid to speak up in class on political footballs, but also about a third of liberals. Not surprising when we see that liberal-on-liberal catfighting is often the most vicious, cf. Evergreen, or search for “TERF” on Twitter. Emo Phillips’ great joke applies to that: https://youtu.be/l3fAcxcxoZ8
The defenders of the liberal orders, laws and policies can counter this by arguing that they do support freedom
They can’t, at least if by “liberal” we mean here people who want to enforce their view of equality. Equality can be achieved in a specified area only by coercion, which contradicts any claim of working towards freedom. The more equality, the more coercion needed. Freedom and equality of outcome are necessarily opposed, at least in part.
A possible solution is to craft orders, laws and policies that do for real what the ideological versions purport to do, namely protect faculty and student freedom while also ensuring that classrooms are not hostile environments. Good, but where to start? How big is this problem? If it is big, (for some value of “big”) how much of the problem lies with students, with faculty, with administrators? How do we quantify this so that we can all have confidence in the amounts?
While this might seem idealistic, it is something that most faculty already do reasonably well.
I suspect so. I also believe that some minority do not even try.
Craft laws to protect freedom? We already have the First Amendment which explicitly states that congress shall pass no laws abridging the freedom of speech. Laws restrict freedoms. FFFS, this was once something taught in the better schools and understood by the Foundrrs as can be found in the Federalist Papers and other background documents.
But of course this is all bullshit anyway. I renounce myself for taking such dreck from such a buffoon seriously. The problem is he’s a teacher paid via our extorted tax dollars.
“Progressives” is better than “liberals.” Liberals from the 1980s and 1990s are viewed as conservatives today.
Mike—I hope you answer—what is the nightmare scenario for lefties? If conservatives could get everything they wanted, what would change in the U.S.?
A realistic nightmare or full nightmare mode?
Dems want to eliminate the electoral college, pack the Supreme Court, pass Medicare for all, eliminate ICE, give reparations to African-Americans, stop climate change with the Green New Deal..
Republicans want to…reduce the number of abortions…
Clearly, Republicans are the dangerous ones. Mike?
Well, Republicans also want to pack the supreme court. The don’t seem to have any health care plan beyond repeal Obamacare. They are also rolling back regulations protecting consumers, the environment and so on. They are also ballooning the deficit and putting incompetent people in charge of federal agencies. So, Republicans.
Packing the court means increasing the number of justices. R’s have no plan to do that.
They were unable to repeal O’care with a Republican House, so that isn’t happening.
What consumers have been left unprotected? What environmental damage has been done?
Ballooning the deficit — true, but is this a bug or feature for Dems?
Which do you think is worse, TJ, that Mike doesn’t know what you meant by the term “packing the court” or that he pretends not to know what you meant?
See CoffeTime, this is the sort of thing I’m getting at. You can’t use logic in the argument because it’s not meant to be an argument in the first place. Use of logical fallacies gives way to feigned ignorance or willful misunderstanding. Whatever works. Because these are not arguments, they are polemics. And remember, Mike teaches ethics. But hey, Groundhog Day again.
I grant you it’s a bit strange that Mike doesn’t know what packing the court means, or that it is a proposal from the left wing of the Democratic Party. Even I knew that!
It doesn’t seem to me that anybody in the US has a coherent vision for healthcare that can achieve sufficient consensus, so, while the Republican failure was indeed epic, the ACA was never going to survive on its own without further legislative and financial input anyhow. It was always doomed to fail without ongoing watering. This is indeed a problem for both parties, except that with the deadlock, each can now point at the other as being the obstruction, so that’s an upside, from the politicians’ point of view.
“Regulations protecting consumers, the environment” are always a balancing act. If you truly want to protect consumers 100%, put so many regulations in place that it’s not worth anybody’s time to try to make anything. If you truly want Clean Air, forbid all burning of everything. If you truly want Clean Water, forbid all discharge of anything into any water, and forbid all use of all substances that might leech into any water source – build a giant Marsdome for the people to live in, and recycle everything within it. I haven’t been following events on this front, but I’m not aware of any significant changes that have taken place in the last two years. Rather than such a vague and overgeneralised charge, I too would want to see specific arguments on specific issues.
“Ballooning the deficit and putting incompetent people in charge” seems to be a regular thing regardless of which party is in charge, and looking at the current direction and standard-bearers for the Democrats, I don’t see much hope of them doing any better.
Appealing to logic for support in this kind of discussion is as useful as appealing to the Easter Bunny. I had lots of jobs and titles, but at base I have been a programmer for decades. Pure Boolean logic is my working material – I’m used to wrangling pages and pages of ANDs and ORs and XORs and NOTs. The nice thing about programs is that you can run them and test whether you have made specific errors. Arguments of the sort presented in these posts have almost nothing to do with logic, and the tiny bit of logic used barely registers at all. Further, a page of prose cannot be tested.
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I grant you it’s a bit strange that Mike doesn’t know”
Not strange at all. Ignorant or convenient. I suspect the latter but would not be surprised either way. Hence my question as I am genuinely curious for other perspectives.
On stupid commuter train today so this will have to be short….Re the ACA, as you note on other issues, it much more greatly applies to HC, there never will be a perfect solution as…now get this because apparently it is some big secret… EVERYBODY DIES…ahem…so there will always be bitching. Taking HC, and it really should only be health insurance, you should be responsible for your own HC, further and further away from personal choice and personal responsibility will fail. As you note (and I can’t get into it now though I think I have made this point many times here before) it will never be adequately funded. This “Affordable” BS costs me over $1700/month for $15K pp deductible for wife and I. Which is why I am riding this crappy Choo-choo to a job I had to take a significant pay cut for, simply because of this (and some other stupid tax laws that I don’t have time to get into now). It has gone up $150-$200/month over the last three years. I could say much much more but I just don’t have the time right now.
Q: Did you wipe your server?
A: “What? Like with a cloth or something?”
Well in Hillary’s defense, she doesn’t get paid to teach ethics.
Do you mean “pack the court” in terms of packing it with judges favorable to one’s party, or “pack the court” as FDR tried to do by adding more seats that he hoped he could fill? The obvious downside of adding more seats is that it just means the next go-round the other side will fill those with their folks. Or just pack the court some more. So, if the Democrats add 6 more seats to get their folks in, the Republicans would presumably add 7 seats when they took the throne again. And so on, until we have 500 judges.
But, I suppose that it would yield a short term advantage.
I always thought “pack the court” was a poor expression for talking about adding more seats. When one packs a bag or packs a stadium, one is not adding more bag or seats. One is just filling them. So, “expand the court seats” would be clearer.
This is an obviously dumb argument, even for you. Anyone else buying this crap? Must I explain everything? If so, it ain’t gonna be pretty.
In any case, R’s have no plan to “fundamentally change” the U.S.