Comment by lurk2

Comment by lurk2 3 days ago

> when partisanship has to be disguised.

The conservatives are right about the partisan bias of universities. See this survey by Mitchell Langbert.

https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/2/homogenous_the_p...

Anthropology and communications saw no registered Republicans. English, Sociology, and Art departments had a ratio of around 40:1 Democrat professors Republican professors, whereas in technical fields the ratio drops considerably to only 1.6:1 in engineering, and around 5:1 for economics, chemistry, and mathematics.

Langbert notes:

> The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free—having zero Republicans.

Duke: https://dukechronicle.com/article/duke-university-faculty-su...

> When asked for their political identities on a scale of “very liberal” to “very conservative,” 23.2% of respondents identified as “very liberal,” 38.53% identified as “somewhat liberal,” 24.48% identified as moderates or centrists, 9.92% identified as “somewhat conservative” and 3.87% identified as “very conservative.”

Yale: https://buckleyinstitute.com/faculty-political-diversity-rep...

> Across 14 departments in the Social Sciences and Humanities, the report identified 312 Democrat faculty (88%) and only 4 Republicans (1.1%), a ratio of around 78 to 1.

immibis 3 days ago

Is this a problem? We expect universities to have a pro-truth, pro-reality, pro-knowledge bias, which are things the Republican party overtly rejects. We could expect that Republicans might not make it to universities as often, or they might not want to attend, or they might cease being Republicans upon learning facts and logic. None of this would be surprising and none of this would necessarily be a problem by itself.

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lurk2 3 days ago

> We expect universities to have a pro-truth, pro-reality, pro-knowledge bias, which are things the Republican party overtly rejects.
The people you’re pretending to be harbingers of truth believe that men can get pregnant.
> or they might cease being Republicans upon learning facts and logic.
So why is the bias the strongest in the least rigorous fields (communications, anthropology, music) and weakest is the most rigorous (mathematics, engineering, medicine, physics)?

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- immibis 2 days ago
  
  Well they can. Some transgender men can get pregnant AFAIK.
  This bias might be strongest in humanities because of self selection - conservatives think those are useless, but can see the utility in engineering - among other reasons.
  
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  quasopp 2 days ago
  
  Yes, but that is because they are in fact women. This is obvious, surely.
  
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gedy 3 days ago

> We expect universities to have a pro-truth, pro-reality, pro-knowledge bias
And yet they are far from that. Lots of finger-in-ears, "la-la-la-I can't hear you" behaviour from universities in US/west past decade for sure.

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- nobodyandproud 3 days ago
  
  Speaking of fingers in ears…
  That happens in conservative circles too. But instead of 4 years, Americans like myself are stuck with 40 years of business indoctrination from pro-business and conservative “leadership”.
  The same leadership, by the way, that largely insisted on college degrees in the first place.
  
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overfeed 3 days ago

> The conservatives are right about the partisan bias of universities

Yes - and? Police forces and catholic churches skew conservative, but I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas.

You seem like you expect political "neutrality", but if you look at at any institution, you'll find "bias": theatre fook, country music, poets, small Business owners, baristas , farmers, CxOs, software engineers tend to lean one way or another on average. The battle is not to establish political neutrality everywhere, but selective against universities because the staff & students leans left. I'm yet to hear conservatives complain about the political bias in the Fraternal Order of Police or the FBI.

Looking at history, every nascent autocracy takes aim at independent intellectuals, like clockwork. First to be neutralized is the opposition, then the press, then the intellectuals in higher education.

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lurk2 3 days ago

> I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas.
There are plenty of conservatives interested in anthropology; there’s no reason to think they’ve self-selected out of the pool, so then we have to consider if conservatives enter the field but are exposed to new ideas such that none remain conservatives for long (this seems unlikely), or that these departments have been taken over by people who explicitly use their influence within these departments to promote certain narratives; this is far more likely as they have been explicitly stating that this is what they are doing for decades now.
This theory is further corroborated by where you see this bias; it’s the least pronounced in quantitative, technical fields (mathematics, engineering, chemistry), and most pronounced in fields that are almost completely qualitative.

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- esrauch 3 days ago
  
  I'm not sure what evidence you would expect to see if it was self-selection because of an in-group mentality versus explicit hostility to intentionally keep some out.
  By comparison, is there some affirmative evidence for the reason why there are so few liberals in the FBI is because they self-selected out, instead of that the FBI being perceived as a conservative institution causes them to self-select out?
  
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  lurk2 3 days ago
  
  > I'm not sure what evidence you would expect to see if it was self-selection because of an in-group mentality versus explicit hostility to intentionally keep some out.
  What about an explicit roadmap?
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming
  > is there some affirmative evidence for the reason why there are so few liberals in the FBI is because they self-selected out, instead of that the FBI being perceived as a conservative institution causes them to self-select out?
  I’m not sure I understand your question. I would presume if people are self-selecting out of any organization it’s because they believe it isn’t a suitable place for them, and if this division is along party lines then politics is likely to be the cause of that belief. In either case, if the FBI skews conservative, I would guess that this was due to internal gatekeeping, not self-selection, and I think the history of the organization supports that assertion.
  
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- overfeed 3 days ago
  
  > or that these departments have been taken over by people who explicitly use their influence within these departments to promote certain narratives
  What mechanisms do these department heads use to suppress conservative viewpoints in research? While politics in academia can be vicious, it's never a grand conspiracy like you think it is, it's typically, and depressingly petty issues and grudges.
  
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  lurk2 3 days ago
  
  > What mechanisms do these department heads use to suppress conservative viewpoints in research?
  DEI has likely had a minor influence. In the articles I linked above, the bias towards liberalism is weakest among Asians, then whites, and then strongest among blacks and Latinos. I don’t know what the racial composition of professors looks like, so this is just a hunch.
  The primary mechanism would be to simply avoid hiring those who fail to signal that they are sufficiently liberal, and avoid funding research that would reach illiberal conclusions. I can’t point you to any evidence of this besides the paper I linked above, but which seems more likely:
  1) Republican opinions just so obviously conflict with the study of communications that there are zero professors of communications who are registered Republicans.
  2) Democrats took control of these positions and did not care to invite anyone who didn’t signal that they were ideological fellow travellers?
  > While politics in academia can be vicious, it's never a grand conspiracy like you think it is, it's typically, and depressingly petty issues and grudges.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming
  
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- TheOtherHobbes 3 days ago
  
  Being interested is not the same as being competent.
  Conservatism is not a doctrine of competence. Experience shows time and again that conservatives can't think, can't plan, and can't govern. They act in emotional and purely self-interested ways to promote rigid hierarchies, and are reliably surprised by consequences that are obvious and predictable to rational educated actors.
  Brexit. Anti-vax campaigns. Anti-masking. Racism. "Lowering corporate taxes makes everyone richer."
  All delusional, all emotionally motivated, all predictable failures with terrible consequences.
  
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  inemesitaffia 3 days ago
  
  I've seen this exact claim in the NYT and it doesn't hold muster.
  You're just othering.
  The organizations we're talking about aren't diverse, inclusive or representative.
  Nor is conservativatism a Western only thing.
  
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ReflectedImage 3 days ago

This is a conservative problem.

Conservatives are split into 2 groups. Conservatives who are in it for the money and conservatives who are in it because they don't know any better.

College professor is not a well paying job for the level of skill required nor is it a job that someone who isn't very knowledgeable could do. That excludes most conservatives from the position.

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lurk2 3 days ago

> Conservatives are split into 2 groups. Conservatives who are in it for the money and conservatives who are in it because they don't know any better.
An inane assertion made without evidence.
> nor is it a job that someone who isn't very knowledgeable could do
So why is the bias the worst in the least rigorous fields?

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