Academics should be valued and sought after not for the conclusions they draw but for the quality of the arguments they produce in support of those conclusions. This is just politics of identity 2.0. It will come back to bite with a vengeance.
1
There is a problem with bias on campuses. Groupthink is real. It is giving rise to fascism https://youtu.be/-1P_1mLlJik?t=5s
What may be done immediately is to introduce in all courses a component of OBJECTIVE discourse. What are the weaknesses, counter-arguments; where are the flaws / fallacies in the beliefs you hold? MAKE students take positions that they do not like, believe in, or even want to encourage. The teachers have to buy in. When you write a paper, or make an argument in class, you must give equal time to opposing views and do it persuasively.
“Tomorrow we will discuss gender fluidity. I will call on three students-randomly-to argue for and three students to argue against the proposition for 3 minutes each (if I call on you and you are absent, you get 0%). No volunteers. This is 5% of your grade.“ Students will then have to GET the other POV and hold it, at least for a while, or not excel.
Especially necessary are courses in Honest Civics (and Home Economics-consider Blue Apron): You should not be able to get out of college without mastering civil discourse and engagement…and preparing a healthy meal in a decent home.
What passes for Civics now is Left/Progressive activism https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=w...
There are very few conservatives in the humanities or social sciences because conservative students are not admitted into Ph.D. programs by liberals. If a conservative does somehow managed to earn a Ph.D. then he or she will not get a tenure track appointment. Again, liberals put up another barricade. The liberals are very good at screaming toleration but they do not practice it at all.
The colleges have become farms teams for leftists.
Indoctrination has replaced education.
The amount of stereotyping, bigotry and hate spewed by the top commenters (all verified commenters by the way - well done NYT!) would give any white nationalist a run for their money. That vaunted “progressive” open mindedness on full display - sarcasm intended.
2
Soooooooooooo, would you invite slave owners to be students in a college ? Perhaps a slave-owners college would be the right place for them.
How far from reality , truthfulness & justice does one have to be to be disqualified from participating in the society they seek to damage ? Yes , education is the answer to fix the problem but it is a long hard road given that evolution of our species did not emphasize the development of Critical Thinking genes. Just opposite happened. The nerds were the least likely to breed. The prehistoric offspring of our species survived because they heeded their elders (learned how to survive). It is in our DNA to channel our elders who steep us in their ways/thinking making it very difficult to escape/think outside the box. eg. The Amish manage to maintain a 19th century way of life surrounded by a 21st century world. A few escape but the replacements are more than enough to keep the culture/farms going.
If colleges and universities make explicit efforts to recruit politically conservative students in the hyper-divisive era of Trump, they have to be realistically prepared for the likelihood of some of those students inviting right wing provocateurs and extremists to speak on their campuses. Additionally, they had better significantly boost their security budgets to deal with the disruptive effects of those campus invites. "Free speech" in a time of renewed calls for white supremacy, neo-Nazi dog-whistles, and other forms of hate speech can indeed be very expensive vocalizing, also.
20
I went to engineering school (U of Fla) and can't recall a smidgen of left or right taint, only the material needed to be an electrical engineer. Literature, writing, humanities, history, and civics should be taught from 6th grade on so that people grow up with a basic knowledge of how to be a citizen in the US and the many ways a nation can go and have gone wrong. Those subjects are as important as learning how to get a paycheck. If we start to denigrate colleges and universities because they have some perceived political taint, we sink to the level of the Ayatollah's IRAN.
27
Great idea! Our failing education systems is what got Trump in office. Shame on us. Wider access to higher education is our only hope.
8
“But to do that, those dorm mates must have different opinions and an invitation to express them. Most colleges like hers aren’t creating that atmosphere, she said ...”
That’s why I think campuses aren’t the place for learning at all. They’re very expensive playgrounds. In a non-dysfunctional society, the city/community would be your campus, and you would receive a great deal of your course content streamed through an intranet/Internet link.
Many Americans are hung up on these conservative/liberal labels, but the issues are more fundamental. Why would you think a society can be successful when you laid down such a ridiculously high tax on even really basic education? The answer is that only a fool would think that will work. Our problems are endless and worsening (100 dead per day from drugs, for example, that’s over 30,000 per year, one problem of many, and that's an easy one), and “higher education” on the old model is irrelevant to them.
A better reason for colleges to actively recruit white lower-class rural students--
EDUCATE THEM!
17
I grew up in alabama and don't need additional education in evangelicalism. I suppose that those in the northeast my benefit from creationism and serpent-handling as a college sport. Why dignify ignorance? It sure doesn't care about rationality.
18
Has Mr Bruni considered that this whole trope about "conservative" political philosophy not being taught, is another ideological fabrication to stoke yet more right-wing outrage?
What is conservative thought? Edmund Burke? David Hume? Locke, Plato? Are the underpinnings of conservative philosophy not taught at our universities? I would doubt it.
The issue of foolish liberal ideologues preventing conservative speakers from talking on campuses is a separate one. They should not be condoned any more their conservative counterparts.
And in general, professors, liberal, left-wing and conservative should be grading their students based on the quality and cogency of their arguments, not on their agreement with the professor's viewpoint. One attends college to enhance and refine one's ability to think clearly and critically, not parrot the media or the political parties, who do that job themselves.
16
The problem i have with including conservative viewpoints is that it seems to also include creationist viewpoints. Because these are provably false, I would not want them taught to anyone who will eventually make a decision concerning anyone else.
15
Yes, indeed, let's increase "diversity of thought" in the university, and then, in K-12, which is dominated by a conservative ideology in virtually every state.
I'd love to see some socialists and communists in our economic departments, which are so doctrinaire in their free market fetishism as to be laughable. Some fascists and anarchists in our political science departments would be a breath of fresh air. Or perhaps some advocates for a caliphate, their friends who advocate Sharia law should be given a place in our law schools. Let's find some creationists for our biology departments, and flat earthers for geology.
What happens, Frank, when the parties change positions on an issue--say like when Nixon employed the "southern strategy"? Do we throw those faculty out on their ear?
Perhaps the solution is for the Republican party to broaden the tent to include academics, not foist silly ideas on one of our strongest social institutions. By your logic, alt-right folks are finally benefitting from diversity initiatives of the Republican party by having their positions included in the platform.
By the way, how are our other institutions doing in terms of diversity of thought? What do you see in law enforcement, the military, corrections, churches (those subsidized institutions), Frank? How will we diversify thought in corporate board rooms, given their public charters, Frank?
Perhaps the NYT editorial page should do the same. Are you volunteering your spot?
14
Bruni is almost always spot on in his editorials. This one is one major exception. Colleges and universities can easily identify an applicant's ethnic origins and the color of their skin, but how, or by what criteria, could they ever effectively pinpoint an incoming student's political leanings.
8
The way for us to try and get to points of understanding is to mingle but already you talk of separate classes structured for those differences to continue separation. As is being pointed out here by the other commenters we are not talking the differences tween the followers of Democrats and Republicans. Add to that the chastisement of the liberal arts and humanities which for me started in the 70’s! The world of liberal artists and humanitrians has always been an open one. The difference between us now is ideas and “tweets”.
5
"Conservatism" as a stream of "thought" is pretty much dead. Those that sell themselves as conservative thinkers are more culture warriors than thinkers. The culture of the big cities has moved tremendously, and the rest of the country hasn't caught up. The friction point is more about gender roles than political theories or policies. To those outside the cities, it is offensive and astonishing that a 1950's "Leave it to Beaver" lifestyle is considered by the "elites" to be wrong and oppressive and if you defend it in any way you deserve to be name-called and shunned. A little bit more listening and less judgment of those who still follow a more traditional culture would go a long way.
11
The article tries to strike a conciliatory note almost apologetic on showcasing colleges as liberal bastions which pump out liberals by the hundreds of thousands. It could not be any more further from the reality for two reasons. While colleges provide education there are liberal and conservative teachers and they may or may not keep their political views to themselves. As a parent of two college kids and having gone through colleges I know this for a fact. If that's the case why did so many white collar whites vote for Trump? Because people's views are not shaped totally by colleges. How they vote changes over time and can be shaped by Fox news and right wing radio as well. My other point is if so-called 'liberal" colleges have to bring in teachers with conservative political views will this also be followed by conservative schools in states like Utah, Mississippi, Indiana and Florida? How about high schools where teachers and local right wing governments are enforcing their own beliefs in the curriculum? Where does this stop?
11
Perhaps ultra-conservatives who see universities greatly slanted toward liberal views are much too far to the right in their views. To an ultra-conservative a moderate view of the world is extremely liberal.
10
Trump "won" thanks to a antiquated voting system favoring rural areas of this country. There is no evidence that any valid ideas, even conservative ones, originate from these parts. If anything, their interests are overrepresented over those of the majority and future oriented urban populace. Universities are liberal less because they are bias than because they have won the battle over the bad ideas.
13
Whites with a college degree: Trump 49%, Clinton, 45%
8
Conservative thought is already taught in our business schools (free enterprise), economic departments (the Chicago School), and even in the psychology department (happiness comes from tribal inclusion), but what the political right wants is anathema to the mission of a higher education. The Right wants academia to condone faith based thinking and to normalize indoctrinated intransigence. Diversity is one thing, but education's commitment to it can't include the antithesis of reason and evidence based thinking. I agree with welcoming conservatives who are truly open to debate, but those students who think their faith already provides all knowledge need not apply.
17
Is it really possible to make a reasonable argument that Trump is anything but a fascist? That, if he were able, he would declare himself emperor and do away with our democracy?
What I can't stand about liberals, and I am one of them, is we're always trying to be fair and empathetic while the other side is lying, cheating and stealing in ever more outrageous fashion.
30
So "a significant majority of Republicans and conservative-leaning independents now believe that colleges have a negative impact on America." So you are suggesting we turn universities into institutions that idiots can say have a positive impact on their version of America.
19
First off, Trump and the Trumpists aren't conservatives. And they've screamed ao over and over again, at increasing decibel levels: they're right-wing radicals, Bible-thumping fundamentalists, gun-toting loons, flat taxers, literal fascists and Klan members, Wall Streeters who smell swill in the trough, and angry working people who have some reason to be angry.
If we'd like to get more historians specializing in working-class history or the "military historians," Mr. Bruni mentions, nifty. But as for finding brilliant young theorists of why bump stocks are the sign and sigil of Freedom and the like, good luck.
So if you'd like to know what's going on here, what sorts of colleges profs we're seeing get funding from right-wing kooks and shoved into universities--ladies and gennulmen, look no further than the seamy careers of esteemed Newt Gingrich and the revered William Bennett.
Oh, and I yield to nobody in telling the lefty shouter crowd to shaddap and clean out their ears. But the right wing also has no interest in dissent or diversty of views or better research of any such thing.
They're interested in power, and apparently in creating a safe space for their delicate sensibilities.
13
Affirmative action for Republicans. Ironic. No?
Yale. Too liberal? William F. Buckley? George H. W. Bush? Dick Cheney? Clarence Thomas? Even Ben Stein and Thurston Howell III.
I think the problem is not that schools have become too liberal. Many academic liberals are barely left of Nixon. It is that conservatives have become stupid. Hannity ain't no Buckley.
30
All ideas are not equal and "fake news" is not journalism. Trump voters are supporting the deconstruction of the social progress America has made on every front. Affirmative action for conservatives sounds very much like one based on the idea of reverse discrimination against white men. What's next? Recruitment of white supremacists and Nazis so they can join the debate on campus? We need to fight these repugnant ideas not engage over them.
20
Yeah, Frank. Right. I can see it now: the Trumpkins who go to graduate school will simply channel Conway, Coulter et al by pivoting and citing “alternative facts” during their oral exams. Oh, wait. My bad.they will tweet their answers. Just what we need.
13
All the proof Frank Bruni needs that he is correct can be found in these comments. Many argue that colleges are liberal because being liberal is the only smart or right way of thinking.
Jonathan Haidt, who Mr. Bruni cites in this excellent op-ed piece, showed that liberals are much worse than conservatives at understanding their political opponents' views. Maybe that's why Democrats have been losing so many elections lately.
The characterization, in these comments, of all conservatives as toothless creationists is insulting and incorrect. There are some morons and some brilliant thinkers on both sides of the political divide.
11
Conservatives are not fools and their would be a lot more of them in Academia if professors were better paid.
9
College didn't make me liberal, life experience did.
13
Does. Bruni's continually writing about reaching out to trump voters mean colleges should the "other side" of evolution and climate change to create safe spaces for them?
4
Reply to Henry Miller, Libertarian...NYT pick?
He writes,"Two of my three kids refused even to apply to some "elite" schools,* including UNC-CH, Duke, my undergrad school, Cornell, and my wife's, Vassar, because all those schools had made it very clear that conservative/libertarian viewpoints would be unwelcome or even persecuted."
So, some "elite" schools make "it very clear that conservative/libertarian viewpoints would be unwelcome or even persecuted." Yeah. I would love to see exactly what Mr. Miller considers "very clear". So, as a fellow Cornell graduate, let's see if I can "interpret" Mr. Miller's statements. Cornell promotes diversity within the student body, as opposed to white supremacy. Well, you have to admit, that diversity nonsense would definitely allow some conservative/libertarian students to feel uncomfortable...maybe very uncomfortable. After all, conservative/libertarians thrive on purity. Not so much purity of thought, but purity of being...white. And what's even worse, Cornell frowns on some forms of free expression, such as symbols of slavery or Nazi swastika's. And if you can't even open a new student chapter of the KKK, well...how good is that education going to be?
At Cornell, pursuit of the truth was/is emphasized. If you would rather wallow in conspiracy theories and your own beliefs, then Cornell is probably not going to be a very accommodating place to attend. I'm sure Henry's children made the "right" choice to go elsewhere. Bible college?
20
Jean Yarborough has apparently not Googled "States with the most missing teeth."
1
CONSERVATIVE Politics, thought and action have, during the age of Trumpzilla, the Trumpenstein Monster, become the politics of the KKK, NRA, NAZIS, White Supremacists and other monstrous criminals. Trump identifies closely with them because his father was among them, since he was arrested in 1926 after a KKK rally in which he had participated, due to fighting with the police. Trump, the extremist ideologues in Congress and the extremist political activist in the Courts, legislating from the bench have done more to damage the cause of "equal time" for conservatives on college campuses. Thanks in no small part to his madcap press conference in Trumpzilla's Tower when he said of the violence perpetrated by the right wing extremists that there were "very fine people" on both sides. That, dear reader, is INCITMENT TO VIOLENCE perpetrated by Trump once again. He is using his bully pulpit to incite violence. He's already set a legal precedent, by being found guilty of incitement to violence during a presidential "rally" by Judge David Hale.
5
The comments are equally, if not more, enlightening about the academy's Leftist atmosphere than the article itself.
One of the religious innovations of the Jews was the idea that man should not build himself an idol and then worship as a God that which man, himself, has wrought. God created man, they observed, and not the other way around.
Judging by today's commentariat, Liberals created conservative propaganda, almost exclusively out of whole cloth, and now they bow to it as if it had been created by an unbiased source as opposed to a well-oiled, well-experienced, political propaganda machine, so successful that any liberal in the academy reading this post is already in full-dudgeon denial.
5
I'm not sure I need to 'civically engage' with a bunch of neanderthals seeking to erase women's rights, think nice people participate in white nationalist rallies, push fiscal policies that benefit the few at the top of the economic scale and seek to cheat to win by restricting people's right to vote. I'm not coalescing around those ideas - AT ALL.
11
Give me a break. I usually enjoy your column but this is a non-issue. Would we want to recruit more racists in the era of Jim Crow, or more anti-Semites or more anti-LGBT people today. Some things promote the civilization, perhaps without overwhelming popular support but colleges should be about that (however slowly they take up the call). While paying lip service to conservatives ideas in this piece, the truth is that the ideas finding voice in the election of Trump were predominately not conservative but reactionary and not to emulated by any institution of higher education.
You missed this one badly.
8
Conservatives in general have been creating their own 'safe spaces' and their own 'political correctness' for 4 or 5 decades at least.
8
The way some people scoff at the very idea that conservatives have anything to say reminds me of a younger version of myself arriving in Japan some 20 years ago. When people are different, you have to develop eyes to see and ears to hear before you understand what people can contribute and what they cannot.
Moreover, one of the problems I detect of being a foreigner in Japan (and visibly so) is that it is difficult to be truly accepted as a person here. Eventually, that does happen with some people, but in a lot of places, I was simply an "entity"; a unit that satisfied some criteria. What I discovered was that it takes many years to cultivate and develop good relationships and most of the time, it is not people in a position of power. The value of good leadership would be in hiring staff that demonstrates certain levels of empathy as "rules" are meaningless if nobody believes them.
On the basis of these (admittedly) anecdotal observations, I would say that it is not just a matter of inviting a few conservatives to have a slot in the system, any more than it ever was to have a couple of blacks or Hispanics or women fill in some slot. The intentions may be good; however, if the heart of the ethos is not _serious_ about learning or understanding the people it invites to these slots, they are only "apparently" there; they are simply "guests", who are expected to behave as such. The attitude needs to be more akin to something like "family" to make genuine progress.
5
Some people, because of genetic variation, don't find the smell of skunk repulsive. Trump is a skunk, but his supporters think he smells just fine. No amount of coaxing will cause liberals to re-evaluate their revulsion.
On the far left, there is a small percentage of more or less powerless extremists who stupidly reject capitalism rather than focusing on making good rules under which it operates. For all practical purposes, they can be ignored. On the right, there is a large group (perhaps 20% of our population) that is empowered by Trump and has extremely divisive, reactionary ideas. These ideas are reshaping America everyday at the hands of people like Scott Pruitt, Jeff Sessions, Betsy DeVos, Ryan Zinke, and Trump himself.
Tell me, please, where is the threat? Is it among lefties who should make space for a broader set of voices in an urbane dialogue? Or is it among the extreme right who are remaking our country as a Medieval state, eschewing words for torches and enriching their feudal lords?
Any attempt to normalize the distorted brand of conservatism that currently reigns is foolish. In practice, the good ideas of conservatism were paved over by right-wing extremism many years ago. When large numbers of true conservatives reject Trump, then a dialog can begin. As it is, except for those planning to leave office (Flake, Corker, McCain), Republicans in power all kowtow to the skunk at the party. No dialogue is possible. The distortion is just too high.
7
The scientific method in academia does not give equal weight to every ridiculous notion for the sake of equal time. Science builds upon data and evidence not conjecture and opinion.
Certainly conservative media completely dispenses with the notion of providing all sides to complex social issues that have not a unique incontrovertible answer.
Fox has concerted talking points handed out to talking heads like Pravda.
The right-wing is following the Russian Potemkin strategy of the 18th century. Far outnumbered, the amplify their supporters through manipulating social media like Twitter.
How many of Trump’s Twitter followers are real? The Russian troll farms and others create millions of fake identities and bots that suggest support as fake as the Potemkin villages that fooled the tsar.
Trump lost the popular vote by some 3 million votes AFTER the GOP purged voter rolls and disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters by disassembling the Voting Rights Act.
Scott Spicer will forever be remembered ignominiously for claiming Trump’s inauguration was the largest in history- footage of empty bleachers and a near empty tarmac notwithstanding.
No, universities do not need to host every crack pot with an opinion, but no academic work, on campus to create violence and destruction for these opportunist’s personal promotion.
That is what street corners are for.
9
Trump got elected President. There were enough of that kind of person in the right place to get.him elected.
2
trump was not elected president. He was appointed by the electoral college based on the finger-on-the-scale for lessor populated states. In this day and age, the electoral college is no longer needed if we as a nation are to regain our status as a one man one vote nation. We are no longer tied to coal or family farms to sustain economic relevance.
5
Truth has no political affiliation.
8
Let's do a thought experiment:
After the election of Hillary Clinton, 20 or so professors at a liberal arts college put an ad in the school newspaper. It states that if you are emotionally distraught and traumatized by the election of Sec. Clinton you can come to any of our offices to receive sympathetic counseling because of this result.
Now, would folks think this announces that the faculty have some prejudice against liberal voters? As a student would you hesitate to take a course from them - esp. if the course had a discussion component? What if you were known to be active on campus for her?
Well, multiply this by -1, and you can find such ads on campuses. You can find messages from college presidents, deans, provosts, etc. worrying about the pain Trump's election caused.
For the record, I didn't vote for either the corrupt and/or nutty one. Debbie took care of my best choice.
3
Colleges are supposed to teach students to think for themselves, but a herd mentality can prevail there as much as anywhere. Still liberal arts are liberal for a reason, and a search for "truth" will bend toward progressivism: yes, Virginia, climate change is real, so was the Holocaust. In 1960, my 7th grade teacher wondered aloud why all her smart students favored Kennedy. (Ans: they were all children of college professors.) In 1968 every county in Michigan voted for George Wallace in the Democratic primary except those where U-of-M and MSU are located. (2016 should not have come as such a surprise.) Education will always track with progressive thinking. If progressivism has become too dogmatic on many campuses, encouraging free thinking and open-mindedness is a better cure than recruiting particular kinds of students or professors. That said, the best cure is simply to make public colleges affordable to all students. That would generate the greatest heterodoxy on campus.
9
I agree with you statement particularly the last part about providing affordable education for all students. In fact, I believe free education is best. And affordable education is a far better solution than what Frank Bruno seems to suggest.
3
It sounds good, Mr. Bruni. I agree that diversity = strength. But what is conservative intellectual thought, specifically? I keep missing it, I guess, drowned out as it seems to be by misogyny, racism and xenophobia.
8
The Liberal Stereotype of Trump supporters: "There is no intelligent or conservative reasons for voting for Trump. Only hate, fear, anger, misogyny, xenophobia and a total misunderstanding of America's role in the world. These are not the underpinnings of any conservative or intellectual thought. They are the antipathy of reasoned thought."
The reality behind Trump supporters votes is legitimate disagreement about current climate science (example, Prof. Murray Salby on global warming): https://youtu.be/rCya4LilBZ8.
Before the Liberal monoculture was imposed on academia, Murray Salby would have debated Michael Mann in public and students would have had an opportunity to fully investigate and evaluate their opposing hypotheses, facts, logic, and conclusions on the global warming issue. In today's monoculture, students will be drilled in Mann's CO2 alarmism and will be actively discouraged from evaluating alternative hypotheses or considering detailed critical examination of the global warming dictat presented by Liberal professors. Students are taught "the science is settled, move on". A far distance from the spirit of open intellectual inquiry in most universities charters.
Restoring open inquiry must start at the top, at the Board level. Anyone around here brave enough to send that trial balloon to your friendly Liberal Faculty Committee? Didn't think so...
2
Okay...to be completely fair, the typical college has more radical elements on the left than the right. One would hope that center would hold sway, but the squeaky wheels always seem to get the grease. The left wingers are no more liberal than the alt right, particularly when it comes to free speech. And they hate being called "liberals". Well, that's fair because they truly are not liberal.
Calling for purity of thought is no better than calling for purity of skin color, or religion, or sexual preference, or. for that matter, food choices. What should be encouraged is respect for a diversity of thought...as long as it doesn't include hate. And there go the Trump supporters. If they can't hate, how are they supposed to learn the 3 "R's"? Rancor, resentment, and revenge. If colleges would offer course work in Trump's 3 "R's", there would be no shortage of his supporters on campus. Many on the far left would be all too happy to join them in class. Hey, I believe I've found a way to bring diverse people together. Hate is like glue. Don't tell me what you like, tell me what you hate and I'll know how well we can get along.
3
It is always a mystery to me as to what is a "conservative"? There are many definitions depending on the source. A God fearing, patriotic, my country right or wrong? A fiscal responsible person who wants low taxes, no regulations and small government? A isolationists in foreign affairs? A anti anybody but white folks? No, , most conservatives seem to be created by wealth, religion, fear, and lack of information. Studies show definite brain differences between conservatives and liberals a with the amygala (emotion center) reacting to things more then the cognitive centers(thinking). This is a primary thing and will colleges be able to change these evolutionary genetic differences?
5
In my experience, there is no great liberal conspiracy. I've found that a great number of conservatives are not thinkers but pronouncers, neither ask nor welcome questions but have no problem dictating their answers and for whom irony may as well be in hieroglyphics. As far as being out of touch with the Trumpers, if I ever find myself in touch with them, well, hemlock.....
1
I don’t need any evangelical or conservative zealot in school teaching my two young granddaughters that Earth is 6,000 years old, is flat, and that the Sun revolves around it.
Fundamentalist Christians deny science, history, geology, and physics, but believe some individual rolling around on the floor speaking in “Tongues” is all the evidence they need to prove Christianity.
Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want any of these people near a classroom, let alone teach. This is especially true with Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Incidentally, Senators McCain, Corker, and Flake voted for her nomination. Because they criticized Trump for his public behavior, don’t believe for a minute they won’t vote for republican legislation which enriches the 1% and is cruel to the middle class and poor.
6
Those darned liberal colleges who object to white supremacists speaking at their schools.....how intolerant, how anti free speech. They should take a page from distinguished conservative/Christian schools (Hillsdale. Southern Baptist, etc.) who regularly invite speakers such as Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein. Right?
And......how dreadful--and how surprising! that sociology departments have a liberal bias. Let's go out and recruit conservatives. Similarly, the armed forces should make a concerted effort to recruit pacifists.
2
Sounds like a good idea to explore as a progressive my opinions tend to be biased vs Trump and republicans and many of us are living in a info bubble echo chamber. Trump appealed to a resentful middle class white rural population that felt rightfully so by coastal democrats college educated that looked down on them. Obviously the democrats having lost so many seats in congress and state house need to examine the thrust of their appeal to the middle class captured by Trump and the GOP. We cannot lose our faith in progressive values of diversity and civil discourse as that TRump base is not all white supremacists and neo nazi's. Democrats need to reach out to the middle of America white working class find out their gripes and needs and offer solutions to help them. Focusing on identify politics exclusively is not a good idea as Bannon points out there are more whites then blacks but Bannon's quest is for chaos and offering up fringe candidates. Democrats should be able to secure a healthier share of legislative offices by presenting viable rational proposals to help the middle class. It seems the current tax cut proposal is crafted to please the donor class impatient with GOP results to date. If they ram it thru the short coming should be pointed out to the middle class it is not a democrat plan with facts and figures.
1
The odd thing is that nobody worrying about "those Trump voters" ever seem to recognize the threat of statism to democracy AND liberty. Statist ideas come almost exclusively from leftist ideology, but are often embraced by all politicians in favor of big government solutions to citizens' needs. Their response: Let's convene a bipartisan commission to study the matter! That said, diversity of opinion and interpretation is sorely lacking in the academy.
3
I thought Bret Stephens put the point well describing his college education in a late September column:
“What was it that one learned through a great books curriculum? Certainly not “conservatism” in any contemporary American sense of the term. We were not taught to become American patriots, or religious pietists, or to worship what Rudyard Kipling called “the Gods of the Market Place.” We were not instructed in the evils of Marxism, or the glories of capitalism, or even the superiority of Western civilization.
As I think about it, I’m not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn’t a “teaching” with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.”
4
I am an educated person (Wesleyan & Columbia), former university instructor (Rutgers), not a Trump voter and generally liberal, but I sense here an undercurrent of both smugness and bravado (We only teach verifiable facts and it's not our fault that they are obviously on our side, not theirs.) Also a lack of confidence and fear (Debating these ideas on campus is not necessary and would only provide aid and comfort for the enemy.).
Perhaps it's one more sad consequence of the dangerous polarization in wealth, education, opportunity and power we have been seeing in recent decades.
My own experience reading or debating with conservatives and others - even Trump voters - who have different ideas or backgrounds from my own is that it makes me think and, most of the time, deepens my understanding of why my generally liberal convictions are mostly correct.
It also helps me appreciate shallow thinking and propaganda. There is a lot on both sides. It also allows me to find and grapple with the various clarifying concepts that help me advance my own understanding of the world.
When I went to Wesleyan in the 1960s, that's what I thought a good liberal education was about, not the arrogance and defensiveness I see in so many of these comments. I know we're almost on a war footing right now, but in a war of ideas, I still believe total victory is neither a feasible nor desirable goal. Modesty and openness are still among the virtues we badly need to preserve. Thanks, Frank.
8
It strikes me as odd, even dangerous, that one's political affiliation should have any bearing whatsoever on college admissions (quotas, anyone?). If a young person has the grades and SAT scores, admission to public universities is guaranteed. Perhaps it is the case that certain demographic groups don't value education and don't encourage their children to pursue it. Clearly, those kids are underprivileged, and underprivileged kids of all types could benefit from outreach, but affirmative action for political beliefs is a bad idea.
3
Would some please provide a definition of the "conservative"? The word seems to me to have become a form of propaganda - in the sense that the use of a word for which there is no widespread agreement tends to destroy the opportunity for meaningful debate.
1
What about open border immigration policies and its consequence across a broad spectrum of available well paying jobs; or the rising death rate among 50 - 60 year old white middle class males who not coincidentally are being systematically replaced by much younger immigrant workers; or ardent pro-life Catholic or evangelical Christians who vote against their own economic interest because of the intensity of their beliefs?
Tell me, where is the racist sentiment in any of this? In point of fact there isn't any. Its simply a convenient straw man used to demonize your opponents.
Let me ask you a question: How often have you in any significant way voted against your interest?
Poor and middle class voters on the right do so all the time and at times knowing full well that it may costs them. Why? Because they're true to a core system of beliefs that places morality, dignity and human life above that of other considerations.
How often do people on the sacrifice their economic interest? Well, in years past they did so in a significant and notable way. But now they don't. Instead they support causes and policies that benefit them (higher returns on capital and lower wage rates) at the expense of some nameless person who they have never met, nor care to meet, all the while using racial, gender and religious tolerance as a source of self-defined moral superiority to champion their views. Now isn't that convenient.
5
"Conservative" has for the most part been conflated with an ideology that ridicules education, treats opinions as facts, and uses religion to govern its ethics. These are not university-level methods for approaching the world. I have no doubt that there are plenty of conservative thinkers who teach, and who study; but that is not the same thing.
3
There are plenty of Bible Colleges for folks who think universities are too liberal. And, of course, military academies for others who desire that training.
What I expect from colleges whether liberal or conservative leaning is to teach their students to think critically in all topics. The lessons for superior critical thinking haven't changed much since the Greeks started writing about the process and it has always been the "mirror and the lamp" of civilized societies.
Social media, mainstream broadcasting, online news, all now work against the critical thinking process more so than any college admission process. We see poor reading and critical thinking skills manifest at large, exacerbated by the limited space that even the New York Time gives to its writers, made clear with the misreading or misunderstanding of Ms. Bialik's and Mr. Damore's essays.
Critical thinking is what is under attack and any college that leads students away from it can't not honestly call themselves academic. Make students hungry for deep and critical thought, make them crave it, and then they can lead with it.
1
The article mentions a "disproportionate percentage of liberal faculty in the humanities and social sciences." Not mentioned were professors in engineering, business, some of the sciences (chemistry, petroleum geology) and other subjects that have a history of being bastions of a conservative/corporate bent. Will colleges insert "liberal" professors into those traditionally conservative departments? It makes more sense to me that mandatory classes be offered in logic and reason, so students can learn how to assess the various claims put forward by any political party or group and not be hoodwinked by any of them.
3
They mean in the" liberal" arts.
1
I’m now in my 36th year on the faculty of the University of Oklahoma. OU has never had much trouble recruiting students from small towns and the middle of the country. We’re not a destination for high school students on either coast. Two-thirds of the student population comes from Oklahoma, the the majority of the other third has come north from Texas. So it’s pretty obvious that not only do we have a lot of students from small towns, many are also conservative, like their parents. Yet I don’t get the feeling that liberal students — yes there are many, even in Oklahoma — feel endangered or marginalized. Conservatives might consider that asymmetry.
I really don’t care how my students or faculty colleagues vote in the privacy of the voting booth. Conservatives and liberals should not be prevented from expressing their political views in proper venues. But I do object when my faculty colleagues offer a half-baked personal perspective that the Civil War was god’s retribution for slavery, or that the US was exceptional for its adoption of Athenian democracy. I also object to graduate students who ‘witness’ to their undergraduate classes about the ‘truth’ of creation, or undergraduates who refuse to read or consider serious historical scholarship because it conflicts with their pastor’s storyline. By all means, conservatives should have a seat at the table, but they cannot form their own rules that destroy the foundations of university scholarship.
8
"By all means, conservatives should have a seat at the table, but they cannot form their own rules that destroy the foundations of university scholarship."
Who ever said they should, Ockham9?
There are some underlying assumptions about the nature of persuasion here that are not consistent with the evidence. First, political psychologists find that persuasion is rare; people do not easily change their minds. There are some exceptions to that and there are conditions under which persuasion is more likely. But I find it insulting to students to assume that since professors in the social sciences tend to be Democrats (probably not true of economists) that students would somehow be indoctrinated because they can't think for themselves. I don't know any professors who profess their normative beliefs in class that and indeed, it is my sense that this would violate professional norms. But even if they did, students, like most people under most conditions, are not likely persuaded by such arguments.
6
" First, political psychologists find that persuasion is rare; people do not easily change their minds."
Perhaps you have not considered that politics is emotional, not intellectual.
" I don't know any professors who profess their normative beliefs in class that and indeed, it is my sense that this would violate professional norms. " Others do and they have posted examples here, like grading down if you use the words"male" or "female" in their class. Really.
It's important to respect the ideas and thoughts of our countrymen. As someone who waited a decade before going back to school, I can agree with the basic idea that they are bastions of liberal ideology. As a moderate, I find it concerning that anyone needs 'safe spaces' when calm and civil discourse should not necessitate a place with which to retreat.
Ultimately, I feel as though we have an undereducated body politic. I don't mind whether someone holds conservative or liberal ideas, but their ideas should be rooted in the kinds of careful thought and reasoning that are the hallmark of our forbearers.
7
There's no country in the world that offers high school students more choices in higher education than USA. For parents who want their kids to have a more conservative education (whatever that means) than what's offered at traditional liberal arts colleges, I say "do your homework and shop around". There's something out there that fits your politics and your pocketbook.
5
Unless campuses can welcome serious conservative scholars, an intellectually important conservative movement will be removed from public discourse and the absurdists of the alt-right will own that part of the public space. As Frank Bruni notes in his article, Heterodox Academy is an important move toward intelligent debate across the political spectrum.
1
On the back page of the paper edition of this Sunday Review is the final installment of a graphic short story describing the journey of a family of Syrian refugees coming to the United States. It brought tears to my eyes. Why should any liberal college, that is built on built on basis of respect for all of its students, seek out members of a conservative movement that would treat treat these refugees as not deserving our care, indeed, as not being fully human? If members of the conservative movement want to be accepted within the polite society the liberal academic community, it is time for them to say NO to the commonplace cruelty and bigotry that has come to define the conservative movement over the past four decades.
8
"Pinpricks in the campus bubble." I teach at a state university. My students are working and lower-middle class. Most of them are white, from small towns in rural counties. They run the political gamut, and many of them are busy studying full time and working two to three jobs to afford their tuition. I don't need my "bubble" broken. My students keep me connected to real struggle and real achievement.
It would be swell if the Times could recall that not all colleges are liberal arts boutiques or Ivy League bastions of privilege. Such assumptions about what "college" means only perpetuate a narrative of elitist disengagement that has nothing to do with my working week. And those same narratives discount the highly productive spaces of discourse that already occur at state, public, and community colleges, which create more informed and critical voters and thinkers.
15
The disconnect between higher education and their local communities is profound in my state, Wisconsin. While liberal group-think is the safe and normative culture on my UW campus, I look out my office window into the "real world" of paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyles, with little or no job security, and costly health insurance. Few of us in the academy have ever met a payroll, nor worked 40+ hrs. per week as a career tradesperson or retail worker. Is it any wonder we governor, Scott Walker, is uniformly despised on campus, while embraced across the street?
4
That's sad, because Scott Walker is their worst enemy. And it simply is not true to "elite" university students and professors have not worked or lived or dealt with financial hardship. If anything, they are more rather than less cognizant of the need for a living wage, universal health care, infrastructure, and programs that help the less fortunate thrive.
The promotion of prejudice does not change the simple fact that improving conditions for non-kleptocrats is good policy and good economics in the long haul. Not to mention real science, not killing the messenger about looting and burning and exploiting a finite planet.
7
Not to mention that Democratic presidents fix the economic mess left by Republicans, 1988 (Reagan) to Clinton, 2007-8 (Bush II) to Obama, and 1929 (F. Roosevelt) and no doubt others. Greed as policy always bankrupts the public purse, and the Trump crash will likely dwarf all the others, because it is based on even deeper corruption and looting.
8
Meanwhile, Betsey DeVos is Trump University-izing criminal profiteering as education. And the heritage of slavery and Jim Crow (now using early and often prison as voter suppression, along with all the other techniques of the radical right) is not gone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/opinion/betsy-devos-for-profit-colleg...
"DeVos is the superrich Republican donor who once led a crusade to reform troubled Michigan public schools by turning them into truly terrible private ones. Now she’s in the Trump cabinet, and she seems to be dedicating a lot of her time to, um, lowering higher education.
“When no one was watching she hired a lot of people that come from the for-profit colleges,” ... the additions are far more interested in protecting their old associates than in overseeing them. Murray is the top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, otherwise known as HELP. These days it’s hard to tell whether that’s a promise of assistance or a cry of distress.
"To oversee the critical issue of fraud in higher education, DeVos picked Julian Schmoke Jr., whose former job was a dean of — yes! — a for-profit university. Specifically a school named DeVry. Last year, under fire from state prosecutors and the Federal Trade Commission, DeVry agreed to pay $100 million to students who complained that they had been misled by its recruitment pitch."
Lots more at the link.
8
Where is this place that Bruni keeps talking about? For 30 years I have taught at a range of places. Students from all walks of life. the simplistic dialogue that Bruni uses and that is used in much of the debate surrounding our institutions gives the impression that there are only 2 canons of thought, liberal and conservative. I have encountered an array of life experiences in my students and a diversity of mind. My institution's response is one of constant change. The place so often described, the liberal self-congratulatory country club, is a fantasy constructed to undermine one of the last places that is willing to challenge to commodification of every enterprise. There is so much debate and disagreement that every faculty meeting and student publication and classroom discussion is a complex navigation in this ever evolving world. We are dealing with a level of stress (student and faculty and staff) that itself is a threat to our ability to teach and maintain effective discourse. Yet we are engaging it all, willing to try and head in the right direction. We are imperfect and self critical. Certainly some institutions are doing better than others. So much opinion has been formed about what we are doing from those that aren't doing this job. Ask us what we are doing, get informed, and please, don't get your information primarily from the internet, we wouldn't let our students do so.
12
Prof - you mean those anti-free speech riots at Berkeley never happened? Nor did all those actions against students and profs with minority views - documented in the press - ever happen?
I'm tired of people telling us blue-staters that we are supposed to bend over backwards to understand Trump voters. How about the other way around? Why not have colleges in the red states hire liberal faculty or have an affirmative action program for liberal students? Why don't conservatives try to understand those of us who think that we should have a one-payer healthcare system, government regulations on Wall Street, and more funding for the EPA, for example?
I can see that some universities (Harvard?) might hire Corker or Flake because they speak well and are thoughtful ultra-conservative soon-to-be ex-senators. But there will be students and faculty who will always remind others that these two senators voted for at least 90% of Trump's policies and people. I disagree with them on almost everything. But I'd be willing to hear their evidence that giving tax breaks to billionaires and corporations and removing regulations from the EPA and Wall Street helps the middle class and gives jobs to the poor. I'd like to know why they don't think that climate change is man-made, and why our healthcare system has the worst outcomes in the Western world compared to those countries that have a one-payer system. I'd like them to prove that they read studies from liberal think tanks as well as conservative ones and that their arguments are based on facts. I'd like to know that they understand how progressive Americans think. Then they'd be true conservative intellectuals.
13
John Kenneth Gailbraith said it best: "The modern conservative is not even especially modern. He is engaged, on the contrary, in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
Is this what we now want infiltrating our college campuses?
13
I think this country should have mandatory military duty. Either 1 year or 18 months directly out of high school. Then kids would be exposed to other Americas of all types.
1
Right, all older teenagers should be taught to kill and live with a war mentality.
I'd agree if it were mandatory public service. But some of our police and the radical right are already too militarized and polarized.
7
What about a mandatory stint in a 21st century Peace Corps? If raising thoughtful, engaged, and respectful citizens is the goal, why is military service (the function of which is often destruction rather than construction) the model to propose?
6
There is a difference between "conservative" and counter-factual. The first is an honest position, while the second is dishonest. Colleges should realize this.
8
Thanks for the latest hand-wringing from within Frank Bruni’s New York/Ivy league bubble. Here in Texas, beleaguered liberals regard the diverse University of Texas, which admits plenty of conservative, religious rural students, as a beacon of rational thought and advanced research in a state whose political leaders have become increasingly unhinged in their wild rightward swing. UT doesn’t need more conservatives, it needs to survive as a liberal — in the best sense — institution amid constant attack from the conservative political establishment. And I would suggest that this is the case for many public universities throughout the south and midwest, outside Mr. Bruni’s bubble.
7
"Should [higher education] grapple with the world as it is or point the way to the world as it should be?"
Both, of course! Education should lead us to a better world - but the only route to that better world is through an accurate understanding of the world we have.
5
Are conservative colleges and Universities, like Liberty University making an effort to bring their students liberal viewpoints? ....I didn't think so. I will respectfully listen to them when they respectfully listen to me. It is a two way street.
8
It wasn't just college presidents and students who assumed Clinton would win the election. Every poll in the country told us that, with the New York Times providing daily updates on these poll results. Has anyone done in-depth research as to why they all were so mistaken?
9
If rural America gets the education it deserves, the radical Right will wither on the vine. When the despicable tactic of repeating the same political lies generation after generation no longer controls grassroots ideology, our country will regain it's moral footing and credibility. I mean you, Hate radio. Yes, by all means, provide a better education for the disadvantaged, rural and urban alike. The stand back and watch our country flower and grow.
7
"Add two more identity groups and call me in the morning" is Bruni's prescription to cure the fatuous intellectual monotony of "diverse" American academia.
It was the politicization of diversity, a simple fact of life, that has led to the intellectual hollowing out of the academy in the first place. "Commitment to diversity" has also papered over the reality that American college students are arriving on campus uninterested in ideas and intellectually unadventurous. And if they aren't, then a few weeks of "orientation" and secular sermons on "respect" will ensure that they soon are.
Here's my proposal to restore universities as places where students critically engage with ideas, regardless of whether those students come from Manhattan or Boise, or are white or black.
1. Accept students on merit. Hire professors the same way.
2. Leave students alone so they can grow up and grow intellectually. American colleges have erected a fortress of student counselling and student community involvement "services" around undergrads. Colleges should get rid of them entirely.
3.Colleges should stop forcing students to have "diversity" for its own sake as a value.
26
I totally agree. It seems that many colleges are increasingly adopting the idea of a four year residential college - where students are coddled. While this may speak to the Harry Potter generation - I worry that they are putting other life skills on the back burner.
The U.S. needs structural reform at the K-12 level. Equitable funding, curricula and standards regardless of geography. More critical thinking in the curricula and better preparation for the 21st century's challenges. And yes, by all means, more debate and tolerance of diverse viewpoints in postsecondary education.
2
The NYT picks (four at this writing) are excellent responses to a truly stupid column. Beyond those excellent counter-arguments, I would ask: even if one were to try to hire more conservative professors, how would one go about doing it? The only ones one would know are conservative would be those who have spent sufficient time publicizing their political views, thus doing less original and important research and less good teaching. Worst of all, they would be publicly, politically ideological professors, and I thought the whole idea was to have fewer such. Moreover, if they have not become known publicly as conservative, how could one tell if they are or not. Hiring according to field, such as military history, is no guarantee whatsoever that the specialist in military history is conservative just because of that scholarly interest. What foolishness.
7
Where do you draw the line at conservative, aka right wing, dogma? Should the schools also try to attract members of the KKK to espouse their views, so that the students can be exposed to the full spectrum of viewpoints? Aren't they entitled to argue for their beliefs as well? Should we also invite Holocaust deniers and supporters of the Third Reich? Not all viewpoints are created equal, and some viewpoints should go the way of the dinosaur, despite the protestations of Fox news. And no, not all Trump voters have missing front teeth. Some of them had their teeth fixed through Obamacare.
7
Here's a suggestion.
1. Get a map of who voted for Trump.
2. Then get a map of the average IQ for exactly those same localities ...
3. Compare the two.
1
So is your thought here the Bible banging colleges are going to start hiring liberal thinking professors? I don't think so, dogma is their opiate
2
It took a while for the NAZIFICATION of Law, Arts, Education in Germany to take effect after 1933. But it was done , and right on schedule, the warped minds in the GOP are looking to incubate a few more rotten eggs.
3
Moral equivalency?
If we become ashamed of standing for progressive humanism then by all means let's lower the bar even further on affirmative action.
Let's make ignorance and tribalism another factor in college admittance policies.
There is nothing valuable to be learned from rural christian conservatives except to identify the causes of their cultural regression in Sociology and Psychology class rooms.
If america has no high road as exemplified by it's great learning institutions the wall between trumpism and liberalism will be irreperably breached:
One is put in mind of H.L. Mencken: “As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
4
Frank, have you been to Noah's Ark in Kentucky, you can get some valuable conservative teachings there.
5
This is madness. Those who study science do no arguing about science, as evidence is what counts. What happened to teaching good citizenship, actual historical facts, and mathematics(look at the false math that conservatives use to lie about trickle down garbage). A person who chooses a life of the mind is not greedy, it's about knowledge and passing it on and public service. Clearly the average conservative does not fit that bill.
I disagree with Emile who seems to believe more conservative thought needs to be taught. Conservatives are taught already, Edmund Burke is not ignored, and the ideas of Nietzsche and Hitler are examined. Teach it all, and teach how to rationally choose for oneself.
Several people mention the super conservative schools like Oral Roberts or Liberty U. Should they be forced to hire atheists and liberals?
If students refuse to allow opposing views to be heard by speakers on a campus, kick them out, make it a part of acceptance by a school to allow peaceful demonstration but not freezing out unwelcome opinions. The important thing is that critical thinking be taught, so we have informed citizens.
I didn't use to believe that education is deliberately restrained to keep citizens from using reason, the defense against propaganda and being a gullible fool. Only totalitarian states did that I thought. I grew up. FOX NEWS is like state tv and the assault on education is out there for all to see. The oligarchs want easily manipulated morons.
4
Its simple.......College and Trump/GOP is an oxymoron. The garbage they spew is counter to science and logic. To believe the GOP/Trump/Conservatives is to believe 1 + 1 = 2,389.....go figure. THE bigger issue is why do so many Americans believe and vote for these clowns?
3
In response, i would simply ask, why did your side nominate Hillary Clinton. for a group of supposedly highly educated folks, you sure are dumb. The only candidate that could hhve lost to Trump, and you picked her. that is just said. And keep in mind, a lot of folks who helped elected Obama didn't vote for Hillary, they either voted Trump or simply didnt vote. Made all the difference in the world.
2
"And colleges should be places where we learn to persuade people not to take paths that we consider dangerous instead of simply gaping and yelling at them."
In other words, invite them in but don't really listen to them because you've already decided they can't have a legitimate viewpoint. Not every conservative is a bigot just as not every midwestern unionized worker who voted for Trump (formerly known as "Democrats") is a bigot.
3
I’ve taught writing and lit at a number of public and private universities in the Midwest and the South. My classes always includes a chorus of conservative views, often supported with poor reasoning and misinformation. As an example: After Katrina, one student argued that our town, Greensboro, NC, should not accept refugees because the hurricane victims might have caught AIDs from the floods. In another example, I taught a lovely story called “Children of Strikers” in a composition. Not one of these 18-19-year-olds knew what a labor union was.
As students become more aware of the world and develop skill in reasoning, they might also become less easily influenced by far-right radio and hearsay. They might see the world through a slightly more liberal lens.
I corrected my student who thought people could catch AIDs from the water. I told my students about Ghandi — who they also had never heard of — when I taught Midnight’s Children in a global lit class. Betsy DeVos and other Trumpists might call that brainwashing. I call it teaching. What do you say?
11
Sounds like more of an issue about the state of our education system K-12, which shockingly is basically run by the teachers unions. Go figure.
I'm sick and tire of the Rightwing crybabies decrying their perceived bias of colleges and the news media.
There ARE plenty of colleges that are unabashedly conservative (e.g. Liberty University, Brigham Young, Hillsdale College, etc.). Conservative students can go to those, if that's the political environment they want. No one's forcing you to go to Berkeley or Oberlin.
If Rightwingers want to isolate themselves in biased news, they can read Breitbart and watch Fox; no one's forcing them to read the NYTimes and CNN.
If one truly abides by the principles of libertarianism and free-market capitalism, then it's no one's business whether any college or media source has an implicit bias. It's all a matter of free markets and individual choice. If "too many" colleges are indeed "too liberal," then the market will correct itself and force them out of business. If a media source is "too liberal," it will lose advertisers and go out of business.
(Personally, I don't agree with this argument that unfettered libertarian free-market choice is the best way to structure our society. I would love to see "liberal" colleges (like ones I've taught at) be less polticially biased. But until the Rightwing hypocrites hold Fox and Breitbart and Liberty and Hillsdale to the same standards that they want to impose on other colleges and the rest of the media, I'll stand by this free-market argument, in order to demonstrate their hypocrisy.)
5
I'm always a little amused when i read comment by professors. On the one hand you tell me that rightwingers are crybabies and complain about a "percieved bias" and then at the end of your post you do indeed agree that there is a political bias. So, if there is a political bias, then i guess conservaties are imagining a bias, it really does exist. What is it you teach? Logic?
2
Sorry Frank Bruni,
But the right wingers who voted for Trump were not well educated conservatives. They were anti-education voters. They believe, like Trump, that they didn't need any of YOUR stinkin facts. They believe, like Trump, that whatever they believe is as good...no, better than any proof of truth that you can come up with. They believe in conspiracies. They believe in lying to obtain whatever they want. They believe in Putin and Russia. They believe in power. They don't believe in education.
Senator Jeff Flake is one of the most conservative members of the Senate. So...he must be doing really great with the MAGA voters, right? Right, Frank? Teaching conservative principles, such as they are, will do nothing to close the divide between the colleges and the surrounding rural counties. If you want to close that divide, colleges need to teach a new curriculum. Courses in anarchy and chaos, propaganda and dissembling, conspiracy theories for everyday life, how to create and use wedge issues, and the value of racial purity. How about a course on why "making American great again" should include a return slavery. With such a curriculum, colleges would be swamped with rural applicants. I should know...I live in a very rural location. You wouldn't believe the stuff I hear from the locals.
When a majority of people in a society can no longer separate truth from fiction, reality from fantasy, that society is heading for dissolution. Chaos will follow.
7
Give me a break. Once these Trump people (especially those of college age) are exposed to college, they too will become “liberal” (although as many commenters have noted, there’s nothing “conservative” about T’s policies—putting the Fox in charge of the chicken house and the like.
1
Back in the days before Columbus discovered America, colleges used to recruit students who believed the world was flat. it made the student body more diverse and lead to a lively discussion in the dorms at night.
Diversity, in and of itself, is always politically correct and therefore should always be embrassed as a value by the left, no matter how moronic the outcome. For God's sake, admitt more Trump voters to Harvard.
As Don Trumps says: NOT.
There is a problem with bias on campuses. Groupthink is real. It is giving rise to fascism https://youtu.be/-1P_1mLlJik?t=5s
Introduce in all courses a component of OBJECTIVE discourse. What are the weaknesses, counter-arguments; where are the flaws / fallacies in the beliefs you hold? MAKE students take positions that they do not like, believe in, or even want to encourage. Teach by example: What are the arguments against THE INSTUCTORS Masters or Doctoral thesis-this is a good point of departure; can an instructor convince the class of this?
When you write a paper, or make an argument in class, you must give equal time to the opposing view(s).
“Tomorrow we will discuss gender fluidity. I will call on three students-randomly-to argue for and three students to argue against the proposition for 2 minutes each (if I call on you and you are absent, you get 0%). No volunteers. This is 5% of your grade.“ Students will then have to GET the other POV and hold it, at least for a while, or not excel.
Especially necessary is a legitimate Civics curriculum: You should not be able to get out of college without mastering civil discourse and engagement.
What passes for Civics now is Left/Progressive activism https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=w...
1
I would be aTrump voter were it not for Trump. Leave out the bombastic, hyperbolic non-solution solutions of the man ("I alone can fix it") and he got the gist of the problems confronting a majority of Americans, all Americans, not just uneducated white voters. Stagnant wages, loss of middle income jobs, skyrocketing healthcare costs, the inability to save for retirement, income inequality. The problem with Trump is that while being able to recognize the problems he has no earthly idea how to solve them and instead abdicates the role to a Republican establishment that continues to pray at the altar of Reagan.
4
"And colleges should be places where we learn to persuade men not to sexually abuse women instead of simply gaping and yelling at them. That requires putting them and their ideas into the mix. Too many schools are flunking that assignment."
Although Bruni didn't write that, it is a logical consequence of what he did write. And yes, it is a silly and even dangerous suggestion. Our colleges should not kowtow to powerful men who want to propagate disinformation.
1
I am stunned by this. Simply stunned. There are real problems to deal with, and there are real sources of problems. To my eye, most of the solutions are blocked by ignorant or willful people who are anti-science, anti-economics, and anti-intellectual. Giving them a special space at a university would do what exactly? My God.
7
The support for Trump has been described as a nationalist backlash against cosmopolitanism...”
Per the definition of cosmopolitan, “free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments; at home all over the world.”, what else could be expected?
Conservatives state that higher education has a liberal bias. When the “godfather” of modern conservatism William F. Buckley, Jr., in his mission statement in the first issue of “National Review (1955), clearly stated that his mandate was to stand “athwart history, yelling Stop.”, how can any esteemed institution of higher learning and research not appear liberal?
Burke, Smith, et al. would not recognize today’s conservatives...
3
People (presumably) go to college to open their minds, ask questions and learn to think for themselves. Maybe this is the reason that places of education are more liberal and/or progressive, they simply don’t believe everything Fox says!
Are colleges in the USA now going to allow that “intelligent design” is a theory on an equal footing to evolution? Astrology is a science? Will colleges place the conservative theories of William F. Buckley alongside the theories of Alex Jones?
5
Sinclair Media, a rightwing Trumpist media giant, is poised take over 70% or more of our local TV stations. Fox News is an ultra-conservative propaganda machine. School boards in Texas and Kentucky, etc. want to teach creationism as part of the curriculum to elementary school students, and change textbooks to reflect their anti-science stances. Colleges and universities all over the country (such as Liberty University) inject Christianity into every subject. Our government is, on a daily basis, not only abrogating civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, but supporting white supremacists (and hiring them in the White House). We need a foil to combat this, and the only place left are our liberal-leaning colleges and universities; introducing Trumpian so-called conservatism will only lobotomize discourse, not enhance it.
2
I think it would be wise for progressives to think hard (if possible) as to whether they object to Trump due to his broad policy agenda -- or is it stylistic? I'm sure some on the hysterical left reflexively object to everything Trump does. But most of his key policy initiatives are amazingly sane. The one that most of the left cringes over is withdrawing from the Paris accord. But that wasn't a binding agreement, would cost us $$$ and it did nothing to slow down CO2 emissions as it let emerging economies keep on emitting until 2030 before they have to set goals.
North Korea -- controversial maybe. But trying to get N Korea to stop its nuclear program before they can damage us or our allies seems sensible. And the time to do it is now, not after they've develop a 2nd strike capability against the US and have built bomb proof shelters throughout N Korea (if they haven't already). Obama's willful non action on North Korea gave them 8 years to build unmolested.
Tax cuts? Build the economy. Build infrastructure? Who isn't for those things? And Obamacare does need fixing if both side would take off their partisan hats.
Controlling our borders is a good idea. Only the left twists that into some sort of racist narrative.
So what is it progs? Fair to disagree with his policies if you want, but do so with intellect, not emotion. They are mainstream ideas.
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These are GOP policies.
Trump tags along
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Just to take one of the points. You say, Ralphie, "Controlling the borders is a good idea." Then go on to criticize us on the left for "twisting" that so-obviously-good thing into ... blah, blah, blah.
Who thinks controlling the borders is a good idea? You do, Ralphie. I don't. My next door neighbor doesn't. My cousin (the one in California) doesn't. No one in my office has said that.
I'll let someone else speak to you about the rest of your stuff.
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It is very concerning (alerting) that Donald Trump, The President of the USA does not know how The IQ Score is calculated. If he did, he would realize that his IQ Score is not very high, even though he went to an IVY League MBA Program. IQ Scores are heavily linked with amount of Education/School Grades completed. Those with Ph.Ds and Post Doctorate degrees have higher IQ's than Masters level, BA Level. etc. Note: It also looks like a lot of the USA News Media, as they discussed this IQ topic over the last few weeks, are not aware of how The Score is calculated either. Maybe they aren't even aware of where they fit in, in the World Population. IQ Scores are important for certain jobs. If the required IQ Score is not on The Resume, then that person is not considered for the job. I was hoping to see an IQ Expert and/or Headhunter on shows like CNN, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow. To inform the USA Population, at the very least. I did not see such a guest. I hope the New York Times and Washington Post do something. IQ Scores are important, very important. The Population needs to be informed.
IQ scores are not on people's resumes ever. Some children are tested before they get through grammar school. Many adults have never had an IQ test.
(My niece, an HCI expert and a PhD-wielding university professor, has an IQ lower than mine. I dropped out after I earned two BAs.)
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Rea-- I am sorry that you, along with a lot of the public...it seems, are not informed about IQ Scoring. I am past the Post Doctorate. Headhunters look at Resumes (bios) that are created by the Workplace, not by the person. I am also above Mensa. Are you aware that there are 52 Grades in School?
Odd, that this so-called liberal newspaper is full of columnists who routinely promote center-right politicians like Hillary Clinton and all but endorse outright "conservatives" like GWB if the Democrat bores them (as in the case of Frank Bruni) but insist liberals are too insular, as if they had special insight into the matter.
The question is, why, not being liberals themselves, do they preach to liberals? Mr. Bruni, try Trump voters, if you want to demonstrate the power of empathy and your ideas. Then come back and tell us how it went.
I would agree if the conservatives, in the public eye, presented wholesome solutions to the problems liberals are concerned about. Global warming - happens all the time, don't worry about it, Burn carbon. Abortion - gold standard is abolishment, settle for close to unobtainable. Health care - ACA is the work of the devil. Only thing worse is universal health care. Environment - important to the extent that it doesn't interfere with the private sector's wishes. International affairs - don't bother to speak, just carry a big stick.Regulating the financial sector - bad idea. Education - leave some ultimate room for public schools.Racism,bigotry - liberal concoction. Poverty - didn't they ever hear about Horatio Alger. Final solution - unfettered private sector control.
2
I never ask students about politics when interviewing for MIT here in the Midwest. They do have to enjoy, not merely suffer, the teaching of science and reason. There is ROTC, and there is evolution. There is Hillel, Jews for Jesus, Church of LDS, and atheism, beef and vegan, boys, girls and unspecified. There is sport and science fiction, there are speakers you’ll love, hate and be bored by. Beyond that, you’re supposed to seek your path to making the world a better place with your training, gifts and enthusiasm, and it’s no business of mine if that involves left, right or center.
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This is the absolute worst form of false equivalence. It just happens to be the case that so-called "liberals" tend to be not just qualitatively different to so-called "conservatives" but quantitatively different. Instead this article seems keen to suggest that despite being different they are nevertheless exactly the same. No: they really are different. Conservatives tend to be more ignorant and not just possessed of different opinions, and certainly not just possessed of opinions of equivalent merit.
People can't be introduced to greater learning but still remain in the same state. Education is civilising. Our common humanity only counts for so much, on top of it is the humanity we share with some others but not with all, on top of that is the humanity that is unique to us. On top of that yet again there's our own unique collection of information we've retained from our unique experience, much of which we share with others. It's called culture. "Conservatives" just so happen to tend to be less and worse cultured than "liberals". As do the young. Go figure.
By all means let such "barbarians" in the gate. Just don't expect them all to remain "barbarians". And don't put what counts for much of "conservative thought" on the same level as the diverse collected works of enlightening, civilising reason through the ages. Certainly don't let "barbarians" teach what has been called "the superior moral justification for selfishness". Then they will win and civilisation will be lost.
I feel like the columnist is missing a vital piece of the puzzle here. They claim colleges are bastions of liberal thought that alienate Conservatives and there’s a huge divide. So Republicans don’t send their kids to college? Really?
I was raised in a family of die-hard evangelical Republicans. If my father was still alive he’d be wearing a red trucker hat and cheering Fox News for “telling it like it is”.
When I went to college I was a die hard Republican who thought I knew everything. But back in the 90s we actually had debates and heard various points of view. And you know what? That die-hard College Republican in pearls and a sweater set my Freshman year? She was a Democrat by the time Bush was inaugurated in 2000.
Colleges aren’t excluding Conservative kids— they’re educating them. They introduce backwater kids to new people and new cultures and new ideas and then they let them marinate for a few years. The graduation timer sings and lo and behold— your Conservative 18 year old is now a 22 year old liberal.
Affirmative Action for Conservative Professors isn’t going to stop kids from being liberal. The only way to do that is to close down all the good universities and send the kids for political indoctrination at Liberty University instead. And even that won’t work for long.
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How absolutely condescending can you be? "tintroduce backwater kids to new people"? "We actually had debates and heard various points of view". Now you are getting somewhere but you miss the point. A lot of colleges today don't encourage debate and various points of view. That is the whole point of the article. When you went to school there was debate. There isn't now. If you are going to not allow "conservate" speakers, if you aren't going to hire professors whose views don't mesh with yours, how are you going to have debate? How are you going to get various view points?
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Hmmm - essentially your post suggests that educated people automatically gravitate to "progressive" views as a natural by-product of education. In other words, conservatives are just ignorant knuckle draggers. Your post reflects the kind of out of touch, insulated arrogance that the article warns about on our college campuses. It also reflects historical ignorance. 70 years ago our elite colleges were the bastions of conservative thought, despite the educational attainments of both the professors and the student bodies. 100 years ago "progressive" universities like Wisconsin and "progressive" intellectuals like Woodrow Wilson were at the epicenter of eugenics and Jim Crow, despite their aledgedly "progressive" values. Neither side of the intellectual divide has a monopoly on intelligence, moral authority or answers for the challenges we face. That's why our educational system should incorporate all sides of the debate.
1
Let's also have affirmative action at universities for climate change deniers and people who believe vast tax cuts for the rich will benefit the working class. Just kidding, but Mr. Bruni's argument is ignoring some essential points. One is that the underlying framework of most conservative thought is anti-intellectual and deserves no place in the academy. People who deny climate change deny a 98%+ consensus among climate scientists. They do so for reasons that are divorced from rationality: because religious leaders, politicians, and pundits they consider authorities, no matter how often they are wrong, have said so; because they don't think God would put any roadblocks on their 'inheriting the earth'; or because they have faith in completely free markets, despite overwhelming evidence that such markets lead to disaster. Traditionalism and submission to authority, including political and religious leaders, are mainstays of conservative thought, but these deserve little more than dissection in institutions devoted to Reason. Yes, there are lefties who have crackpot ideas about eg GMOS or vaccines, but a) these also don't deserve honored places in the academy and b) they are not central to the definition of liberal as for instance climate change denial is now to conservatism. The other point Mr. Bruni fails to see is that conservatives already dominate power through most of our society and are just trying to wipe out the last sources of resistance by converting universities.
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colleges and universities should be academic, not admit or hire on the basis of political views.
hiring faculty or admitting students because they favor Trump and thus add to the diversity on campus is not appropriate.
Frank Bruni is wrong on this issue.
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The best colleges and universities teach the liberal arts, healthy skepticism, and critical thinking. The more students absorb these skills and subjects, the more they become broad-minded and, uh, liberal. The reason colleges and universities are bastions of liberal thinking isn't because other points of view are refused; they are considered and rejected. Liberal thinking is more evolved, rejecting narrow-minded, bigoted, and pseudo-religious ideas. The most highly educated people tend to be liberal, and the most educated states tend to be blue. It's just how it is.
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When I was an undergraduate during Ronald Reagan's first term, the atmosphere on campuses was completely different. College republicans were in ascendancy, and it seemed to me that the brightest of the bright young things were movement conservatives. Befuddled leftists, conversely, seemed a pathetic spectacle. An interesting thing happened over the next four decades: as the GOP lurched further and further to the right, becoming more overtly exclusionary of immigrants, ethnic minorities, gays, etc., more and more of my college republican friends and acquaintances grew increasingly disenchanted, and I watched them fall away at a steady clip from about 1992; by 2012, many of them had become reliably democratic voters. It hasn't been campuses who have lost touch with conservatives — it's the other way round.
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It is a dangerous presumption that those in the military or studying the military are exclusively conservative or Trump supporters.
Patriotism and the desire to serve one’s country does not belong to just one side of the political spectrum.
4
I agree that more economic and geographical diversity would be good for everyone.
I disagree that we need to treat reactionary views that deny the value of women, immigrants, racial and sexual minorities, and the disabled to history and society. To take Bruni's instance of military history v. gender studies: why must this be an opposition? Why treat "military history" as synonymous with working-class, straight, native-born U.S. male citizens?Could a thorough history of the U.S. military (including war, strategy, hierarchy, personnel, and recruitment) not include discussion of the conscription of unpaid slaves to the Union cause, sexual assault of both women and men, the genocide of indigenous Americans, and the changes in policy around gay, lesbian, and transgender soldiers? What about the ethics of rape and torture as military tools in the Middle East? Students could certainly debate the value, ethics, and utility of military hierarchies and actions that privilege certain genders, races, and sexual orientations over others, rather than treating their inclusion as a separate topic.
This is but one example of the poor logic of this piece, and of defenses of white and male identity politics more generally.
3
Universities which are "liberal" not because conservative students or faculty members are being excluded, but because they value truths, facts, and critical thinking. Conservatives students and faculty members don't want to attend or come to these universities for their beliefs challenged. I am a university professor, one of my students told me that President Obama was not born in the US. What do you think how a professor should deal with this? Nod, and say "I respect your diverse opinion"? A student of mine issued a strong complaint against me because I said in class, that the first several chapters of the Genesis is one of creation stories. How do a professor deal with this? It is not that "liberal" universities is less tolerant of conservatives, but the other way around. Just because Trump won the election (mind you, he did not win the popular votes), we need to sacrifice higher education to accommodate his supporters and reverse years of progress we have made?
3
It is remarkable today how anti-intellectual the American citizenry is today. And it is just one political party that has particularly embraced this no-nothingism.
The academic scientific and mathematics communities live in a professional world that is based on reason, logic, and evidence; they can't afford not to. So when these groups poll hugely Democratic might it possibly be a sign that something is unbalanced in American society, politics, and education, and not that science departments are inadequately conservative?
Two stories from the recent news: (1) 20-yearold students at the college of William and Mary shout down a speaker from the ACLU, (2) the Turmp administration EPA forbids its scientists from reporting on their own research. Both are most definitely wrong. But hmm ... which is more dangerous?
4
Not so fast, Mr. Bruni. There is ample empirical evidence to support the following:
(1) While liberals predominate in the Humanities, disciplines such as economics, business, international business, finance and international finance, law, and even political science are dominated by conservatives. Thus, a wash;
(2) Scientists with their inherent apolitical tendencies used to be slightly more conservative, as the latter demanded greater scientific rigor. But, now they are overwhelmingly liberal. Why the shift? Because now that same Republican Party and the conservative ideology riles against the science of climate change, against epistemology, and the validity of the scientific method itself.
(3) 18 of the top 20 universities, and 80 of the top 100 universities on this planet are American. Academy is the jewel of the American society, even surpassing the Silicon Valley. If this is the sector of the society you consider liberal, perhaps there should be more liberal institutions in other sectors of American life as well. After all, it beats the best of the rest of the world.
The fact is that in most American universities, the choice of topics and issues to be examined may be subtly informed by values, but rigor, not of liberal versus conservative, but a grand tradition of inquiry in which the United States excel.
To those conservative business executives dominating universities' Board of Trustees: please preserve this jewel, the Academy.
4
With the current state of conservative thought, incorporating right wing voices in any intellectual environment is beyond challenging. Should universities give credence to climate-deniers, discredited Laffer-curve macro economic theories, and the distorted history of Conderate generals and white supremacy? Left wing dogmatism is a problem, but it pales in comparison to the know-nothingness that has gripped the conservative movement.
4
I see the Ivy League colleges as lacking the diversity of a large state university. A working class white student would be fearful of ridicule and feelings of isolation at an Ivy League, and is more likely to choose a state university.
Bruni’s suggestion is DOA. He says, “I’m not suggesting that colleges normalize Trump.” But you are Frank by saying that contemporary conservative beliefs (not facts, but beliefs) should be given the same credence and value as fact-based information that the university has traditionally used. The acceptance of non-verifiable ideas as qualified to offer a legitimate contribution to the academic conversation “normalizes” those ideas. It defies the very purpose of education which is to instill critical thinking skills. The conservative approach to education defies critical thinking by blindly accepting unverifiable and abstract absolutes like religion and creationism, and culturally entrenched propaganda like the Civil War was not about slavery.
Is Bruni saying that higher education needs to include some of Betsy deVos’s conservative Christian educational agenda in its curriculum? To what end? Where do we draw the line?
When a student gets to college, a critical thinking foundation should have already been established. But, unfortunately, that is not the reality for many students, particularly those coming out of parochial systems, or public systems like Texas where textbooks are chosen for propaganda content.
What is the purpose of education? If you think it is to get a job, or to cement unverifiable belief systems, then you really don’t want an education. What you want is to confine your life to a small room with a locked door and no key. Education is the key.
1
As a university professor I find much of this article deeply disturbing.
“And 8 percent — a tiny group, but a contingent nonetheless — said likewise about politically conservative students.”
So you’re going to purposefully recruit conservative students? This means you’ll need to ask potential recruits about their political beliefs and favor those who describe themselves as conservative. If this isn’t illegal, it should be.
“Some people woke up the day after the election and realized that every surrounding county voted in a different way than the college did.”
Colleges don’t vote. People vote. And it’s none of the university’s business how they vote.
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When a university hires the ilk of Shawn Spicer, the slimy slitherer, we are doomed. The students are smart enough when faced with these fools to know that this is not what they want. They want a "real" education. Not the faux stuff that is enveloping our nation.
1
Diversity is good, so recruiting students with diverse backgrounds is a reasonable thing for colleges to do. Recruiting students based on what they think, however, seems a step too far. An immediate question becomes, what kind of conservatives should you recruit? Probably you wouldn't want to recruit a neo-nazi, so you now you have to start distinguishing "good" conservatives from "bad" conservatives. Where do you draw the line? Admitting students based on what they think is perilous.
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Another wasted opportunity to denounce the racism of the odious Charles Murray. But then by now you can deduce Frank’s on board with him.
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Trumpism is nothing more the bullying with bluster, lies and empty-headed deflections. There are no adults in the whole miserable lot of Trump enablers.
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Isn't education meant to inform one's frame of reference?
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Does the name Betsy Devos ring a bell? The Trump administration is not even a year old, but you can bet after three more years that education as we know it will be flushed down the toilet. After the trillion dollar tax cuts the cuts in public services will come, and education, especially higher education, will be dead center in their cross hairs.
2
Frank Bruni gets played by conservative claims of victimhood. He quotes Professor Jean Yarbrough, a Trump voter, who thinks “the academy” believes only people with “missing front teeth” voted for Trump and is “out of touch with America.” Amazing! Not only does she claim to speak for all of academia, she promotes the myth that rural America is somehow the “real America.” Note: more than 80% of Americans live in or near cities, yet are disparaged as not being “real Americans.” Of course, the racial and ethnic makeup of cities exposes this as a racist dog whistle. And the Heterodox Academy defended the recent white nationalist screed by law professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander. Wax wrote “Not all cultures are equal. Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans.” If Bruni is unfamiliar with what Jonathan Haidt and the Heterodox Academy really stand for, he should find out before citing them as an authority. Conservatives are not being kept out of academia, but have increasingly adopted anti-intellectual positions that cannot be empirically defended..
2
If all those schools out there are so restricted that they can only produce liberal thought and snowflakes, where'd all the intellectuals that populate conservative think tanks come from?
Where'd the conservative college student now elected to a local school board come from?
And who, for all that's under heaven and earth, is populating the Business Schools? Are we seriously imagining that Marx and Lenin are in the B-schools? That the intellectual work that created securitized mortgages, or arbitration clauses, did not come from people educated in our colleges?
I call horse hockey. Many professors are Liberals, and many are fans of liberal democracy. Many students will get in a huff about Halloween costumes, and micro-aggressions, and many will be part of organizations trying to stir up controversy by bring Mlio Wha't-his-name to campus.
Somehow or other we have a fairly educated commercial and upper, upper class who are conservative and pro-business. They think colleges are brain washing our youth - but they don't want education, they want a better shot at brain washing.
1
From most of the comments, looks like Frank is talking to the wind.
1
So colleges should have chairs in eugenics, creationism, climate change denial, Holocaust denial? Where does it stop? False equivalence in the media helped Trump and his ilk in Congress get elected. You can’t have a dialogue with bigots and know-nothings who hold beliefs to be superior to facts. Let’s not pander to prejudice.
3
Wait a minute.
Trump is personally a disgusting human being. His limited ideas, his racist and misoginistic actions are repugnant.
That has absolutely nothing to do with valuing the conservative point of view on college campuses. Examining all ideas about how we should proceed as a society is a key opportunity presented by a college education.
Don’t link the Trumpster to anything educational.
1
Forget “Hillbilly Elegy.” Actually, I am a hillbilly, a native of West Virginia (where my ancestors have lived for 300 years) and a Ph.D.; which is something of a tradition in my family—getting advanced degrees, I mean. Right now, I’m angry with people who read one book about rural life in general and Appalachia in particular, and think they know all about us. And as for recruiting more conservative professors (whatever that means): When we go to college, the last thing we want is some Trumpian numbskull parroting the party line to us. Or even some mildly conservative eminence telling us that true benevolence lies in limiting government and cutting whatever meager support we have gotten in the past. We want accuracy, not the kind of right-wing, laissez-faire politics that have been force-fed to us from our cradles.
If you REALLY want to do us a favor (and you probably don’t), could you please export some of that lovely bicoastal learning to us. Khan academy is a good start; but we can use more resources along those lines, and with more subject areas. Any kind of aid you can spare would be welcome. If more students are well prepared for college, they will be less likely to think higher education is a work of the devil and less likely to vote for idiots who think that carbon dioxide does not cause global warming.
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From a fellow West Virginian with a JD, well said. Ideas that have been proven a failure do not belong in higher education, unless teaching students what not to do.
I know some Yale graduates that have lost their front teeth. Perhaps they should speak out.
1
Good points as long as the conservatives invited to campus are people like your colleagues Russ Douthat, David Brooks and Bret Stephens. Should people who deny climate change and evolution be invited to teach? What about white nationalists who could teach that the holocaust is a myth invented by Jews to control the world. And let's not forget to make Christmas great again. Where is the line between reason and idiocy?
This is a return to the bad ol' days of Reagan one of whose central rhetorical feats was to turn the word "liberal" into a dirty word. Here we go again. The William F Buckley's are few and far between, but the thinly veiled racists and bigots are plentiful. Somehow the decent people who are progressive and don't want to subscribe to some perverse
mixture of social darwinism, hypocritical religious fundamentalism, and disproven supply side, "trickle down" economic theories and policies. And yet we are the ones who get tarnished by the dirt thrown on the notion of being a liberal, a progressive. And then somehow they are the victims of discrimination and need special forums for their nonsense.
C'mon Frank, we have the decency to feel guilt and want all voices to be heard, but we are not flunking by being totally sick of fraudulent, deceptive, bigoted clap trap. For every Buckley there is an ignorant resentful herd who feel no such obligation to hear progressive voices. I don't feel bad that university students don't want to waste their time listening to nazi inspired hate speech. We've bent over backwards and where has it gotten us?
What’s next?
An endowed Professor of the Alt-right?
Some things have no intellectul merit and don’t deserve support in a serious intellectual environment. If you want to listen and learn from ignoramouses who disrespect science and truth, go somewhere else.
2
What pray tell is the conservative ideologue that is missing? That women should dress more dolled up like Huckabee Sanders? That there are parts in Dearborn and London that the police do not patrol because of Islam nationalists? That gays are recruiting? I’m flummoxed by this idea that college professors are too liberal. Where exactly is this validated? Gorsuch and Roberts aren’t de nova phenomenons, but the fake news line that colleges bust at the seem with anti-American ideals is.....
Critical thinking and the ability to practice and teach precedence of activities or ideas precludes any participation by rigid preconceived ideas embraced by those choosing the conservative label. A teacher has to follow the logical connections of ideas and results no matter what they want the outcome to be. Thus all the stupid greenwashing articles paid for by climate deniers.
Some of these proposals may have merit, but can liberals like Bruni please stop circulating the idea that college campuses are "one big blissful love-in of like-minded liberals"?? Has Bruni failed to read the parade of stories about nooses left dangling: swastikas left on doors, and even physical attacks on students of color?
At my institution, all the black students in the incoming freshman class received a blind facebook message with their name assigned on a calendar with the date for their "lynching." On the day after the election, of my students was assaulted as he walked across campus by three young men who heard him speaking a foreign language in his phone.
Even many liberals see campuses only as protected bubbles; but for that very reason they are targets in the upsurge of intolerance and hatred from the right that Trump has loosed on America.
iIf we wonder about the veracity of the claim that academe has mived off into the uninteresting realm of vacuous and banal self absorption check other columns in the Opinion section today. "Let It Go: Making Peace With Princesses" is based on an assumotion that we're all in agreement: traditional female roles are ridiculous and ridiculing then is of course not closed minded m, it's just vorrect. Snother cokumn asserts that all the well intended attention to breast cancer research summarized by the "pink" campaign is regressive and refkective of cultural bias because the good professor doesnt like pink being associated with females.
There can be no surprise when the public grows tired of this tripe
A silly column. I’m waiting for The Conservative Approach to Classical Mechanics. Or Conservative Group Theory.
Et tu, Mr Bruni- Getting drunk on the wine of white grievance and resentment.?
Conservatives are shoving regressive policy down our throats and into our lives and somehow, they need affirmative action? White people are losing it, day by day. Heaven help us - I mean them.
I'm no cook, but soup's better stirred: thanks for that Frank. The ivory tower I hid out in was "diverse" in proportion to direct experience of "other"--perceived variously--we earnest idiots either stumbled on or searched for. The line blurs. Clear, though, is that best-laid curricular plans to school our heads to think critically were successful by accident as much as on purpose, affirmative action (plus corollary tokenism) notwithstanding. When discomforts arose was when we got to cook with gas, when it got personal, eye to eye. "Liberal?" "Conservative?" Actual persons were then and are now shielded from view by the cardboard cutouts they white-knuckle before them. We humans seem to lose whatever humanity might mean to the extent we revert reflexively to labels for mediating the phenomenological AND relational paradox of being alive. Such labels feel (in the term of art!) experience-distant, intellectual bane of liberal artist. People engaging persons with pulses, taking stands yet allowing the requisite vulnerability for radically intimate connections of all stripes--that's what I want my children to share and to have. CAN we be the change we wish to see in the world? I was persuaded so recently by Mr. Daryl Davis (www.daryldavis.com) on Maher: "Our country is going to become one of two things: what we make it, or what we let it become." Inquisitive, instructive territory, true, when "danger" is invited smack dab here [privileged blabbermouth touches heart].
Don't conservatives generally revile affirmative action policies?
Trump isn't truly conservative unless corruption, ignorance, racism, white supremacy, incompetence, intolerance, dishonesty and narrow self-interest are.
Then again, maybe he is.
Yes, we need more conservative economic ideas like those that were implemented in Kansas recently under Governor Brownback. And we need more real conservative political candidates like Roy Moore in Alabama. The difference it will make will be astonishing and affect our nation profoundly in many important ways. When the fire is already too hot, pour on more gasoline, I say.
3
Conservative intellectuals, such that they exist in this country, have been dedicating their polemical research to a level of truth best housed in well-funded conservative think tanks and better-funded popular media outlets. Conservative historians who tell a historical narrative that pushes select groups of the disenfranchised to the margins; conservative scientists who turn a blind eye to evidence of climate change in "research" that supports outdated corporate interests; are these the kinds of academics whose research and classroom perspectives universities should foster and fund? I think Frank Bruni is buying into some universities' marketing efforts to position themselves in the current political environment, where conservative media outlets are painting them as out of touch or even outright hostile to the white volk of America. Bruni is usually quite a bit sharper than this.
4
The argument assumes that the politics of impressionable students is immutable. Yet the college experience should be transformative. Sadly the non-scholarly and politically attuned chancellors may embrace Bruni's claptrap as all they think about our $$$ and budget cuts.
1
Mr. Bruni, the reason many college level schools are left-leaning is because that will be the logical outcome of intellect and education, which is why tump "loves the uneducated." The dumbing down will be complete when he and DeVos succeed in replacing education with indoctrination in private schools. Why would you suggest that we open the door even a crack to courses, lectures or visiting speakers promoting conspiracy theories, really "fake news," white supremacy and climate change denial? Why legitimize or give credence to nonsense from the fanatical right-wing fringe? They do not belong in the company of higher education. This isn't fair play, it's naivety.
5
College students and most other Americans would benefit greatly from taking a course on the First Amendment. I am a lifelong Democrat but it is disheartening to see how many people on the Left want to regulate political speech - which the Supreme Court has repeatedly noted is entitled to the highest level of protection - based on content. Recently, a former high-ranking member of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign was a guest on Anderson Cooper's nightly show on CNN. Twice she interrupted a conservative guest by saying she would not allow him to make certain statements because she anticipated what he was going to say and had concluded they were factually untrue. The audacity! The heart of this problem is best illustrated by an incident that occurred during a class on the First Amendment when I was in law school. Our professor, the former head of the ACLU in New Jersey, asked the students on the first day of class whether the Black Panthers should be allowed to hold a rally in Central Park to espouse their views in a non violent way. "Yes" replied most of the class in unison. The professor the asked whether the KKK should be allowed to hold a rally in Central Park to espouse their views in a non-violent way. "No" was the loud chorus in reply. Whereupon our professor explained to the class the dancers of regulating speech based on content, a lesson that many Americans on the left, right, and in the middle need to learn.
3
The notion that colleges need someone to represent the thinking of Trump supporters makes as much sense as hiring scientists to teach creationism, geographers to teach the world is flat, or religious scholars to teach the religious benefits of Mayan human sacrifices. I will grant that many in modern education are insular thinkers; but that has always been true and has only worsened as the libertarian Kleptocrat class has attached ideological strings to their support to educational institutions. Fact is, folks voted for Trump for a variety of reasons, many of which were illogical or emotional. Education should not embrace acting irrationally or throwing away common sense to feed emotion. Putting ideological labels on top tier schools to debase the currency of higher education is not an act of legitimate ideology. It is an act of war against
education. It is an effort to manipulate people to turn their backs on what education teaches us in order to destroy this country and the aspirational values it represents.
4
Colleges now have lengthy questionnaires to match roommates who have similar interests and beliefs etc... God forbid students should have to deal with a morning person or someone who likes different music. If we coddle students to that level, is it any surprise that there is a decrease in heated debates? It think throwing out those surveys should be the first step towards regaining balance on campuses.
1
If only mornings and music was all it was about. I know a college administrator who had to intervene just a few weeks ago on behalf of a minority student who walked into his dorm room to discover that his roommate had decorated a wall with a Nazi flag.
At first I thought that Mr. Bruni's argument was well thought out. And most of it is. But then I started reading the comments section. Most of the commenter's were right on. I believe Mr. Bruni was probably talking about the social sciences. We need more discussion on what divides us and to bring those ideas to the fore should probably start in high school or earlier. It might be to late to change the minds of people by the the time they begin college. Hopefully "facts and truth" can still be learned after one graduates from high school.
1
Mr. Bruni's Op-Ed assumes the predicate of a leftist academia. The veracity of this assumption depends on one's definition of the left. Are we talking about the materialist left of Marx or the social left of the modern Democratic Party? The former is underrepresented amongst college faculty, whereas the latter is present in healthy numbers.
I agree with other commenters that the intellectual right is quite different from the Trump crowd. Indeed, most members of the intellectual right oppose Trump.
All ideas are not equal, nor equally deserving of being elevated on our campuses. Inherent in Trumpism is the classic trope of American anti-intellectualism, as is an oppositoon to affirmative action programs generally. So, any demand that Trumpists be the beneficiaries of some kind of academic affirmative action recalls a twisted formulation of the Groucho (not Karl) Marx remark, "I would never join a club that would have me as a member."
6
I really don't think all that much intellectual discussion goes on in dorms or on campus outside of classes or academic club activities, any more than it does elsewhere in society. This vision of students debating among themselves doesn't describe people I know very much (definitely rare when I went to college 4 decades ago). However, in schools, there is no doubt an overwhelming progressive as opposed to conservative majority and from my own brief experience teaching in the mid-00s, conservative kids are sometimes sniggered or snapped at. I was told, when hired, by the department admin., a friend, don't offer opinions that might be seen as conservative. That's what I hear goes on elsewhere at most schools. I'm a political moderate and made sure the kids didn't know my political views, despite teaching law classes, but I have met teachers who do politically proselytize.
As far as Trump goes, a lot of less well-educated people support him. But, most of his supporters I personally know are not uneducated, many highly educated, and less educated doesn't always mean less intelligent. Though I don't support Trump at all, I'm more concerned about the violent nature of the "resistance" and hysteria against him and what is called Trumpism (like the so-called Bush doctrine, it often means whatever his opponents don't like) than I am about him. For all the pretensions of intelligence, the anti-democratic and anti-first amendment nature of the "resistance" is disturbing.
1
Despite the fact that "a significant majority of Republicans and conservative-leaning independents now believe that colleges have a negative impact on America", and the common perception that " the left holds bold and sometimes imperious sway", there is a question yet unanswered: why are a majority of state legislatures, governorships, the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House all held by Republicans and Conservatives? If indeed American colleges and universities are leftist brainwashing centers (for decades no less!), why are conservative ideas in the ascendant? One possibility is that the whole notion of an overarching left wing agenda on America's campuses is so much propaganda. Another is that despite a leftward lean across academia there doesn't appear to be any long-term effect. What is the percentage of college educated Americans that voted for Trump (or Bush, McCain, Romney)? Considering that percentage is pretty high you'd have to conclude that the brainwashing didn't work.
3
The trend toward hiring Trump ideologues as faculty sounds to me like a ploy to ingratiate the universities with conservative donors made at the expense of intellectual goals like thought and the implications of fact.
6
I think you are overlooking the ongoing Kochtopus efforts. Trump and most particularly Pence are lending power to their elbow.
1
I generally appreciate the Bruni approach, but not this time.
The entire country has been shoved to the political right by corporate interests and conservative propaganda for nearly 40 years. Even universities are controlled by investment banker trustees and pragmatic manager presidents.
The idea that we have an urgent need to populate campuses with these voices is dangerous and a solution in desperate search of a problem. As another commenter pointed out, business schools dominate many universities. Undergraduate business majors flourish and philosophy departments close. And, of course, intellectual discourse has always been inclusive of multiple viewpoints. Bruni too easily stipulates to the erroneous notion that all college professors are fiercely, blindly dogmatic. They are not.
Like most of America, Bruni has allowed a few "safe spaces" (a harmless nod to historically abused humans) and "trigger warnings" (a civil and sensitive gesture to those who might have been harmed by a racist, sexist culture) create the delusion that campuses are deeply biased.
Should we bring climate change deniers into our scientific communities, just to be inclusive? Should we bring religious zealots into the highest levels of our justice system just to be even-handed? Oh, I forgot. We already did that. Enough is enough.
1
Ah, but Trump is being normalized! Some in the media are slowly turning his way, some congress members, and now academia is rolling over. You know that if conservative ideology and thought are taught in the long close-minded universities there will be heavy discussion and converts. Not good for Dems...watch the protests erupt when the invited right wing shows up on campus. Yes, Trump is being "normalized", and in less than a year in office, and if his tax bill becomes law...well, the left better learn to say "Good-bye".
1
I am a college professor, disabled veteran, and attorney. I reference myself as a pragmatist who leans left socially and as a centrist fiscally. I prepare my students for the professional world while teaching them to think critically/analytically, question, and recognize their confirmation bias. I never look down upon them for their beliefs, but I will not respect their beliefs unless they they can support them with evidence. Regarding Mr. Bruni's article on higher education, for Republicans and/or conservatives to look upon colleges as liberal bastions and to fear higher education is possibly a reflection of their confirmation bias - can you imagine being told your beliefs are wrong and then actually having to face evidence in support thereof? You poor things. As for liberals, you cannot convince anyone of anything by acting as an elitist or shouting at them. Recognize that a conservative's perspective of you may have merit. Higher education should be about learning, developing tolerance, sharing ideas, and thinking critically, no matter if you are conservative or liberal. To stand in contravention of these principles is to stand in contravention of principles that have enabled America to become a great country. You might as well wrap yourself in a blanket of confirmation bias and turn on Fox News or MSNBC and hope that the parts of the world you do not like just go away. It is a lot easier than challenging yourself to think critically and learn.
3
Affirmative action for conservatives. Really??? I can understand a desire for greater economic and geographic diversity on campuses, but are you really suggesting that a Republican child from Nebraska should get admissions precedence over a Democratic one from the same high school with better grades. Are you really saying that a Republican faculty member coming up for tenure should get preference over a more accomplished Democrat one? Political favoritism of this sort has certainly existed in other nations and at other times (it helps to be a party member in China, for instance), but I have a hard time seeing how political favoritism of this sort is in any way step forward.
1
Why do we put up with this nonsense?
We need affirmative action for liberals. It would make the world such a better place. Consider what would happen if domains like law enforcement, defense, finance, and corporate management were hounded to install liberals. It would go a long way to making the US a decent place.
There would be reductions in random incarceration and killing of minorities, reduced military expenditures, less malfeasance, corruption and double-dealing, and more women on boards.
The list of possible improvements is endless.
2
As conservatives, mostly in the Trump camp scream of elitism that exists in most all learning environments, deny basic science, and any exploration of ideas past their narrow view of how the world works, it’s difficult to feel sympathy for their perceived victimization. I’m not sure how much the institutions of higher learning are shutting out these conservative voices, or is it the fact that conservative voices/ideas have shouldered and cozied up to racial prejudices, corporate monied interests, and the general vision of Trumps world.
3
So many of the comments on this article indicate that liberals still don't get it - that diversity of opinion matters not just in academia, where it has been woefully missing, but in all aspects of our society. The caricatures of conservatives or Republicans are as embarrassingly one-dimensional as the caricatures of liberals on Breitbart.
2
There is a world of difference between recruiting rural students, which is very important to the mission of universities, and trying to create "a fair and balance" view. The latter idea quickly falls apart. Should we teach science- and holocaust-denial to provide balance? Is free trade a conservative or liberal view? Do we need to endow a chair of Feudal Studies to promote monarchism for those who believe we need a king?
1
Frank Bruni do you truly believe that White Christian Colleges are interested to become more diverse as far as giving a political course in say conservative vs. liberal agendas in politics? Or hold honest political discussions about conservatism vs. liberalism and as to what they have in common and what devides them and as to what unites them. If the above named colleges would do that they would have to agree to teach more true science rather than popo science as a hoax or left wing propaganda. All I am saying is that what you are proposing applies to many colleges in the South as well as the North, denominational and non-denominal colleges.
2
Another example of liberals being called out to open their "bubbles" to conservatives. Are conservatives ever called on to open their "bubbles" to liberals? When will someone call on Liberty University to admit more atheists? Of course, Bruni is not asking universities "mainstream" Trumpism. Give me a break!
3
As a veteran and a college professor, I find offensive the assumption that everyone in the military is politically conservative.
116
A veteran and a college prof. Wow. I hope this post raises your liberal credentials on campus sufficiently for the Left finally to speak to you with cordiality.
Gosh golly there are a lot of offended liberals here; yet you of all people, John, should know that the military is disproportionately represented by conservatives. We all know this and accept it just as we know that academia is disproportionately represented by liberals. Are you offended by that?
Try this: ban legacy admissions.
I got my degree from a European university where legacy admissions are illegal; only measurable merit of the student can be used as a selection criterion and the selection process is transparent and public. As a consequence most of my classmates were working class or lower middle class.
Most of us didn't have money or privilege, we had a demonstrated ability to learn difficult subject matter. The thickness of daddy's wallet is not included in the formulas of General Relativity.
4
The problem is not just a matter of being more open to conservative views. I wish someone would explain the absolutely bizarre antics and thinking in today's college communities that are supposed to be full of smart, educated people. Some of this just losing touch with a sense of what is reasonable -- not liberal vs. conservative thought. In some cases it seems there isn't a hint of belief that there could be another legitimate point of view. Columnist George Will has noted "behavior beyond satire," including faculty warning students in the syllabus that that students risk “failure for the semester” if they use “derogatory/oppressive language” such as “referring to women/men as females or males.” Then there's the emergency re-write of the English language noting that some might be uncomfortable with gender-specific pronouns (“he,” “she,” “him,” “her”), suggestion of using gender-neutral noises (“ze,” “hir,” “xe,” “xem,” “xyr"). These are just a couple of examples. This nonsense is coming from institutions that supposedly train people to think?
40
Unusual as it is in American tradition, as of late the majority has suffered the minority--even on its extreme fringes--to call the shots.
It had better get its face out of its cell phones long enough to comprehend that the inmates are taking over the asylum--with due apologies to all of our inmates. No offense.
"Inside Higher Ed published an article recently in which college-placement advisers said that some clients wanted to steer clear of certain elite schools — Yale and Brown were singled out — that struck them as overzealously progressive."
****
Such individuals are looking for an excuse to make a statement excoriating "liberal elitist schools" by refusing to apply to them. The self-selection against those schools was already entrenched. The only difference now is that they are seizing the opportunity to vilify a group they hate at the same time as they seek environments that reflect only their own views. It is the same mentality that led certain members of Congress to demand changing the name of a cafeteria side dish to "freedom fries" because they failed to cow France into supporting their desire for war in Iraq.
4
Affirmative action for rightists in the Humanities? OK, but only if there is also affirmative action for leftists in economics departments, business colleges, political science departments and law schools. This idea of "political correctness" run amok in universities is wildly exaggerated, and has been since it was first ginned up by the likes of Lynne Cheney in the 90s and used as the proverbial bloody shirt ever since. I for one would welcome some rightist readings of Moby Dick, that wicked book by the spotless Melville. But methinks the protagonists in this squabble have a more pissant agenda.
7
I asked the main question in this piece to my wife, the retired college professor, and she said "is you deal with the world in both ways - how it IS and point the way how it SHOULD be". This seems too simple an answer.
1
While I'm a "progressive" who worked hard in the Sanders campaign, I think that Bruni's analysis is right. Liberally-minded college students who hear only the opinions they agree with aren't getting a better education. They're insulating themselves from hearing other viewpoints and handicapping their own ability to respond. Unfortunately, there is a quasi-religious atmosphere at many colleges, where erstwhile progressive students have decided who's been selected to be saved and who's damned; as a result, we're regularly seeing stories of professors being shouted down or bullied for apocryphal accusations about their views (see: Reed, Evergreen, or, earlier, Yale). Students who don't have to deal with views they disagree with will be completely ineffectual as advocates. How will they even argue with their spouse?
48
At least the students at Reed (disclosure: I attended it), Evergreen, Yale, and others have the opportunity to speak with faculty and fellow students about dealing with views they disagree with. The students at Bob Jones University and the like are expelled if they disagree. Please don't engage in false equivalence; there is hope (such as in the form of Lucia Martinez at Reed) at the one, but none at the other. Yes, I deplore the closed-mindedness at all of these places, but at least there are countervailing forces at some of them.
1
your premise is wrong, so your conclusion is also. These students are exposed to plenty of conservative argument and ideology. It surrounds them. Any shouting down in the classroom (really? where? when? how much?) can and should be dealt with, as a teaching moment and, if necessary, as a matter for discipline.
You appear to be a very unusual progressive "indeed". Now let's see who talks to you tomorrow.
College should be about teaching what is and about pushing the envelope of human knowledge in order to explore what we can become.
Of course a college's student body should be as diverse as possible, otherwise, how can it succeed in that mission?
5
Everyone has an ideology. Not having an ideology is an ideology. Decades ago became shameful on campus to have an ideology based on a Christian worldview or that which was rooted in Western Civilization. I lived this. I saw "dead white men" scraped off the curricula and radical multicultural revisionism become the new dogma of the academic elite. NOW, you want to say colleges should have "inquisitive instructive" dialogue with those they have considered part of the "dangerous" white trash heap of history? Really? This is the fruit of what has been very carefully and intentionally sown in our culture through liberal education. How can anyone deny this?
If only that "Christianity" were a Christian practice based on Jesus's teachings and the gospels. "dead white men" culture is still around, but the existence of slavery and its inheritance has polluted us all, as has the treatment of women.
3
I attended a Jesuit-based university in the 90's where classes on theology and the Bible were required, so suffice to say, your experience is not universal.
But the barbarians ARE at the gates. The GOP has long pandered to anti intellectualism and Christian fundamentalism. Those elements stand against precisely what the University stands for. Evidence based, rational decision making. They for push climate denial and Divine creation to be taught in schools. That can't stand.
20
Don't forget that less prestigious (or downright non-prestigious) colleges and universities - who, at most, have regional influence and who don't advertise their less competitive acceptance rates - don't need to recruit student veterans or aspiring police officers or religious and ideological conservatives. These students are already on campus. And they often cannot afford the residential status that allows them the luxury of staying up all night debating issues with roommates.
The majority of my students work full-time or nearly full-time. They're responsible for their own or extended families. They are determined to earn their degrees, and they are both open to and disdainful of conversations about context, assumptions,and different points of view.
The wealthy, selective colleges and universities are not the only source of educated Americans. Your article seems to be talking about folks who will have influence through power -- sheer top-down power. Those of us who educate folks whose political power will find expression primarily through voting, non-managerial work, and neighborhood relationships need societal and philanthropic support for conversation across differences, too.
It's disheartening to be given the impression that educated Americans are people who have earned degrees from prestigious institutions. Millions of educated Americans have degrees from community colleges and less prestigious or non-prestigious universities and colleges.
8
I agree in part, but you've gotta admit, the intellectual dishonesty of so much modern conservative political thought (cf. at least half of your colleague Paul Krugman's columns) doesn't help them here.
3
Trump wants to know why so many educated people dislike him. He said in a recent speech that he graduated from an Ivy League college, was a good student, is very intelligent, etc. etc. We also know that Trump is a pathologic liar. But the real question is how an ivy league school can take a very intelligent good student and turn him into a Donald Trump? I would be embarrassed to admit I was graduated from the same school as Donald Trump, no matter how much his father paid to get him in.
6
I think the "very intelligent" and "good student" parts of his speech were lies too, or at least exaggeration. His speeches and public comments show little evidence of intelligence or education.
Trumpism isn't Conservatism, so I feel the article is conflating two different movements. Academia has no obligation to normalize the hatred, lies and general idiocy behind Trumpism. Conservatism, yes, needs to be represented among students and faculty.
8
I think a lot of NYT columnists are flunking the "liberal campus" debate at the moment.
Amongst the conservatives (Douthat, Brooks, Stephens), I think it's a question of projection--it gives them comfort to think that it's left-wing professors at elite East Coast colleges enabling a mob these days, not the "their" party, the GOP, and certainly not conservatism itself, a belief system that has clearly started to rot (think communism in the late Soviet period). Stephens' calling Middlebury a "factory for junior totalitarians" is a good example: it's not an argument that reflects facts or reality, it's an ad hominem smear worthy of Fox News.
As for Bruni, I think his heart is in the right place, but again, once you step away from the elite schools (I'm guessing he went to one), the assumption that liberals have absolute power on campus starts to look just like that, an assumption.
Check out Senate File 288 in Iowa, which proposes introducing quotas for hiring Republican faculty, or the legislator in Madison who proposed vetting courses at the University of Wisconsin for ideological bias after he heard about someone teaching a course on "Whiteness" (I think he added "Of course we won't check the Business School," or something to that effect, because ideology is something everyone else has).
Anyway, rather than try to engineer a new campus polis student by student, how about making state colleges free? Instead of dismantling them, like the GOP wants (see again Wisconsin).
5
There should not be "affirmative action" (discrimination) for anybody.
It just gives administrators arbitrary power (to favor their pets).
This op-ed doesn't make sense.
Because America elected a moronic, genitalia-grabbing loudmouthed reality TV host with an itchy Twitter finger, we now need “affirmative action” for conservative professors to promote "intellectual diversity in higher education."
What?
NO !
That just means you need better public education in general, starting with free pre-K all the way to free college.
That's how you get diversity, including intellectual diversity, at every level.
But you want "senior military officials as instructors and would tweak its curriculum to offer, for example, a course on the philosophical underpinnings of free enterprise."
Honestly? Like America isn't enough of a warmongering nation, brainwashed into believing in the free market fairy?
Education should be about teaching critical thinking skills and facts. not pushing ideologies.
And while "Too many schools are flunking that assignment." that certainly doesn't mean we should stack them with partisan hacks from either side of the political spectrum, just to make it "'air and balanced'.
That's ridiculous.
17
Frank Bruni was a good restaurant critic for the TIMES once upon a time. This strikes me as one of his sillier columns. There are no political litmus tests for college professors. That most Humanities professors are liberals or progressives (I am a retired professor and a proud liberal, a democratic socialist in fact) is because they are thoughtful and humane. Contemporary American conservatism is anti-intellectual, bigoted, narrowly religiose. Any person with intellectual interests is pretty certain to find these views abhorrent and opposed to the life of the mind, of independent and critical inquiry.
11
Bringing conservatives to liberal colleges to "teach" them the ways of the liberal isn't the answer. This is arrogance. Liberal colleges need to be learn to be more conservative.
To address Yarborough's comments about Bowdoin faculty members "being out of touch with America," her premise is disingenuous. No one is obligated to greet bigotry, incivility and idiocy with an open mind. My grandfather fled the Nazis at 17. The rest of his family died in the camps. Would you say he was "out of touch with Germany"? Or would you say he saw the fascists for what they were?
15
Or sure, let's make Fox News a mandatory TV station in campus dorms on Monday, Wens, Fridays. Why not invite Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter to lecture young college students on - Why have our American trained doctors waste their professional lives fighting the Ebola epidemic in the "cesspool of West Africa." (Ann Coulter's quote)
Students get enough of closed-minded, ignorant, racist, compartmentalized conservative mind ideology outside of college.
A liberal arts education opens the mind - why close it to true facts and the art of reasoning?
7
While being able to discuss competing views is a vital part of a diversified education, we also need to realize that college is more liberal because it allows that competition. Time magazine just did a profile on Roy Moore, the likely new senator from Alabama. In reference to NFL players refusing to stand for the pledge, they quote him: “It’s against the law, you know that?”...“It was an act of Congress that every man stand and put their hand over their heart. That’s the law.” Being that Time wants to be "open-minded" to conservatives they then state that this is U.S. code, though failure to obey has no punishment. (You can expect to hear this paraded around by conservatives at you local workplace as some form of wisdom.)
However, a college professor would point out that in Minnersville v. Gobitis (1940), the Supreme Court allowed 2 student to be expelled from school for not reciting the pledge; however, they overturned that decision in West Virginia v. Barnette (1943) after concentration camps were found in Germany, with Justice Jackson writing, "Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard." THIS is the law today.
How many high school students know this, are taught this by their teachers? How many Americans know that they can't be forced to recite the pledge because of the Holocaust?
They probably don't - unless they went to college.
4
Perhaps an exchange program between those living in Urban areas and Rural areas or those in Blue and Red States? Perhaps then we can dispel with so many stereotypes (and you can pick one about who is racist, ignorant, uneducated, pushy, patronizing, elitist) that make conversations hard.
I can't believe the NYT publishes this garbage. A few facts: 1. There is no political litmus test for filling state jobs (university professors), that would be illegal. 2. Most professors are politically moderate, NOT LIBERAL but they do support the mission of the public universities where they work; makes sense right? 3. Most Republicans and conservatives are on record OPPOSING funding for public universities. So why would a university hire someone who philosophically opposes their mission? 4. Universities seek diverse student populations, but don't recruit students based on their political philosophy, also illegal. 5. Columns such as this are published by people who peddle FAKE news, myths about institutions that they know nothing about and don't like.
5
Should colleges accept more people who got bad grades?
Should colleges accept more bigots?
Should colleges accept more people who think real knowledge comes from the Bible?
Should colleges accept more incurious people?
Should colleges accept more people who care more about the supremacy of their tribe than about the truth?
Should colleges accept more closed-minded people?
Should colleges forget why they were created in the first place?
8
I'm thinking that you might some "conservatives" in all those Business schools the college students are flocking to. Finance and accounting ... a real hotbed of Marxist thought, I would wager.
4
Frank, your essay is missing one major detail: Your syllabus for your college course titled "The Ten Greatest Conservative Ideas." 1. White supremacy; 2. Creationism; 3. Trickle-Down Theory; 4. Authoritarianism; 5. Climate Change Denial; 6. Misogyny; 7. Racism; 8. Oligarchy; 9. Double Speak; 10. the Ten Commandments. Am I close? Correct me if I'm wrong.
6
Remember that guy who danced in the median of South Broadway and taunted rush hour traffic with a gas mask on? He REALLY didn't like the Front Range's brown inversion layer. Oh, those over-liberal Boulderites!
Thank our lucky stars, that 38 years after the Rocky Flats Protests and 28 years after the FBI and EPA followed through with their raid on DOE's Rocky Flats, the CU Boulder campus is getting its 5th 'designated conservative' professor reintroduced into the wild.
The initial release, Steven Hayward, documented his thoughts in a 2013 blog post titled “Off on a Gender-Bender,” where he mocked gender self-identification. You know, 'conservative' free speech.
No one is exactly sure what the next 4 releases of 'designated conservative' professors contributed to campus life, but togas are now at least 4 inches below the knee, climbing the Flat Irons in the moonlight has been changed to an elective, and the Alferd Packer Grill no longer serves finger foods.
It's always - always - a race to the bottom with these people.
Now, they fail upwards by getting high-paying, prestigious jobs at Universities. Not because of what they know or even how they think, but more because of how they don't think and what they feel.
I suppose it's the illogical outcome of when The Supreme Court rules companies are people, and that their "belief" that contraception "causes" abortions (interestingly, even if life should begin at "con-ception" - which it doesn't - these are "contra-ception", right?) outweighs both science, and each and every woman employee's right to medical care she deems necessary.
And now world-class universities specifically recruit these people to proselytize (since they clearly won't "educate") and "attend" (since they clearly won't "learning").
But, they'll believe all right! They'll believe!
3
I'll think this is a good idea when all the fundamentalist "colleges and universities" hire evolutionary biologists to teach alternative viewpoints.
4
But Frank.... Do we really need to get some "flat earthers" teaching geography and creationist teaching evolution so we better understand their clearly incorrect point of view? Hard not to think of George Carlin when I read your article. "Think of how dumb the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that".
2
Since when truths, facts, well-reasoned arguments are either liberal or conservative? Are they what we teach students in universities or colleges? Diversity of viewpoints are not just limited to only two categories--liberal or conservative. The conservative political science professor claims that universities and colleges are out of touch with Americans, who are these Americans is she talking about? Are only those who voted for Trump Americans? Why don't conservative colleges try to recruit liberal students so they can have a debate about creationism vs. evolution? The whole idea of recruiting more conservative students by some of these well-known universities are completely misguided and border on stupidity!
3
The phrase “conservative thought” is an oxymoron.
6
Mr. Bruni rambles on about some half-baked theory that higher education has a goal of encouraging and nuturing political discourse.......this is WRONG.
Higher education was once intended as a place to educate future citizens on how to think independently for themselves....as they pursue scientific investigation, use technology to advance civilization, appreciate the classics, express themselves clearly and intelligently through writing and speech, apply the laws of the land, etc, etc....
NEVER ONCE was the goal of Higher Education to promote political discourse....it was aasumed that young people would debate politics in the off campus bars....often with fiststicuffs.
Bruni .....you need some schoolin'
“Affirmative action” for conservatives? Are we hearing ourselves? Are THEY hearing THEMselves?!?
3
No.
When something is wrong, it’s wrong. Weren’t liberals excoriated for relativism not so long ago?
Trump was elected by white supremacist. Full stop. And they are wrong.
Colleges can debate trickle down economics and the broken window strategy of fighting crime, but there is no debate about white supremacy or a dinosaur-riding Jesus. What’s wrong is wrong, not matter how many people believe it.
Truth is beauty, beauty truth.
4
Trump is a stain on humanity and our democracy.
It is our patriotic duty to resist.
1
Some Southern states ban courses in critical thinking in public school.
1
How do you know this? Where and when does it happen?
1
I disagree with this editorial. Bigotry, exclusion and anarchy are aligned with the left on campus. Too obvious to suggest otherwise. Try open-mindedness 101.
My daughter was at the Macaulay Honors College of CUNY when they invited David Petraeus, who recently had copped a plea to revealing classified secrets to his mistress cum biographer, to be a lecturer with an eyepopping $150,000 salary to teach two seminars per semester. This was at a time when budgets were being cut, and adjuncts were making a tenth of that.
After an outcry, he agreed to forego his salary (his pension alone is more than that). But Macaulay went to great lengths to screen out students likely to challenge his politics.
The idea of molding politics on campus is downright anathema to the educational ideal of a university.
Funny how Frank makes much of recruiting white rural students. Most elite institutions are already overwhelmingly white. So are those schools going to reduce their number of legacy admissions to admit some students of color?
5
Conservativism is rooted in Christian mythology and 40 years of failed supply-side economics. It is anti-intellectual, rooted in propaganda and has no place in academia.
3
I just hope you're not suggesting that the "inquisitive, constructive territory" is the sort of affirmative-action-for-rightwing-faculty you wrote about, which is farcical. It is based on the paranoid assumption that there's some kind of conspiracy to keep the hordes of right-wing academics from finding jobs, to keep colleges stocked with only liberal faculty, etc. The logical questions required of anyone who suggests a conspiracy are not only "who's behind it?", which they have covered just fine; but also the equally important, "and HOW would they pull this off?" The left that is too disorganized to prevent a Trump electoral college win is somehow capable of pulling this off? Have we considered the far more plausible explanation for the preponderance of liberal faculty: that research, reading, critical thinking, logic -- i.e., the tools of good academics -- are much likelier to support liberal beliefs, since they actually make more sense? The corollary, perhaps, of John Stuart Mill's observation that "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
The ideas reflected in this column strike me as ill -conceived in the same way that legitimate news media bent over backwards to be objective in the 2016 election cycle. Ignorance and, yes even stupidity, need to be vigorously opposed, not granted respect and legitimacy.
3
As ever--two thoughts:
(1) I am a retired high school teacher. My principal (for some years) was a young man from the south.
But he did got his bachelor's degree from Princeton University.
Well, he was (of course) a born student anyway. We teased him about it (every now and then)--teasing he took with perfect good humor.
BUT APART FROM THAT:
He had no doubt, his "poor white background" helped him get into Princeton. I expect they got lots of qualified applicants from New York City. Or Philadelphia. Applicants from some small town in South Caroline--no! not so many.
I expect he would come down (slightly) on the "conservative" side. Nor was he at any pains to drop the southern accent. But he graduated magna cum laude. Like I said. A born student.
(2) Something is getting worse every day! Oh the times we live in!
But I am increasingly tired of "liberal" and "conservative."
Dr. ______________! Professor ______________! Run your ideas by me. Then I'll say, "Good idea!" Or "Bad idea!" I'll agree with one. And disagree with the other. Or I may see some merit in both.
But this ever-present preliminary: Does this fit in with my LIBERAL worldview? With my CONSERVATIVE worldview?
It reminds me of LIBERAL "think tanks"--odious phrase! Or CONSERVATIVE "think tanks"--ditto.
How about you guys just THINK, period? Then make up your minds to call those ideas "liberal" or "conservative."
But I know--I know. Ain't gonna happen.
More's the pity.
They often conclude that outright preferences are a bad idea but that creating an extra position in, say, military history rather than gender studies would probably up the odds of adding a Republican to the lineup."
This is alarming, in and of itself, for two reasons:
1. It implies Democrats fail miserably to grasp the fundamentals of of history: where they live now, under what form of government, in what state of security, is all a result of military activity; and
2. How many liberals would take such a course? You can add water to which you might lead your horse, but unless you make this a required course [not a bad idea] you cannot make him drimk.
As Joe Queenan once wrote, "The left gets Harvard, Oberlin, Twyla Tharp’s dance company and Madison, Wisconsin. The right gets NASDAQ, Boeing, General Motors, Apple, McDonnell Douglas, Washington, D.C., Citicorp, Texas, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Japan and outer space." And now Harvard and Oberlin get pressured to rectify this.
93
"The right gets NASDAQ, Boeing, General Motors, Apple, McDonnell Douglas, Washington, D.C., Citicorp, Texas, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Japan and outer space."
So that's who 42% of unionized households voted for in 2016? Seems to me there's a little cognitive dissonance in there somewhere.
Why hold to the premise that most rural individuals even desire to attend college? For many, it is a source of pride to be earning wages at "real" work, or to be earning wages at all: education is valued for its direct currency in the workplace. Also, it can be a terrifying prospect for some young people, who may have grown up in homes where reading widely was not a habit, or reading was not a habit at all, or where digital media dominated, and especially, where there was little or no intellectual discourse among family members. The very essence of a college education delivers abundant opportunities for intensive reading and engagement, analysis, and discourse on fields of study where a body of scholarship provides both a foundation and tradition of factual knowledge and meaningful interpretation. This is no environment where anyone can thrive without a respect and passion for truth and intellectual labor. Indeed, professors who may be liberal or conservative will find it challenging or impossible to arrive at gradable assignments and a grading rubric that fairly assesses and encourages strong scholarship but does not enrage and embitter the individual who does not value academic rigor and integrity.
2
Putting the burden for change on colleges and universities ignores, in my opinion, a deeper issue. Education is not a priority in American culture. The median salary for an English professor in this country is approximately $86,000 (as of 9/17). The MINIMUM salary for an NFL player is around $435,000. And, as we know, salaries for many sports figures can reach into tens of millions of dollars, while the English professor might eventually reach around $150,000 at the top end of the scale. Admittedly, the sports players have shorter careers, but given the promotional opportunities and other side perqs, none of them should end up begging their bread.
Many Americans who have struggled to pay for the cost of a higher education find that the employment situation often doesn't keep pace with what they had to sacrifice to enter it.
Until the love of an educated population exceeds the love of an entertained one, I don't see how colleges and universities can make a significant difference in producing a nation of people who have learned how to think critically for themselves or anyone else.
25
What does it say of "elite" colleges like Wharton and Harvard who have trained the narrow minded greed at all cost mentality regardless of the cost to others - costs to everyone? Maximize profits for self by devaluing everyone else - especially employees who only represent a cost. It is the unprogressive business schools that needs a few more progressives.
Wharton should be ashamed of producing a graduate called trump. I guess they allowed him to grade himself so he could graduate.
Do we really need to give political scientists credibility and platform to denounce Climate Change just because they call themselves "scientists"?
14
Here's my question for you. What do you say to progressive students like myself when we get Trump-supporting students and professors who are blatantly discriminatory? My uni had a problem with a white supremacist group soliciting members on campus. I have been hushed in academic discussions, told my views are not valid because I don't understand the world, and had to learn in incredibly hostile environments. I don't understand why students and professors who are right-wingers get special treatment (and get special treatment they do). We are expected to coddle these people because the big wide world is mean and scary to them. That is not acceptable in form. If I get told to shut up and respect their views I deserve the same curtesy. And yet...the liberal and progressive students never get said curtesy. We are not treated the same.
10
Kind of like affirmative action, "special treatment", "coddled", "not treated the same".
I applaud Bruni for sticking his neck out on higher education bias against conservatives. But this phrase reveals a blind spot when it comes to understanding the 2016 election results:
"...those whose relatives thrilled to Trump"
As long as liberals continue to believe that the 2016 election result was because of pro-Trump voters rather than anti-Hillary voters, they will never see a need to address their biases. Trump won the election because he was seen as the lesser of two evils by independent and swing voters. What higher education needs to do is examine why so many people feel anathema towards democratic policies and politicians. Focusing on Trump makes it too easy to ignore the hard questions about the tenets of liberalism.
8
The problem with your argument, jb, is that for Republicans Trump was somehow the lesser of seventeen evils. What's up with that?
I think all this says more about you guys than it does about Hillary.
As does your apparent unwillingness to stop reminding us that Trump won, and Hillary lost. Most of us figured that out on election night, and moved on. But you seem to be stuck for some reason.
The biggest problem you have, though, is that you seem to believe Hillary is a liberal. There hasn't been a liberal party in America for forty years.
In the 2016 Presidential Donald Trump won 58% of the white American vote. Getting a majority of whites in every gender, socioeconomic and educational caste and class.
The purpose of education is curiosity. Knowing how to resolve our massive ignorance begins with answering I don't know when asked a question about something we do not have any education nor experience.
There is no science in politics nor history nor law nor economics nor finance nor accounting. Too many unknowns and variables to use controls to fashion predictable and repeatable results. While they are valid academic inquiries they are not sciences.
2
Mr Bruni has unintentionally taken the concept of college affirmative action to its reductio ad absurdum. Humanistic values, including individual dignity and intellectual freedom, enlighten most universities where work consists of the objective search for truth and advancement of knowledge. Why aren't there more conservatives in academia? Perhaps it's because many conservative ideals have been rejected long ago as ill-conceived. More importantly, alt-right thinking, the core of Trumpism, is based on fabrications, distortions, and a mixture of spite and anger. Hardly what could be needed to invigorate discussions on campus. If the federal government truly supported college education for those that desire and qualify, then those with few resources, including the sons and daughters of of some Trump supporters, would be better represented at elite institutions. As it stands Mr Bruni simply propagates the Breibart lie that universities are decaying due to bias against conservative thought, solidification of political correctness and arm-waving hysterical administrators creating safe spaces for children of liberal elites.
10
It pains me to express this, because it will be considered intolerant, which is NOT a liberal or progressive trait. But, why, spend the effort and resources educating someone who will not use that new found knowledge to benefit society?
Think about it. Whether you are liberal or conservative, think back over the events of the last one hundred years and list the political successes this country has had that you value. You will find that they are overwhelmingly causes promoted by liberals. We have a contemporary example. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was pushed through congress by those evil liberals and most people hated it. But, now that reality is setting in as a minority of conservatives try to kill it, it has become very popular with the majority. So, put conservatives in power at your peril.
7
Mr. Bruni,
I typically find your opinions thoughtful and well founded. Not so with your “Too Many Colleges Flunk Trump 101.” For one thing, the reason that universities are dominated by progressives is that their understanding of the social world and policies to address its problems are supported by the evidence. Unless one falls into the trap of moral relativism, which so-called conservatives love to rail against and accuse progressives of embracing, there are more and less tenable positions on these matters. Why do you think Trump and his followers are such inveterate liars? It won’t do to say that any view that is “political” is on a par with any other vis a vis evidence and argument. For another thing, the label “conservative” is by-and-large a misnomer these days. Thoughtful conservatives no doubt exist, but Trump and a great majority of the members of the Republican party aren’t conservatives, but “regressives,” who’d like to turn the clock back to before the New Deal.
9
I am not concerned about most scientific disciplines where the search for reliable truth produces a healthy balance of liberals and conservatives. The social sciences and the media arts are in disarray from the faculty to the curriculum and even to the administration's lack of oversight. Misguided affirmative action has favored the Alt-left over the Alt-right and brainwashed administrators to think one side is better than the other.
2
Yet another reason to steer students toward public/state colleges. I went to a state school and was exposed to every kind of person from every kind of background and every kind of ideology available. A great life lesson, and it has served me well in my professional career and personal life.
5
The great divide is now between the WCN (white Christian nationalists) and the SR (secular rationalists). The former, mostly rural, modestly educated, present a common front. The campus provides an amenable home for them, particularly in the social and political sciences, because intellectual inquiry tends to be both secular and rational. To the WCN, racial and religious truth is given, and the only reality is the reality that conforms to and confirms the given truth. For the SR, race and religion are subjects of inquiry, which is heresy right from the outset. SR is neither inherently conservative or liberal, but it is incompatible fundamentally with WCN which has co-opted the GOP.
4
Define "amenable."
It's time to cut through the analysis of side issues in this debate and move to the point.
This article and many others are treating the university experience as a place where fully formed intellects meet to discuss and debate issues of all kinds with the outcome being a greater appreciation and perhaps persuasion of the other.
This is not the case. Students arrive with with the need to hone their intellects and the university has the obligation to help them do so. All points of view and beliefs are not equal. Coming to that understanding and learning to how to discern the truth is the entire point of becoming "educated".
Don't teach your beliefs. Teach knowledge and how to seek it.
8
One important point that's being missed in the suggestion of explicitly recruiting conservative, white, rural types is that it will expose them to rigorous thought and academic excellence. They can take these influences back to their community/clan and hopefully infuse some diversity there as well.
4
I'm afraid that Bruni's caricatured view of what goes on at universities in the U.S. is very problematic, and I generally appreciate his columns. I am professor of history and do not see my role as one of representing liberal or conservative views--or persuading students "not to take paths that we consider dangerous," and most of my colleagues and I do not "yell" at students. Yes, there are certainly a lot of partisan faculty and students, but universities should not be places where one recruits political cranks of whatever persuasion, whether they yell or not. Bruni's column is a very sad testament. Higher education should be about opening minds and enlightenment.
7
Retired military officers as professors? Okay, there are many courses on the subject of military history, ancient and modern, offered by most large universities. But if the complaint about "liberal indoctrination" in higher education has any meaning and is somehow dangerous, then know this:
The American military establishment is quite likely the most "indoctrinated" institution in the U.S. outside of evangelical tabernacles. Anyone who's ever worn the uniform - brown, green or blue - knows this. We're "taught" (informally, of course) that Democrats and liberals in general "hate" the military, which means by extension that they hate US. If you open your mouth at the Officers' Club or NCO Club to object to that "fact", be prepared to spend the evening surrounded by snarling faces whose principal argument is that "everybody knows".
There are some very bright minds in our military capable of being good instructors in the very broad field of history - military and otherwise - and perhaps in certain of the sciences. But as a counterweight to the "liberal establishment"? That would be putting a very heavy thumb on the scales.
(Please note: I speak from past military experience. Perhaps things have since changed, but I doubt that.)
8
I'm a professor on a college campus. And yes, many of us were astounded at the events of Nov. 8. But the surprise was how many colleagues were rejoicing. In my area of the world there appears to be two issues that unite avid Trump supporters: abortion and guns. Don't allow the procedure and repeal the Safe Act.
2
I am always astonished at the degree to which intelligent people forget that the current occupant of the White House did not win the popular vote. Millions of Americans rejected him. Why is that so hard to remember? Why is there so much eagerness for major institutions to revamp themselves based on a false narrative? As so many have commented, the upholding of truth, reason, science is the core of academia. Let's continue to strive for these ideals, not accommodate those who have always been threatened by them.
5
Thank you.
As is often the case, conservatives start with a non-factual premise, and then proceed to give non-factual or non-representative examples to support their argument. Conservatives now take any statement that is contrary to their beliefs as 'bias'. The fact that a professor teaches facts that go against their beliefs is not proof of bias - nor of even being a liberal. It's called critical thinking - or education.
6
Good to hear about these efforts. The comments from many who disagree further reinforce the need for this thought diversity outreach. The bubble they live in has impacted their ability to think straight.
i thought maybe this idea was going somewhere when it involved actively recruiting poor white students or in general poor rural students. in the rural area where i live most kids grow up thinking that college is for others, city people maybe, but not them. many have parents that may not have finished high school. very hard for a kid from a family like this to believe that they could or should better themselves by going beyond high school. as for recruiting conservatives for higher ed? the test should be the level of expertise and knowledge about the subject they are being hired to teach and nothing more.
2
I believe all colleges and universities must include faculty and admit students who believe in an all-seeing and all-knowing god that created the earth a few thousand years ago so that minds captured by those extraordinary beliefs can be freed... but I'd add one condition: the private religious schools must also give up the notion that anyone who doesn't believe in that god will not fail because he or she is a heretic and evil.
1
Several writers have mentioned that business schools within universities tend to have a conservative bent. I haven't seen any that point out that many (most? all?) universities offer what is politely called "business calculus". There are text books specifically created for business calculus classes. The courses cram a subset of Calc 1 and Calc 2 into a single semester.
These classes are a sick joke. They teach rote memorization of a few formulas, skipping right past the ideas that the formulas are based on. They don't even cover trig functions, because apparently nothing that's cyclical over time is of relevance in the business world.
Business and economics majors take this rather than actual calculus courses. They tend to be weak students.
4
I still find it amazing how much an article this can still manage to ignore the 500lb gorilla in the room. Class exists in America, there are genuine fault lines between the classes, and wealth inequality is accelerating in a frightening fashion, tearing at these fault lines. We may well be facing end-stage capitalism. Universities should be focused on examining these class structures in a clear minded manner and on developing rational solutions to keep this a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. They should not acquiesce to the irrational, hate filled ethnocentric narratives of the right and the ultimately painful and horrific solutions they propose.
4
Sorry, Frank, there are legitimate reasons why conservative or right-wing professors and their "philosophies" are underrepresented on college and university campus. If they deny evolution and climate change and support the dismantling of the E.P.A. if they oppose abortions AND the use of contraceptives, if they distort or lie about their untenable positions, if they believe that if we just make the rich richer it will solve all of our problems, and if they refuse to disavow President Albatross (silence is consent), then I don't think they are entitled to the support of higher education. Frank, this time it is you who has slipped into false equivalency. Sorry, bro.
JD
8
None of this discussion would be happening if there were quality Pre-school through high school throughout the land.
3
Mr. Bruni, there is one terrible omission in your thesis that all/most/a majority of our colleges and universities have a democratic/liberal/progressive/left leaning bent. What about all those "Christian/Born Again/Evangelical/The bible is the literal true word of God" colleges and universities. One can wonder how many of their students have a left leaning/almost communistic bent. BTW, how many of these are actually for profit institutions, notwithstanding that I've never met a poor evangelical preacher, tho there may be a few, but they all are most likely black. Meanwhile, the group your essay speaks exclusively about are all or at least mostly not for profit. Even while it seems that top executives at many of those schools compensation does seem to be getting out of hand.
1
Bruni's piece skews itself toward top administrators' voices, that is, presidents of colleges who now have a different mission than the rest of us in academe. College presidents are rarely scholars themselves anymore but are fundraisers concerned about matters of political and bureaucratic expediency. So when these administrators speak about needing some kind of balance in which all perspectives (including that of our maniac president) be represented, they are not referring to the search for truth in the university or to the ways students can come to understand what it means to lead a good life. They are, instead, trolling for money. And there's money among them thar conservatives.
2
Bruni and many of the commentariat make the arrogant mistake of assuming liberal ideas are fundamentally superior to conservative.
I suggest that instead of debating whether more conservatives are needed on campus (with 2 assumptions, we can understand their faulty thinking then convert them to the true faith) progressives should consider their own educational needs. And question why do so many reject progressive ideas.
Having been a long time Times reader (articles & comments) I find several problems with progressive thought that better education might help. First and foremost, progressives tend to ignore facts and logic in making their case, believing their ideas are so universally accepted and profound that facts aren't needed. Time after time I read an article in the Times only to find there are no supporting facts or the facts are wrong. Good example, a recent article on climate suggesting Octobers are growing so warm that we should start calling Autumn, "Hotumn." Only problem -- Octs in the contiguous US aren't getting warmer, which a visit to the NOAA site "climate at a glance" will confirm.
2) -- name calling. When someone disagrees with progressives, progs strike back by calling names, not by refuting the argument.
3) -- negatively stereotyping conservatives (racist, homophobic, etc.). Where is the evidence?
4) -- group think. Living in a bubble where everyone shares the same views.
5) A failure to think critically about prog ideas.
You're right, I'm wrong seems to be your thought.
The former White House press secretary Sean Spicer is teaching at Harvard as the beneficiary of a fellowship. Not only is he justifying all the lies he uttered as press secretary, he even told the students that although his door was always open to journalists, they never came to his office because they wanted to be seen at press conferences. That turns out to be a lie, too: photos of people lined up outside his office have appeared online--photos taken by reputable journalists. What good is his teaching at Harvard doing anybody but himself? Do students really need to be inundated by outright lies?
3
"Should it grapple with the world as it is or point the way to the world as it should be?"
The answer to this one is a no-brainer. Point to the world as it should be. I keep looking at what passes as conservative thought. It points backwards. It points to times, attitudes and ideas that have long passed. Underlying the contemporary conservative movement is a fear of change. That fear is so great that it drags us backwards, it sits on any meaningful progress like an elephant on an ant.
I am all for helping conservatives overcome their fear and begin forward movement into the future. But I have no interest in coddling them.
As for "so-called" conservative politicians, they don't really exist. They are simply opportunists, who co-opt conservative citizens to enact their political agenda. The agenda is NOT about conservatism. It is about money. Pure and simple.
As for Trump, he is an opportunist of the worst kind. He co-opts everything to benefit himself. Trump's only ideology is Trump.
It's time to look to and move toward the future.
3
“These faculty members, she added, consider 2016 ‘an illegitimate election, so they’re not worried about their being out of touch with America.’”
What else do you call it when the margin of victory is -2,864,974 votes?
4
The cause and effect line of thinking is strenuously denied by my Trumpian friends (I have quite a few). The documented fact that most advanced intellectuals are "liberal" is somehow blamed on everything (frequently on George Soros, that demon) except the simple fact that the more intelligent one is the less credible much of "conservatism" is. Science denial, historical ideological rewrites, racist rationalizations and blind acceptance of theologies just don't hold water for the bright and inquisitive minds that pursue truth into the PhD stratosphere.
3
Two points 1) the biggest issue from the 2016 election is how can the majority of the population vote for a candidate and that candidate not take office? This is not about Repulican or Democrat or illegitimacy - it would be a valid and fundamental question had the Republican’s won, but a Democrat was placed in the Oval Office. Elections come and go; the structure and procedures are what protect our representative system. Where are the articles and the analyses of a system where the majority no longer rules? In-depth discussions of the origin, continued validity of, and the benefits or harms caused by the electoral collegee? I see so many articles on the symptom not the problem. We currently have a minority elected President - whether Democrat, Republican, Independent or Green - this is a massive issue - write about this.
2) So many articles, as does this one, miss one of the major issues with many Trump voters - not their viewpoints - but their not “doing their homework” Their view changes with Donald - whatever he says is fine - regardless of self-conradiction. Many Trump voters (others do this to some degree too, but this group is extreme) don’t know the issues,
don’t reseach to find out how issues may effect them (or others) and are simply tribally loyal. The fundamental position of many Trump supporters seems to be that knowledge is unnecessary. Is that not anti-thetical to college (and any schooling - basically life) itself?
1
So many thoughts. Every single part of our lives does not need to be sorted into “conservative” or “liberal” piles. I’m still confounded by a friend’s comment last year: “Karen, I suspect that you’re more liberal than me, but I like you anyway.” What the heck? Who I vote for matters more than the facts that I’m kind and funny and supportive? This whole political-tribalism nonsense makes me sad. If the way to fix that is to ensure a better mix of conservative and liberal students, then ok. But why do college students need to be died-in-the-wool anythings at that point of their lives? I sure wasn’t. I’m still not. Isn’t college supposed to be about learning facts, and how to think critically? As for professors, how many areas of study have a “side,” any way? I don’t remember any of my professors—even in areas like political science and economics—having a side that they made public. And finally, this shouldn’t be just about some colleges recruiting conservatives: Bring Paul Krugman to Athens to open some ears in UGA’s business school, to start.
1
So people who truly believe the earth is 6000 yrs. old (and can not be convinced otherwise) are to be accommodated and welcomed to argue this. People like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who blamed 9/11 on homosexuals (or was it abortion?). Is Liberty University going welcome pointy head elites who understand climate change is not a hoax to teach actual science? Are we going to get our own version of Fox propaganda teevee and a left wing radio/media apparatus to spread the word and balance the scales?
Look, I am all for debate, a reasoned and amiable argument, being exposed to ideas I may not be comfortable with, but do we really need to listen to the likes of Sarah Palin, Roy Moore, Kid Rock or Alex Jones? Our so called president has about a 200 word vocabulary and is "like a really smart person" in that he's evaded the law all of his fraudulent life.
I understand that educated intelligent people voted for him - I've been married to one for 23 yrs. and no amount of discussion or debate moves the meter with these folks. The problem here is not putting them and their ideas into the mix - they've been doing that for forty yrs. What they need is to be put in quarantine until a cure can be found.
2
Bruni’s column is depressing, but he casts needed light on a problem within academia--and I’m not just talking about the way so many professors are die-hard “liberals” (they actually *aren’t* a monolith, but I agree that they often put forth that front, for sure).
I’m also talking about the way conservatives *perceive* many colleges to be. The son of a close friend was recently offered a very attractive scholarship at the New College of Florida in Sarasota, based on his achievements and excellent math skills. He scoffed and turned it down, after spewing a long line of nonsense about the school being “full of filthy hippies and dirty liberals”. This young man has never sat in a single classroom at the school, yet here he was, turning down an incredible opportunity, because his father (my friend's ex) had filled his head with toxic, black-and-white, us-versus-them thinking.
John Stuart Mill wrote: "The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
Can we make a class in logic/critical thinking/philosophy a mandatory requirement for graduating high school? Please?
2
OK, so we need conservatives on campus. I conduct research and teach geology at a major state university. I teach that Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, that life evolved by natural selection over that time, that humans descend from a common ancestor with apes, and that human activity likely is causing global warming. I suppose that all of this makes me a wild eyed liberal (I have been called such). I would like to know where we can find a geology professor with opposing “conservative” views, that can be supported scientifically, and who has the credentials to teach at a major university. Certainly not the oil companies. I recently spent a sabbatical year working in the research laboratories of the largest oil company in the world. None of the other scientists there differed in their opinion on the above matters, including global warming. So just where are we going to find this “conservative” scientist who is a member of numerous scientific societies and have published scores of peer reviewed scientific papers, as I have, and is required of anyone teaching at a major university?
When we hire faculty we hire on the basis of scientific potential and productivity. The person’s politics are never considered. The fact that not one member of my geology faculty voted for Trump (and apparently very few university faculty in America did) says more about the intellectual bankruptcy of the conservative movement in America than any bias at Universities.
333
JG,
A bright guy no doubt with whom I mostly agree, Frank has seemed to swallow the conservatives claims in this matter hook line and sinker.
Why, I don't know.
Point well-taken, Prof. Gregg. As a professor of history at a large urban public university, I agree that while it can be useful for students to be exposed to different ideological perspectives (conservative, liberal, socialist, etc.), a university's first responsibility is to nurture critical thinking and appreciation for scientific and scholarly inquiry/truth-seeking. Picking students and faculty on the basis of presumed ideological biases or worldviews (whether conservative or other) would undermine that basic mission.
You define "conservative" views at the extreme. Some on the right also believe that all Democrats are "commies". Neither extremist view of its political opposite is accurate, and that includes yours,I'm afraid, professor.
The call for more so-called "conservative" views has more to do with respect for freedom of speech, and the re-introduction of many history, philosophy and literature courses that study the development of thought and how it resulted in the Declaration of Independence and the.Constitution. You know, dead white European males.
I doubt there are even a handful of professors who could make the argument for free speech even if it is offensive speech, let alone agree with it. The philosophical basis for our freedoms is no longer being taught, or understood.
Who is to determine what is offensive and how much power that should give them to control others' speech? If a communist is offended by criticism of Marxism, should he be allowed to silence me?
Anyone can claim to be offended, even at a distance. People belonging to a group are claiming to be offended if anyone in that group is being criticized for their specific anti-American activities. Are we all to be silenced on this subject as well?
"...steer clear of certain elite schools — Yale and Brown were singled out — that struck them as overzealously progressive."
Two of my three kids refused even to apply to some "elite" schools,* including UNC-CH, Duke, my undergrad school, Cornell, and my wife's, Vassar, because all those schools had made it very clear that conservative/libertarian viewpoints would be unwelcome or even persecuted.
My daughter, still an undergrad, reads and writes Latin and ancient Greek like they're her native languages--in addition to going to school, she teaches Latin at a nearby Montessori school. My son, also an undergrad, is already part of a research team in the school's physics department. Both kids would have been assets to any school they attended but, apparently, the only "asset" too many schools value is political conformity to radical Leftism.
* The third kid deferred college to join the Army and is even now raining 120mm mortar rounds down on bad guys in Afghanistan.
32
How, specifically, did those schools make that clear?
This is nonsense. There are strong conservative, including libertarian, groups at the elite universities, and at at least one of them, Dartmouth, conservatism plays a dominant role. Moreover, I've never seen any evidence that "political conformity and radical Leftism" play a role in admissions or institutional treatment of students by elite universities. If Mr. Miller has any such evidence, he should offer it rather than conspiracy theory style generalities. But it seems likely that, like so much of today's extremist Right, Mr. Miller puts ideology over evidence. It's a pity that he's also willing to let his ideology lead him to encourage his children to choose their schools because of the schools' political leanings rather than for the quality of education they provide, including interaction with the brightest of fellow students.
From a retired professor at a couple of so-called elite universities, and graduate of UNC-CH during the peak of Jesse Helm's red-baiting: nonsense. At no point in my 40-odd year career did I once witness classroom derision of a student's social or political views, or recruitment or promotion of faculty influenced by the same. However, students, grad students in particular, and professors are self-selected for analytical thinking that values objective evidence over belief. If that makes your offspring uncomfortable, sad, but they would not have encountered discrimination. They however might have been enlightened.
Why the concern about the political leanings of students or faculty ?
I spent seven years at a prominent college, got three degrees, and never knew the political leanings of any of my professors. College is about teaching students how to think, not what to think.
12
The business of higher education should be higher education.
On the snowflake vs. snowflake business, I think the fake conservatives are much more flaky, and certainly dangerous to children and other living things. Their problem with "Merry Christmas" for example, is entirely hypocritical (as is their christianity, which Jesus wouldn't recognize, being all about magic hunts for success and unctuous ugliness from the pulpit that ignores the gospels). The whole elitism thing, the desire to put a thumb in the eye of knowledge, all of that is carefully oriented to encourage primitive emotions and set people against each other.
Getting together to solve problems has a liberal bias.
11
Bruni and Scott Jaschik would do well to investigate the world of Christian higher ed not just secular education to get a fuller picture of what is going on on college campuses. At the Christian university at which I teach the institution decided students could not form a club affiliated with Planned Parenthood while two clubs, Students for Life and Young Americans for Freedom, both pro-life, can exist. And Inside Higher Ed itself published a piece on the Christian College of the Ozarks which is now requiring a course in patriotism that includes military-style drills. The landscape is more varied than described in this piece.
5
I think that having a mix of liberals and conservatives on a faculty will not have the effect of satisfying the conservative complaints against current faculties. That is because the conservatives on a faculty would have to be ‘thinking’ conservatives (yes, there are such), whereas most of the complaints come from ‘feeling’ conservatives.
The ‘feeling’ conservatives are those whose main complaint is that the values they have always felt ‘good’ about are being challenged, and they want the challenge to stop. The ‘thinking’ conservatives will fight the challenges using conservative principles, and we are already seeing that such people are not wanted by the ‘feeling’ conservatives.
There are many examples to cite, but at hand we have senators Flake and Corker, whose ‘conservative’ base is disowning them.
A possible solution would be for certain classes to be 'co-taught' with faculty from both sides. That would be resisted, I know (I taught in a state university for 30 years), but it could be managed.
3
I would argue that there is a difference between "Trump voters" (i.e. the disaffected, those who feel forgotten and excluded) and the conservatism that Mr. Bruni is addressing here. It's true that most Republicans voted for Trump, but the elite conservatives who are making these small inroads into higher education don't represent the alienated core of Trumpism. They supported him because he was the Republican candidate, and was most likely to advance their interests (as indeed he has been doing, despite his campaign rhetoric).
If an important interest of Trump supporters is to improve the lives of those whose jobs don't require a college degree, then I'm not sure that is furthered by creating institutes and professorships funded by ultra-wealthy conservatives.
9
Wow, four times in this column you try and push the notion that anyone with a military background is conservative and/or Republican. I know a lot of veterans who would take serious issue with that.
20
The GOP, conservatives and other right wing folks equate yelling the loudest and using force
3
We are trying to educate, not indoctrinate. This means development of objective thinking. This is outside the vocabulary of right right thinking. They view "belief" as correct thinking. They have not sense of how they are trapped in a conditioned, indoctrinated mind set. Lost souls. This is a slow drip into fascism and the like and the poorly educated don't know what that means. This has been under way for many years.
14
The obvious answer is not to put conservatives on campus but to put progressives in rural area. Trump is a major disaster for the nation and the answer to to persuade Trump voter they have been conned by a master con man. The con man pretends to be for them but is just for himself and his fellow billionaires. The Koch brothers are already putting plenty of fake academics on campus to work for the corrupt rather than for the truth. I say the urgent thing is to throw those duplicitous bums out. Right now Universities are a last bastion of the society that is ruled by facts not corrupting money.
14
Times have changed. About thirty years years ago I was asked by my university to put a panel together of activists of the left, right, and center to discuss social, religious and political positions. I called a famous evangelical pastor from Mississippi--he said sorry. I called a well know neo-conservative--she said--too busy. and I called an equally well known New York State social conservative--he said maybe, but did not show up. I remember about twenty years ago a middle the road democrat who worked for one in congress was harshly criticized for his moderate positions by almost all his classmates that the order of the class got out of hand. But, on the other hand, What would I do today if a student tried to hold forth on creationism? Yes, you have your position, but I have mine too. Absurd. Right?
So, I guess we are going to see the same affirmative action process for "liberal" professors at conservative colleges? The ability to question is the real reason why academics and intelligent people skew liberal. There is no bias.
12
Do these conservative faculty believe in global warming and evolution just to name two? If they do, great! Then maybe they can educate the average trump voter.
11
I would benefit, at age 68 with a master's degree, from returning to college if I could learn why there is such a strong presence of racism among the Trump voters. I'd like some "conservative" scholars to explain why Obama's presidency resulted in the election of a moronic "birther" advocate, as if his voters felt able to breath freely finally, after 8 years of an African-American president. Yes, do bring in these alternatives to liberals and let them teach us liberals about how sort of morality benefits our society.
10
Mr. Bruni, what makes you think that adding brainwashed republicans 'party over country' values to higher education will change anything? Republicans have no morals, no ethics, and worship greed and religious dogma above everything else. Don't get me wrong I believe in listening and evaluating opinions other than my own. But the republican party of today and their followers want to force their un American agendas down everyone's throat, be it lack of health care, poisoning the environment, or giving tax deductions to large corporations that already avoid paying taxes and billionaires like themselves at the expense of the rest of us. Why would anyone in their right minds want to give a voice or attempt to educated these amoral students.
3
The money is in finance.... the good paying jobs, in tech.
Time and space for humanities ?? Not enough.
The world has enough warriors, with video games being a sort of training ground for the unwinnable wars of the future.
But learning citizenship ? values ?.... not enough time for that.... when there's the loathsome faceBook, and other such trivia to obsess over.
4
What I’d really like to see are the facts — the best research by conservative professors — Fact based research that employs the scientific method. Please publish it. Then you’ll find why there aren’t conservatives on campus.
7
Well, I’m a bleeding heart liberal, and I’ll take that over a cranky conservative any day of the week.
3
You've got it right. Welcome to the small club of intellectuals who actually want to do something about the shrieking alienation that the elite has caused in our devastated heartland. And, thanks for not beating your breast about how much better you are than us hicks.
BTW, you write:
Scott Jaschik, the editor of Inside Higher Ed, told me. “Some people woke
up the day after the election and realized that every surrounding
county voted in a different way than the college did.”
Jaschik also gets right what's up in this country. But, in bringing us country people to enlightened education, as he seeks, it would be nice to show us real literacy. However, those who would mentor us will need some Subject A, i.e. makeup high school English, toward this end.
An example of the raging ungrammatical speech of the contemporary elite is the ubiquitous "different than" in Jaschik's "...THAN what the country did." The King's English is "a different way FROM what the country did".
Generations, even out here in Flyover, learned this.
Now, "do your own thing" has taken over education.
1
I endorse your criticism of pseudo-literacy (as distinguished from merely illiterate Bushspeak or Trumpspeak), but I'd also point out that your traditionally correct phrase "the King's English" belies our republic's actual basis. The birth of America involved killing the king---that is to say, repudiating tyranny. And correct language is now properly called "the Queen's English."
1
I'm sick of this. The problem with college is financial.
What your talking about starts at home, and grades 1-12.
Learning how to judge fact from fiction, and respect for people and ideas that do not sync with your own.
This has nothing to do with college, and everything to do with Donald Trump and his base of resentful anti-intellectual religionists.
3
Jonathan Haidt is a hack. He's a little bit theology (emphasis on little) a little bit psychology. I heard him recently on the radio and I was just appalled at his naiveté about the nature of the world of closed systems that brook no dissent and certainly care nothing for empirical findings.
3
Why not add a class in climate denialism or trickle down economics? Because that drivel is Fox News, right wing propaganda.
Academic discourse must focus on facts and evidence based argument-and I assure you there never will be a shortage of rational positions for college students to debate late onto the night.
7
I usually like and agree with your editorials but this one is complete nonsense. As a college professor, I try to instill critical thinking skills in my students. I also present facts so they can form their own conclusions and ideologies. I have had conservative students in my classes and they always look like fools because they use opinions to argue with facts and it never ends well.
7
It's even worse with empress de vos as queen of education. Anything can be a college.
4
I wonder whether centers of conservative thought, be they universities or think tanks, are searching for liberals to enrich their discussions and outlook? The evidence is slim.
7
I am a Democrat, but one who is appalled at the attempt by some to deny conservative voices the right to speak on their campus. I believe that conservative opinion should be given a stronger institutional presence on our college campuses.
But let’s not go overboard. The last thing we need is a remedy that brings more pro-Trump yahoos and evangelicals to our campuses. These people no more represent traditional American conservatism than segregationists or American fascists represented that tradition. Surely, the fact that already prominent Republican politicians are speaking out against the Trumpists for trampling underfoot America’s traditional moral and democratic values and common human decency rules out colleges giving one iota of legitimacy to such savagery. That would be as if, in the midst of the 1960s Civil Rights struggle, “liberal” colleges sought balance by allowing the KKK Grand Dragon to speak. More military instructors is also a skewed approach.
Bruni hits the right note in his penultimate paragraph: “I’m not suggesting that colleges normalize Trump, validate everyone who backed him or make room for the viciously bigoted sentiments he often stoked. But there’s…constructive territory short of that.” A good place to start is with our conservative commentators--e.g., David Brooks, Michael Gerson, George Will, William Krystol, Jennifer Rubin—who have often been more eloquent and to the point in denouncing Trump than even liberal voices.
5
Scientific inquiry and rational academic pursuits have a well known liberal bias.
6
As I read this op-ed, I was reminded of the advice from a long time ago, "Physician heal thyself." Throughout the campaign, NYT’s columnists referred to Trump supporters as under educated, under employed white guys with missing teeth. Or as, one contributor put it, "Teeth in need of repair." When the election was over, it would seem that a whole lot of people should be going to the dentist. In a recent article, an author referred to a few Senators as collaborators of Trump. as though those millions of collaborators who voted for him didn’t exist. Mr. Bruni seems enthralled by the idea that universities have put “Hillbilly Elegy” on their reading list. It is a story about someone who didn't come out of The Hamptons, but did achieve the ultimate goal, admission to Yale. Maybe better choices would be "Tobacco Road" or "Gods little Acre". How about "The Grapes of Wrath" or maybe “Tthe Pearl." What about a book describing the life of Booker T. Washington? Or, a story about a person from another country, Dr. Fleming who came off a farm to invent penicillin. It may come as a surprise to Mr. Bruni, that getting into Yale is not the ultimate achievement for many. There are a lot of people who would rather have a lock with the name "Yale" on it, rather than a diploma with "Yale" on it. Maybe Mr. Bruni could get some special glasses to see the people who seem invisible to him, the universities, and the contributors to the NYT.
1
Should conservative institutions, like Liberty University, be required to hire liberal faculty?
3
Kinda seems like overkill to recruit professors to explain conservative ideology: "I got mine, you go get your own."
2
Do we really want to encourage our universities and collages to promote and give equal voice to wacky ill informed people who think the earth is only 5000 years old ? Do we really want our schools of higher learning to teach and give equal weight to the professor who belief's say that climate change is caused by sun spots and not man made C2o's .
If we allow these things to be taught in our universities and collages all in the name of fairness to the conservative right wing and evangelicals we might as well give up because we have lost....
3
Perhaps colleges and universities, especially business schools, should offer courses like:
Lying to get ahead
How to distort facts and win
Trickle-down economics
Making budgets with asterisks
Using race-bating to win elections
How lowering taxes on the rich increases government revenues
Why keeping immigrants out makes our country great
Oligarchy, the best form of government
The truth of social Darwinism
Why white people should rule
Why poor people deserve to suffer
Please add to the list. Yes, our schools of higher learning should definitely offer courses like this. In the interest of balance.
Not
Being Anti-gay is not conservative, it is prejudice. Right behind Trump conservatives is an evangelical dopelganger that wants to take health care away from women AND the right to an abortion. We don't need to talk about this more in college, the culture war started the minute we got laws passed to protect LGBT, Women and poor people We've talked enough about all of these issues. We don't need to talk abut this stuff anymore. My mama told me that if I didn't want to be poor that I should get an education. That's what I did. Everyone has the same chance to get an education and change their own future. I didn't see any of those people at the junior college I went to that didn't cost money. I didn't see any of these conservatives taking part time jobs to pay for the rest. Lets FACE IT, lack of education is a choice conservatives have made so they can believe in creationism instead of science because it is tougher to learn. You have to apply yourself, learn math, actually study. TALK ABOUT SNOWFLAKES
5
" These faculty members,' she added, consider 2016 “an illegitimate election, so they’re not worried about their being out of touch with America.”
Talk about being out of touch with America!
A thoughtful column which points up the difficulty of knowing the historical consequences of what is happening now.
While recruiting more conservative students may seem like a good idea given the disconnect between the way 'town' and 'gown' voted in the past election, would it have been wise for German Universities to have recruited more nazi sympathizers in 1935 given the growing movement?
It may well be that students are doing what society seems to be doing--organizing themselves around the poles-- at a time when colleges could instead help to synthesize a conservative/progressive firewall against the worst instincts of Trump supporters.
The value of 'putting ideas in the mix' as you say, is that thinking people of all political stripes will find they have much more in common with each other than with those who worship this autocratic and ignorant outlier occupying the White House.
In that regard, we don't have much time to waste.
1
Many Republican conservatives accuse liberal professors of discriminating against conservative students. They claim that right-of-center or right-wing comments are unwelcome in a college classroom discussion. Those critics have obviously never taught school. I once gave a grade of "C" to a community college student who disagreed with everything I said in class, and his quiz and test average was a solid "F." But I was so happy he participated in discussions so that I didn't have to do a two-hour monologue I gave him extra points for class participation. The public doesn't realize that often students just sit there like bumps on a log and remain mute throughout the entire class. The job is difficult enough as it is without having to deal with unresponsive kids who are asleep with their eyes open.
2
I find myself agreeing with many of these comments in dissent of Mr. Bruni's opinion piece. It's just another case of false equivalency. Just because there happens to be another viewpoint, one widely held in fact does not necessarily mean it deserves a place at the table of academic endeavor. Besides Frank, the very basic dichotomy of progressive versus regressive holds full sway here. You know the exigencies of the times. Stay with the program, please.
2
This article omits the widespread corruption of the academy by ultraconservative members of the Koch donor network as set out so masterfully in Dark Money.
2
I thought conservatives were against affirmative action.
Oh, I see. It helps them here...
This is a ridiculous article. There may be a few colleges that conform to the stereotype of left-oriented political correctness. But the majority, in my experience, reflect a quite broad spectrum of political opinion. I teach at an Ivy League school, and I have colleagues who are centrist Democrats and even Republicans. What I have yet to meet is an academic who voted for Trump or will admit it. Does that reflect an ideological bias? No. It reflects good judgment and common sense. Will campus life be enriched by deliberately bringing in scholars marked by their right-wing orientation? No. That is a recipe for demagogy, and such scholars will immediately be discredited because they have been branded for their beliefs rather than their scholarship. Does the quality of campus life improve by inviting provocative media manipulators and white supremacists? No. Colleges need to hold anyone speaking on their grounds to standards of argument and evidence.
253
What Mr. Bruni continues to confuse is support for the Trump Cult of Personality with Conservative ideas, ideals and ideology. Of course there is a place for the rich tradition of Conservative thought from Burke onward.Holding these values is very different from the position that only one man can save us from all our problems and he will make us tired of winning. Traditional Conservative ideology is also distinct from tribal white nationalism. Just how can one who embraces a cult of personality or who sees exclusive Blood and Soil racism as patriotic contribute to dialogue in multi-cultural institutions? It would be interesting to see if Ms. Yarbrough continues to support Trump and whether she joins in his view that those who don't support him are enemies of the people. I doubt if she does, but if she does then I would ask whether this actually makes for a richer dialogue at Bowdoin.
1
Exactly!
Re: " I teach at an Ivy League school, and I have colleagues who are centrist Democrats and even Republicans. What I have yet to meet is an academic who voted for Trump or will admit it."
What do you teach?
This piece assumes that colleges skew liberal because there is bias against conservative scholars and ideas. I don't buy this assumption. Much of what is done in higher education does not have a direct link to republican or democratic ideology, and is focused instead on asking relevant questions and applying scientific method to answer them. And questions of a students political beliefs are certainly not included or apparent in college applications. If anything, where academia (as well as politics and the media) is currently failing, is in taking the time to ask and answer questions that are not driven by organized corporate and government information providers (and their interests) and that hold relevance to the experience of people's everyday lives all around the country. For academics, part of the problem may be that there's little funding for such exploratory research, their own labor market has become precarious, and the expectations for publishing have become almost inhumanly high and encourage relatively fast and efficient research lest they "perish" in their career. I doubt there are any scholars now or in the past who would say we don't need to study conservative thought, history and politics. I view the actions of these colleges as misguided and ceding ground to a set of assumptions and attacks on academia that should be resisted rather than given credance.
10
Mr. Bruni's generalities play into the right-wing's culture of complaint about "liberal" strangleholds on academia. Given the number of so-called "institutions of higher learning" that cocoon their students in conservative ideology and put a low priority on critical thinking, Bruni's essay presents a very distorted picture of the alleged problem. He should re-direct his sights to the differing paths chosen by conservative and liberal graduates. Whereas the former tend to head toward careers in finance, big business, the military, agriculture, engineering, and politics, the latter head for professions like teaching, the law, medicine, the arts and the media. It's the collisions among those worlds that increasingly define polarization in our society.
6
My politics are far-left progressive, but I did not spend my 32 years as a university professor trying to indoctrinate my students. I presented multiple points of view (often ones that I disagreed with) and allowed the students to challenge me and their peers just as I challenged them, and peers challenged each other. This was also true of my colleagues. On numerous occasions, colleagues would talk about classroom situations where, one week, students would accuse them of being, say, radical Marxists and then the next week of being right-wing nationalists. Clearly, they were presenting multiple, opposing perspectives.
Moreover, while serving on many hiring committees over the years, I and my fellow committee members never questioned or considered the politics of a job candidate. There may well have been an implicit political bias in the way we decided on candidates and made our final choices, but in general we attempted to overcome that bias. We never discussed a person's politics and, indeed, would have been opposed to promoting a candidate in order to maintain a liberal perspective or to provide a conservative alternative.
Universities are obliged to provide students with the ability to think critically, inform them about different ways to see the world, and present them with a body of knowledge that they have probably never previously encountered. This may in essence be liberal and therefore explain why the professoriate is usually perceived as such.
18
It would take more than hiring a couple conservative professors or recruiting a few conservative students to balance the craziness coming from the left.
Just this week we learned (if you read any non-liberal publication) that a liberal education professor has declared mathematics, the study of mathematics, and the practice of mathematics to be racist.
3
Conservatives used to despise affirmative action. But now that they feel they have gone from silent majority to oppressed minority they have decided to embrace all that they used to despise. Now you can not be an true conservative unless you embrace victimhood and identity politics. And to prove your oppressed status you will cherry pick a statement out of context by one random individual to reinforce your oppressed status. But the only people oppressing conservatives is religious culture warriors who’s distain for education and science has kept conservatives in ignorance ghettos. Destroying America’s education system by catering to those who do not want education but to corrupt the whole system is not the answer.
This just shows that craziness exists in both camps, but there is still more garbage coming from conservatives.
1
and the right has declared mathematics Fake News
Critical thinking skills and the appetite for informed debate, reflection, and reasoning do not suddenly materialize in people. That is the role of high quality education at all ages and stages. Until all youth receive equal access to curriculum that develops zest for thinking and questioning right from kindergarten through to graduation and beyond, little will change. Those who haven't had an education rooted in the act of thinking, rather than in rote learning, are an easy target for uninformed and unsupported opinion based in emotion instead of fact; hence, Trump.
160
Your post earned 71 approvals by the time of this posting. That strongly suggests that liberals have approved, which suggests they think it is we conservatives who cannot think!
We think the same about you, just for the record.
Of course schools should include logic and debate early in education. Why do they not?
It’s interesting that the military is so associated with right wing thought in your column and in some of the surveyed schools. My father was a pilot in the Air Force during the 50’s and 60’s. I was anti- military due largely to Vietnam. I ended up going into the military when I was 26 years old by convincing myself that I was taking an oath to defend the Constitution, not the whims of any particular administration. However, the prescient farewell speech by Eisenhower regarding the military-industrial complex (I would add antiterrorism to that, now) foretold the almost constant state of war the US has been in, enriching the defense contractors while draining the government treasury of funds needed at home.
My father had an argument that I vehemently objected to at the time, but which has made a lot of sense in hindsight. That is, he said we should have a draft in this country on a permanent basis. His reasoning was that if the military only took in volunteers, there would be no naysayers and whistleblowers to constrain the urge to go to war. It makes sense. We have been at war for almost 15 years. What would happen if some of our dead and wounded didn’t volunteer? That’s what led to the end of Vietnam, because ordinary citizens would have a stake and our politicians wouldn’t be so quick to send “boots on the ground”. I would add, no college deferments.
So, sure, add conservative military veterans to college campuses, but also add college veterans to the military!
23
To say that universities are bastions of liberal thought is to miss the reality of academic life. The humanities and social sciences may be populated primarily by politically liberal faculty, but business, engineering, and agriculture are overwhelmingly conservative. Guess who’s paid better.
211
Susan: I give up. Who?
By "paid better," I assume you mean money. There are, however, many ways to be rewarded in one's life work other than money, though I know that conservatives think of little else but money and how they can all get as much of it as they can lay their hands on (Donald Trump has laid to rest any illusions that they think about moral values, that's for sure.)
Actually I find computer science, physical sciences and engineering to be pretty much liberal bastions as well. That leaves business & physical education on the right, although a lot of OR and Finance people who are really mathematicians skew left as well.
1
The focus of this piece is slightly off. It raises two issue: recruiting white students from poor and working class backgrounds and recruiting right wing professors. The first is critical to countering Trumpism. The biggest division in American is education -- and this is linked to social class, which in turn is linked to the increasing cost of a college education. Trump's ascendancy represents the failure of a whole range of American institutions and certainly includes our schools. "I love the uneducated" chortled Trump during the 2016 campaign -- and for good reason. But then the article goes off to focus on the recruitment right wing professors -- which in my opinion is less important. Aside from the reality that the "ideas" of these professors represent, in one way or another, advancement of the interests of the 1%, it's not like there is any lack of conservative ideas among America's intellectual ferment -- thanks to all the billionaires and the think tanks, lobbyists and not-for-profits they pay for.
13
Frank makes some good points and the remedial intentions expresssed are laudable. But Jean Yarbrough immediately disqualifies herself as any kind of reasoned voice on these matters by having voted for someone as obviously multi-dimensionally unqualified as our Dear Leader. And keep in mind that since the 1980s the Right has through conditioned donations to the American university system (funded by the Koch brothers and their billionaire donors) endowed chairs of right-wing ideological thought (masked with innocent-sounding words like Competitiveness, Enterprise, Freedom) in more than 300 universities and colleges. They are now reaching into high schools; the DeVos-backed charter school initiatives provide even more capability to shape and warp young hearts and minds.
8
Lost in all of these discussions, whether the writer is from the left or right, is the fact that much of college life has nothing to do with politics, especially in the sciences. Politics are not germane when one is discussing the metabolism of HMG-Co-A-Reductase inhibitors by Cytochrome P4503A4. I have spent my entire adult life as a student or professor on college campuses, and I can count on one hand the number of conversations I have had with students about politics, alway initiated by the student. I have been on countless search committees for faculty over the years and never did we consider the politics of candidates. Not once. So in my 56 years on various college campuses, public and private, politics has come up about as often as the Cubs win the World Series. Political discussions, of course, are more likely to occur in the humanities than science, but how much of the "liberal bias" of the humanities due to left-wing zealotry and how much results from the professors rationally evaluating the empirical data? Those of us in science, engineering, and technology must support our beleaguered colleagues in the humanities--without humanities, universities become little more than job-training institutions.
17
Mr. Bruni, I admire your work, but you're missing something grossly obvious. Academics are not alone in thinking there was something wrong with this election and it's not because of bias. Every day there's more and more evidence that the election was seriously skewed towards the winner by Russian interference on social media and elsewhere. Perhaps we should spend more money on Russian language and departments....
17
If those with whom you interact every day endorse a certain view, then that view is the normal, and those who think differently must be odd. This behavior is just being human, and it takes conscious effort to move away from it. One place to start, might be to read the 'Righteous Mind", a book by Jonathan Haidt, who is mentioned in the article.
1
False balance. Once conservatives have actual ideas of intellectual honesty and value, those ideas will become over time reflected in the academy, because they will be impossible to ignore. The last year shows we're light years away from that. The meme to which this column belongs was launched deliberately by the right in order to conquer the last stronghold, academia, having already faked their way into disastrous nationwide control of three branches of government and substantial parts of the media.
10
This is baffling, to say the least: do you really believe, Mr. Bruni, that the idea of "diversity" should apply to opinions -- on climate change, on the Confederacy, on immigrants committing crimes, on the Jews ruling the world ? And why do you assume military veterans would be Trump supporters? (Unless you mean people like Mr. John Kelly, of course).
Universities are institutions of learning and research, not social clubs. They should make special efforts to recruit, and thus be affordable to students of various origins and economic means. This does not mean to try to recruit students of various social and scientific beliefs or electoral tendencies.
In a sense, Mr. Bruni, while I'm sure it was not intentional, your article is insulting to both universities and minority students, because it implies that the latter are sought by the former because they tend to vote Democratic.
10
Great letter, EM. Thanks.
Spot on!!
Outreach by colleges and universities to qualified prospects from the heartland is an admirable goal. Addressing wage stagnation and the obscene profits of the 1% is important. But assuming that Trump in the White House has some profound meaning about the American voter is a misconception.
The Democratic candidate received three million more votes...three million. And everyone tries to overlook the anomalies in this most recent election: voter suppression laws in critical states; micro-redistricting; the fact that some seventy thousand votes over three states out of 120 million votes cast made the difference in the Electoral College, and the whopper which is difficult to quantify, a massive disinformation campaign conducted by a hostile foreign power guided in its efforts by the Trump campaign. Whatever lessons we want to draw from the 2016 Presidential election results, however much we want to 'understand' the Trump voter, Trump is not a legitimate President. The mid-term elections in 2018 will prove the point.
176
Indeed, Trump is an illegitimate president.
Hope you are right about 2018 elections proving the point.
2
As long as your side clings to the absurd smugness of being sure they actual won the election you just lost you will continue settle for moral victories instead of electoral ones. Assuming that your side is winning the war of ideas in face of the obvious evidence of losing all 3 branches of government and 2/3's of the states is taking cognitive dissonance to a new level. It threatens to make the Democrats time out of power make Moses's 40 years of wandering in the desert look like an afternoon stroll.
1
Are you really that obtuse? The 3 million votes came primarily in California and NY. If they results were reversed and Clinton had won by the same margins as Trump you would be screaming to high heaven how great the electoral college is to have saved us from the Visigoth Trump and his evil menions. I think it is hillareous that Clinton demanded that if she won Trump accept the results without question.
1
" ... conservative ideas and traditions, because on too many of our campuses they seldom get the sustained, scholarly attention that they deserve."
As atheists have long observed concerning "theology," how does one study a topic with no content?
7
The answer is simple. Lower the educational standards. Done.
5
I'll keep it simple: College and university professors tend to be liberal because they are intelligent people and they are not fixated on money.
16
There’s also the consideration (which goes unmentioned here) that places of higher education are filled with liberals because the fundamental tenets of higher education almost invariably lead one to a conclusion of progressivism. Educated voters tend to lean left not because we’re all being indoctrinated in progressive thought by the University, but because an education in the liberal arts and sciences and the skills taught therein (critical thinking, evidence-based reasoning), when applied to politics, often result in favoring progressive policies.
Donald Trump and his ilk are neither the results of critical thinking nor evidence based reasoning. It’s not that we in academia don’t want them per se; it’s just that I’m not quite sure where we’d put them, or what function they would really serve.
It’s not as if there isn’t conservative thought available in the great Marketplace of Ideas. It just tends not to sell very well.
13
There is a problem if the affirmative action policies of elite institutions insist that the only people of lower income status that deserve a spot in their colleges must also be people of color. Having just graduated from Columbia, I can say that the result of this policy is simple: It maintains the white student population (about 40% of the student body) as an overwhelmingly upper-middle class to wealthy demographic, often coming from very privileged educational backgrounds (private/preparatory schools). Affirmative action must account for socio-economic status as much as race; otherwise, despite their efforts to diversify, elite institutions will keep their white student populations looking exactly the same as they have for the past hundred years.
3
One of the problems here is that in many fields conservative scholarship lacks rigor. In economics, for example, conservative academics argue that cutting taxes will promote economic growth, but there is no data that supports that contention. It is an idea that is not grounded in research. Second, US public higher education institutions are not all that "liberal." All the patterns of racism and sexism that exist in our society as a whole are present in universities where women and people of color are under representated in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and fields where there are more equitable distributions of female and male academics are paid far less than than male-dominated disciplines.
7
One of the many strategies that the moneyed right developed in the 60's to fight off the growing "threat" of fact-based thought (in their words, "liberalism") was to infiltrate colleges and universities with conservative professors, administrators, and political organizations. Right along with their systematic campaigns to delegitimize the mainstream press, create and promote right-wing think tanks to steer the political discourse, train conservative-minded candidates for offices at every level, develop right-wing news outlets and commentators, make it more difficult for minorities and the poor to vote, control the content of school textbooks, etc. I'm all for encouraging youth with conservative leanings to seek out objective truth in our learning institutions, but purposely recruiting conservative faculty? That plays into the decades-long strategy of the right.
2
Many Colleges flunk College 101. Start with that first, then there wouldn't be a problem with Trump 101. Also, don't begin an article about Education, Higher Education with the old Left domination versus Right campus presence (especially with regard to Faculty). People in the know about the field of Education, know that there is a Standard. Politics has nothing to do with it. Politics is not prestigious enough. Standardized Testing is very important. There is a Standard, a World Standard. There are jobs all around the world. People should not be so limited to the country mentality.
3
When can we expect conservative colleges and universities (BYU, Liberty, Oral Roberts, etc.) to bring onboard a "visiting scholar in liberal thought"? Why is it suggested that only liberal colleges have to be inclusive? Why should Yale and Brown have to change to accommodate conservative parents, but Bob Jones can continue to alienate liberal ones?
Having said that, no institution can be all things to all people. If a parent wants to send their kid to a bible college instead of Yale, so be it. That's why there are thousands of colleges and universities around the country.
But, if the goal is to use higher education as a vehicle to improve how "Americans in separate cultural and ideological camps" communicate with each other, inclusiveness should be required on all sides.
9
I strongly agree! We should expect conservative colleges and universities to open up their gates to progressive and liberal scholars whose perspectives may not align with conservative views. It should not be only those institutions of higher learning characterized as progressive or liberal who should be compelled to open up their gates to greater diversity. This includes all private and conservative colleges and universities.
In addition, the Wall Street Journal should offer an Op-Ed section whereby its readers can peruse views divergent from its conservative orthodoxy.
As for Fox Propaganda (which has masqueraded as a news organization since it was spawned by Rupert Murdoch), the FTC should restore the Fairness Doctrine and require that Fox present NEWS instead of rightwing propaganda as well as views from viewpoints that are opposite from its own extremist rightwing mindset. It is long past time for Fox to separate its propaganda from its FAUX "news." Fox has created the intense polarization and hatred that has eroded civil discourse in our country since its inception. That is a damning legacy.
Oh, please. Colleges and Universities already do outreach continuously. (I work in the CT education system, my niece works for the RI. I know what I'm talking about). There are almost 4,000 colleges in this country. Just about anybody who really wants to go to college can. Don't have enough money? Do what I did - start at a community college, finish at a state college. If colleges have a lot of upper and middle class kids in them, it is because their parents insist/push them to go. If lower class parents don't, well, that is a bigger problem that the colleges themselves can over come. This is not a new issue: in the 1930's my grandmother insisted that everyone of her children would (and did) go to some school of higher education. She did this over the protests and criticism of her family and neighbors. Her act sent the next two generations of my family out of poverty and into the middle, upper middle, and upper classes.
5
There are "naturally occurring" ideological biases in some job fields.
For example, those work on Wall Street, where money is the paramount value, tend to be Republicans. Those who work in academia, where openness to new ideas is often necessary, tend to be Democrats. I would also guess that there's a Republican bias in the military and a Democratic one in nursing and other helping professions.
But Republicans have deepened this bias by scorning science—in everything from evolution to climate to whether birth control is abortion. Going against the evidence in economics in favor of ideology also does not help.
Do we need to be so blindly egalitarian that we stop respecting reality?
4
In 1574, the good people of Leiden withstood a multiple-month siege by the forces of the Duke of Alva. Upon rescue by the forces of William the Silent of the House of Nassau, they were able to establish their city as the Crossroads of the Enlightenment. It also served as a refuge for a group seeking to purify the Anglican church, who later headed to Plymouth to establish their colony. The economic growth of the Dutch Republic allowed it to finance Henry Hudson and resulted in the establishment of New Amsterdam. We in the modern world are all in debt beyond measure to these unsung heroes.
Ever since, the forces of authoritarianism and centralization have tried to rollback the advances garnered by those who were steadfast at Leiden. Liberal universities (for all their flaws) are the repositories of both natural philosophy and moral philosophy - the sciences and humanities that are the modern branches of the Enlightenment. Without them, there'd have been no American experiment in the past or even our current discombobulated present. Those who advocate a repulse of the liberal tendencies of institutions of higher learning condemn us to a future that would merely resemble the worst of the past, unleavened by education and certainly un-Enlightened.
5
One conservative bastion rarely mentioned are the many schools of business on the campus of every large university. It is possible there to find many professors who subscribe to the Republican notion that wealth makes right, and greed is good. Professors there may not agree that Earth is 5,000 years old, but you will find plenty of arguments for corporate personhood and the kind of government disengagement with rules and regulation that the current administration favors. The ideology may be cloaked in higher mathematics, but generations of students have been conservatively indoctrinated.
1
I find the primary division in dorm room debates typically falls into one of two categories. You have politicized students and you have apolitical students. The politicized students generally possess a fairly evolved ideological preference, liberal or conservative, before they ever enter college. They'll typically seek out courses and professors that help reinforce their worldview. You still have homogeneous groups. They just self-identify and orient themselves around an established position. Debates between these groups rarely change anyone's mind. Its argument for the sake of argument.
By contrast, conversations with apolitical students run the gamut. Sometimes the student is legitimately uninterested. They will only read a newspaper when assigned a project concerning news. Other times, the student is willfully dispossessed of all things political. The cool thing to do is not pay attention because politics don't matter anyway. There are many shades of grey in between these extremes as well. Sometimes students don't like to reveal their ignorance on a subject so they'll just parrot a common opinion.
These are the students we need to focus on. They don't have an entrenched opinion yet so teachers still have an opportunity to educate. That's the whole point of college, right? Education. Perhaps we don't need conservative affirmative action so much as a required freshman seminar on political philosophy. Start by informing the students and then let them go wherever they want.
Why is it better to yield to the benighted forces that elected Trump than to reach out to the school boards in surrounding counties to restore critical thinking and civics classes?
When Texas college professors offered to fact-check Texas public school books -- particularly science and history -- the state Board of Education turned them down. https://thinkprogress.org/texas-board-of-education-refuses-to-allow-prof...
It's clear that state governments are party to bias in education and, we can assume, to steer children toward a certain ideology. If you learn that evolution is merely a competing theory, that climate change is controversial or that slaves are really only "workers," then you end up with a population for which Trump has some appeal.
It's not competing political views that separates voters, but deliberate indoctrination by public officials.
6
Only 10 military veterans for incoming classes? Higher education has got to do better than that.
1
When I was a freshman in college I was surprised to meet someone who voted for Gerald Ford - I only knew people who voted Democratic. I was suspicious of Republicans. This kid was, and probably still is, a great guy.
Now I know and like lots of people who don't vote like I do - I just disagree with them on tax policy or the like. Some elections I win, some they do, but my whole attitude changed for the better after meeting mid-westerners and Southerners. I understand my country better.
College was great for me in this regard.
I think I read somewhere that you can’t me a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Sure, let’s admit as many students and hire as many professors as possible who don’t believe in science (climate change, evolution, for example) and don’t believe in economics (trickle-down anyone?). What could possibly go wrong? Maybe you could educate some of the students, but hiring a professor who supports magical thinking over empiricism? What would they teach, Voodoo Economics 101? An Introduction to Fawning over Veterans Without Examining the Mission? Advanced Number Theory, 3%>97%? How about How to Destroy Higher Education with Tax Cuts for the Wealthy (three hours with one-hour lab)?
1
American conservatism has, over the last several decades, relentlessly pursued agendas which counter that which can be proved -- in other words, facts.
A university's mission should be to pursue truth. When a political movement is dedicated to denying and obfuscating truth, it is hard to envision how that movement can be given equal space or status within the intellectual framework of pursuing truth.
American conservatism pursues policies that deny science, which promote economic ideas that have again and again been shown (in actual practice) to be arithmetically impossible, it persists in the notion that religious freedom is merely a device to impose one group's beliefs on everyone else, and ignores historical racism and misogyny (when not actually practising or promoting them.
Why should the pursuit of truth bend to allow space for these pernicious tendencies?
1
I agree that all views should have equal time, It is the job of colleges and universities to open minds to all ideas. After all isn't this the primary reason for pursuing higher education?
But indoctrination is another matter. So if the real purpose is to indoctrinate a student, whether with liberal or conservative ideology than these schools will be failing to do their job. After all, isn't that what most religions do? And isn't this why we are in the predicament that we are in as a country. No separation of Church and State.
Civil and respectable debate is necessary. I am hoping that is the outcome the schools have in mind.
The writer may over-estimate, by anecdote rather than data, a connection between Conservatives and Trump. If my local N=1000 data is relevant, the link may not be so highly correlated at all, with a coefficient far less than 1. As for Wesleyan's proposed campus affirmative action for conservatives, I think Harvard's Alan Dershowitz has a better idea, and said it well: "Hey, I'm from Brooklyn, if I get shouted down, I just yell louder." Whoever said professors or speakers deserve "safe spaces?" As for what too many colleges are flunking, Johns Hopkins is on the right path: civic engagement. In 1970 nearly a million student protestors shut down 450 universities and colleges across the country, and within 90 days, the Kissinger-Nixon duo ultimately brought back 380,000 servicemen from Vietnam, and cancelled expansion beyond Vietnam's borders. Fast forward to today: 16 years of the global war of terror, hundreds of thousands of innocents killed, millions of displaced refugees, a domestic Patriot Act, $6 trillion spent from the Treasury--and not a peep from universities or their students. Readers may enjoy a related op-ed I wrote this weekend for the students at the University of Chicago: https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2017/10/27/shoot-messenger/
2
The problem is, to count as "conservative" these days, an atmospheric scientist needs to deny that human activity contributes to climate change and an economist needs to believe the Laffer Curve describes reality. Universities should be open to vigorous debate and a range of perspectives. They should not give tenure to quacks.
2
If colleges make efforts to attract poor, qualified kids regardless of where they are - they deserves applause. But there are three underlying notions - strongly interconnected - in this article that are dangerous nonsense.
First, the notion that the left and right are morally and intellectually equivalent, is rubbish. Both are wrong about a lot of things; integration of two wrongs does not produce a right. A curriculum that aims for a balance is one that produces nothing. A faculty body that has equal far right and equal far left, produce heat without light. Imagine a class with Rachel Maddow followed by a class with Hannity.
Second, the current variance in the American faculty body is high to produce coherent discourse. A small proportion (20%?) of faculty are intellectually engaged. There are more pay-to-publish journals, more nonsense conferences, more 'buy yourself a text book publisher" in this field than any other (imagine if your physician had purchased her creds). The less accomplished the faculty, the more noise they make on campus. I don't trust college faculty as a whole to implement a social agenda this complicated; without irony, we agree that we are all above average.
Third, much of this article rests on the assumption that the American right is now nuanced, and we can attract the "reasonably" republican out of the compound. This too is wrong. Kool aid has been drunk.
But, nice try.
Kalidan
Limiting this discussion to college is a mistake. High school students need to learn critical thinking and an open minded view based on facts before they go to college. These skills are important even if the kid becomes an auto mechanic or plumber. Otherwise we will end up with a succession of people who believe in the Trumpublican party line that denies any kind of rational view of the world.
1
Frank, don't be so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance, if the objective is to educate those people missing front teeth so they might have a more open view of the world and those around them, fine.
It seems however, you're striving to bring close mindedness to institutions that by definition should and do oppose that. Is there a liberal democratic orthodoxy to the non STEM programs, probably, but that's the nature of those fields of study, it's akin to teaching creationism along side evolution, oil and water, you can shake it up and force it to mix but ultimately it will separate to their philosophical origins.
"Republicans and conservative-leaning independents now believe that colleges have a negative impact on America."
So this is what we have leading America right now in the Congress, the Judicial, and the Presidency. They think that colleges harm America. Jeez.
2
Please read the statement by the President of the University of Chicago. Every college President and Trustee in America should read it and put it into practice at their school.
Bruni shows only that if Republicans (whose thinking today is mostly not very rooted in conservative philosophy) whine loud enough and long enough, they can bully or shame liberals into believing or at least considering the most outrageous garbage. That public universities are bastions of liberal thought is an unproven "alternative fact" tied to Republican campaigning more than reality. Good luck finding liberal thinkers in engineering or business departments. And while humanities and social science faculty skew liberal, the claim that there are no conservative thinkers in these fields is simply wrong. Moreover, faculty members who may hold liberal beliefs nevertheless teach a balanced set of theories rooted in a range of philosophies, ranging from conservative to liberal. The problem is Republicans want to frame these as "correct" and "liberal propaganda," as part of a strategy to colonize every aspect of our lives with a business mentality, to turn everyone into unthinking consumers and true believers in the idea that our purpose on Earth is to consume whatever the corporate elite wants to sell us. By teaching critical thinking - both conservative and liberal - social science and humanities courses threaten corporate domination, so Republican politicians, acting in the interest of their corporate overlords, must delegitimize these fields. Their preferred tactic is to brand them, and universities in general, as "liberal." How sad that Bruni buys into this big con.
Black students who benefited from affirmative action were castigated because, conservatives argued, because they were lazy and not intellectually gifted enough to succeed otherwise.
Now white, conservative, rural students are being encouraged — but that's because, despite their strong work ethic and family values, they've been denied opportunities other Americans have had, such as access to the upper strata and decent primary and secondary schooling.
Strange stuff indeed.
1
Conservatism, as practiced by those whining about the lack balance on college campuses, is a dead end when it comes to the open, vigorous, and logical testing of ideas.
Today's Republicans offer nothing: "creationism," anti-Women's choice based on religious thought, "trickle-down" economics....on and on. All dead ends. American conservatives have as much to do with Edmund Burke as Democrats have to do with Eugene Debs.
Nevertheless, liberalism, by definition, invites openness to new ideas, and that is where the battle for youth and critical thought will take place in classrooms. That is why classes taught by eminent thinkers are so popular on campuses everywhere.
1
Instead of blaming universities for a lack of political viewpoints that skew right I would like to see data about the percentage of conservatives appointed PhDs. Is this an attraction problem as opposed to a selection problem? I see a lot of knee jerk latching on to narratives and a lot less scientific data on what's going on with the academy.
Let us not confuse conservative thought with Trump politics.
1
Fostering better communication is definitely needed, even if Bruni's suggestions miss the mark.
A recent article by Bret Stephens, absurdly caricatures liberals as communists. Meanwhile, liberals caricature all Trump voters as racist. (If indeed that were true, you might as well give up.)
These caricatures, and the resulting tribal divisions, serve the interests of a corrupt oligarchy, as each tribe ignores and excuses the corruption of the plutocratically appointed leaders of their own tribe, while viciously attacking - not just the corruption and bad policy of the rival tribe's leaders - but the rival tribe in it's entirety. Meanwhile, the policy flaws and donors of ones own tribal leaders are ignored. Repeat this on both sides, and the result is ever worse policy outcomes for the masses.
Specifically regarding Trump, it is true that he played a core of anti-immigrant sentiment to gain the critical mass to win the primary. But ignoring the fact that Republican primary voters overwhelming rejected the status quo candidates with huge stacks of money and establishment approval, prevents liberals from seeing the huge opportunity to win swing voters by rejecting corrupt, donor approved candidates in Democratic primaries.
Voters across the political spectrum are enraged and discouraged by legalized bribery. This is a huge missed opportunity. Think you can increase Democratic turnout with the same bad product? Same big donors? Guess again.
1
Should universities hire climate change-denying, civil-rights oppressing, racism-exacerbating "teachers"?
No. We have enough ignorance in our country without propagating more under the guise of "education."
Should universities recruit and educate under-enlightened people from rural backgrounds or other typically conservative areas?
Yes. Then we can work together to rebuild our country with the modern version of its founding principles: equality, opportunity and separation of church and state.
2
Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler are both graduates of the University of Virginia. What are their other "claims to fame"? They are two of the most prominent leaders of the so-called alt-right and Unite the Right movements. Steve Bannon, Trump puppet-master and Breitbart editor, is an alumnus of of one of Virginia's most respected Catholic schools, Benedictine, in Richmond. So much for the argument that progressive, liberal schools are failing to incorporate and accommodate other points of view.
1
Frank I am a liberal, so please enlighten me. Please tell me what, specifically, is that "... inquisitive, constructive territory short of that."? Take away the hatred of the other and the belief that white is destine to rule the world and that men are superior to women, and what conservative ideas do remain? I would love to know!
There are many interesting books representing conservative thought and I, more of a socialist than a liberal, believe there is a lot to be learned from some of them. I would have no objection to my son or daughter reading William F Buckley or Milton Friedman in a college course. Diversity in college materials would be a good thing in, say, a history or economics class. Just because someone voted for little don does not mean that she is a college level thinker. In fact most of his voters probably have never heard of Milton Friedman. Great discussions are to be had in comparing political and economic policies. It's good to realize that Jonathan Swift was not serious about raising Irish children for food. Apparently, many today would not be able to see that.
3
I agree with your comment, but I would suggest rethinking the sentence, "In fact, most of his voters probably have never heard of Milton Friedman." It's a biased statement. I tend to agree with your bias, but, also, I know some very well educated conservatives. Arguments are stronger and more productive if bias can be removed.
1
Just as the views of the liberal are influenced heavily by the company that they keep and t he material that the choose to watch and read, so too is the conservative.
The whole purpose of education is to expose the learner to a variety of viewpoints and to explore the benefits and drawbacks of both.
We, as a nation, have come far from the concept that all ideas are worthy of hearing and, in the grand scheme of things, the good will drive out the bad.
It would seem that both the conservative and the liberal are unwilling to put their views to the test in the marketplace of ideas.
And that is sad both for our and our nation's future.
1
Suppose a university needs to hire a biology professor. One of the candidates seems in many respects well qualified, but espouses Intelligent Design as the explanation for life on Earth. Thus he's profoundly at odds with the bedrock principle of modern biology: that the development of life, and speciation, is the result of evolution subject to selection. The question is not open to debate: in science some things are necessarily settled. By a selection process analogous to evolution, the candidate's defect has rendered him "unfit" to teach biology at an institution of higher education.
The analogy extends to other disciplines as well: geophysical science (think climate change), economics (tax cuts pay for themselves), and potentially even the social sciences.
Some might view conservative exclusion from higher ed as the equivalent of political gerrymandering. But is that so?
If the progress of intellectual inquiry broadly speaking is going in one direction, and the conservative view of reality is going in another, then what is the remedy? Surely it is not to introduce incorrect ideas on settled matters to achieve a balance of viewpoints. To do so is at odds with the very idea of intellectual progress.
To a significant extent, the notion of "liberal bias" is a fiction of conservatism. For example, before conservative media we didn't have the "liberal media"; we just had the media. Conservatives wanting to construct their own reality constructed their own media. Here we are.
13
Universities are inherently meritocratic institutions. That’s why we have grades, theses, competitive grants, etc. People from all backgrounds, Trump voters included, are welcome to enter and learn. There are certain attitudes, preparation, and characteristics that contribute to success in this competitive environment, particularly in STEM areas. Respect for scientific method, logical thinking, and math. Admissions favor “well rounded” applicants who excel at extracurricular activities as well as advanced placement coursework, but when the choice comes down to gentleman’s C’s from applicants who favored football and deer season over calculus it’s really no surprise they are not the first to be admitted or hired on a faculty. A robust junior college system with guaranteed junior year access to state universities as California had in the 60’s provides an opportunity for young adults to escape a culture of grievance and entitlement and prepare for a brighter future. As those on the right are fond of saying people deserve equal opportunity not equal outcomes.
23
"gentleman’s C’s from applicants who favored football and deer season over calculus". Well, that kind of snide stereotyping is exactly what Mr. Bruni is getting at. And, besides, I know a lot of friends who preferred opera and philosophy (well, almost anything) over calculus, too.
1
Ha! I would bet you that many of those applicants "who favored football and deer season" have far better basic math skills and aptitudes for engineering than any group of left-leaning academics immersed in the so-called "soft" sciences. There are even some liberals in the math academy who believe the teaching of primary arithmetic needs to be changed because the subject matter is inherently "racist". Believe me, I'd much rather drive on a bridge or ride on an elevator designed and built by a Trump voter than some Berkeley socialist.
1
I am in my 70s now and have taught and conducted research at all levels of post-secomdary institutions from community college to liberal arts college to Big State University to medical colleges. My research focuses on individual differences in response to drugs and toxins. By extension, I consider labels of "liberal" or "conservative" Procrustean. These terms reduce a complex individual to a word and thereby deprives that individual of full consideration. When I recently asked one of my students whether he would vote on election day, he responded that he would, but I would not like his vote. My counter was that I would not like it if he did not vote. The Pew poll showing that a majority of Republicans and conservative-leaning independents believe that colleges have a negative impact on America is nothing new. There has been a long-standing anti-intellectualism in the USA and somehow we have survived and progressed despite it.
20
Residing in an ultra-conservative rural upstate NY community, I can state with a high degree of certainty that most of our college-bound high school seniors want to attend college to escape this environment - with no intentions of ever returning. The last thing they want is to experience that which they ran from.
19
Rather than seeking agenda-driven professors, universities should be focused on truth-seekers. A well rounded education should expose students to the causes and effects of history through anthropology, the arts, sciences, etc as well as competing political ideologies. If done right, the students will, or should be able to, discern what worked or didn’t work and choose their own political ideology in the process.
21
Absolutely true. The problem is that administrations are investing in - surprise surprise - administrative costs, and not faculty development.
4
So colleges need to better embrace conservative thoughts and ideals. Who could possibly object?
Well. when conservative tax policy is about selling the lie that tax cuts for the rich will somehow generate growth that benefits the middle class, despite historical evidence showing that doesn't happen, it seems that a good education will not promote conservative thoughts and ideals.
And when conservative health care policy is about improving national health care by throwing tens of millions of people off of health care insurance to get big tax cuts for the rich, a good education would lead one to believe that conservatism is not worth promoting.
The flaws of current conservative thought will not be promoted by any education worthy of the name.
29
Don't you think that's kind of the point? Classes should present conservative and liberal ideas (in this case economic ones) and discuss/criticize. It's much too simplistic, for example, to point to a multi-year period of growth or recession and state that it was caused by one factor out of thousands.
Colleges need look no further than their economics departments to find conservative political thought or the philosophical underpinnings of free enterprise. I am a progressive economics professor; we are quite marginalized in the profession.
13
This question: "disagreement about the very mission of higher education. Should it grapple with the world as it is or point the way to the world as it should be?" is profoundly flawed. The solution to this "dilemma" is to realize it's the wrong question, emerging from a profoundly unbalanced equation: more administrative than faculty costs, and a rising administrative concern about the money-producing "brand" and attendant worries about the complaints of 18-year old, untrained minds and their doting parents. Universities need to reinvest in a balanced intellectual investment that honors its own academically-defined foundations, less "message" and more "critique" - NOT in terms of a specific political or moral objective. They need to invest in a faculty balanced between conservative and progressive theoretical approaches - especially in the humanities, and emphasize the teaching critical thinking tools, not the end goal, but the process of consideration. Instead, administrations are focused on "job-producers," and STEM; their solution to social problems is to hire "diversity managers" instead of hiring faculty who can teach what's at stake to the student population; the humanities have been gutted instead of shaped in a way that will focus on giving young people the critical tools to assess and judge for themselves their own place - real or desired - in the world. The question should be: Why are business, and not academic, models shaping the current American university?
18
As a diplomatic historian, professor, woman, mother, Democrat, musician and person of faith, the key to reaching students is to meet them where they are rather than criticize them for being there. Of my many identities, academe and political liberals are least accepting of my faith. At the same time, I take issue with the gender studies/military history dichotomy, not least because it is code for woman/man (my own discipline is overwhelmingly male) and academe does not need to re-ify that structure. What academe does need to do is practice what it preaches. People of faith, women, intellectuals, and Democrats often pride themselves on high ethical standards, being blind to difference. We should live that, not just talk it.
8
Of course we are the least accepting of your faith. We try to deal in reality, not magical thinking, voodoo economics and racial superiority.
Mr. Bruni, could it be that in the marketplace of ideas, conservative ideas are not marketable at universities? By that I mean, ideas that are researched based, secular based, demonstrate a modicum of ethical and moral reasoning, and offer practical solutions for real world problems. Now, by any academic/intellectual standard the conservative ideas now emanating from White House, Congress, and conservative think tanks fail one or more of these marketplace standards. Pick a policy, from immigration to climate change to health care to tax reform---how could any reputable academic stand in front of a lecture hall uttering the nonsense we hear from Trump and Paul Ryan? I know, real conservative academics would admit Trump and Ryan are nonsense ---for these brave souls, award them adjunct position. Should add, that the core of conservative/neo-liberal economic theories, that are embedded in the Republican party---low taxes, deregulation--originated from University of Chicago's School of Economics.
37
How about surveying students about their views, when they're incoming freshman and then when they graduate. Anonymously, of course. Maybe someone already does this?
As many commenters have pointed out, the problem with the conservative viewpoint right now is that it seems to be driven by wilful ignorance. And if the college professor quoted in the article as having voted for Trump STILL supports him, after all of his lies and bullying and childish, reckless tweets...well, that would be discouraging. People who hold tight to a viewpoint regardless of the evidence are not good models for college teachers.
30
'“The idea that the only people who voted for Trump have missing front teeth is really so extraordinary, and yet I think that’s largely what people in the academy think,” said Jean Yarbrough, a conservative professor of political science at Bowdoin College who voted for him herself.'
My own view at this stage of Trump's presidency is that even if his supporters aren't actually missing any front teeth, they're certainly missing the obvious: Trump is unfit for office. By all means, let's get these people into institutions of higher learning where they'll be exposed to actual facts and possibly even learn how to use reason to form judgements and make decisions.
37
"By all means, let's get these people into institutions of higher learning where they'll be exposed to actual facts and possibly even learn how to use reason to form judgements and make decisions." Your first mistake is that we have already graduated from, and earned higher degrees from, these very institutions. The answer is the opposite: to get your people OUT of these institutions "of higher learning" because they are expose there to facts --and viewpoints--that tell only their side of the story.
You take it for granted that Trump is unfit for office. (I won't even address whether the candidate he beat was). Most of you cannot list his accomplishments, except for a pitiful few, because you remain clueless--and then you disapprove even of those, considering them to be not true accomplishments, but set-backs.
You correctly address the issue. You need to expose rural and traditional value (religious, frugal, military veterans etc.) students to challenge and a breadth of ideas.
The university is not a seminary for the like-minded. At its best, it should be a place where the entire history of ideas, particularly those which have stood the test of time and examination, are presented. Let students debate, peaceably march, and respectfully disagree. Let some closed minds be opened in the process.
Although I'm in favor of the idea of getting anyone to college who wants to go, how would getting white working class voters to college help? Whites with college educations tend to vote Republican so whatever left wing indoctrination is supposedly happening at institutions of higher ed, it just isn't working, at least among white people -- who, let's face it, is really who the critics of higher ed are talking about.
The vast majority of college students in the US do not attend Yale, Brown or Wesleyan -- or even flagship state campuses like the University of Colorado Boulder or Bruni's own UNC Chapel Hill. No, these students go to community colleges, regional comprehensive universities (many of which are located in rural areas: Eastern Illinois, Cal State Chico, Southern Oregon, etc). Only a small fraction of students in the US major in the liberal arts subjects that freak out conservative commentators as the ground zeroes of radical thought. Most are business or criminal justice or majors in other practical, career oriented subjects. Many Bruni and other NYT reporters should occasionally check in with these campuses and these students. I'd bet you find a larger mix of conservative/liberal profs & students.
1
Education breeds liberalism. Or at least it makes one much more likely to reject populism and extreme right wing ideology. That may be the best argument yet for free college for everyone.
33
Which is exactly why Republicans will do their damnedest to make sure higher education is NEVER free.
I note your careful wording. You omitted writig that education makes one more likley to reject centrist ideology. You don't define, or give examples of, what you mean by "extreme" right wing ideology, party, I surmise, because all your co-religionists (your "true political believers")are certain that Trump supporters see in him an extremist subscribing to "extreme right wing ideology".
We do not.
You are all drowning in your own political propaganda, and you remain blissfully unware. There is an old saying: the fish doesn't know he is wet. Neither do the Democrats.
The recommendation to add "conservative faculty" is perplexing. Does that mean climate change deniers would teach chemistry, or Holocaust deniers would teach history? What about political scientists who believe that corporations are people, or psychologists who believe in racial differences in character or ability? I'm not sure we would be better off teaching college students that politicians should pick their voters via gerrymandering, or that the U.S. should become a theocracy, but these are "conservative" goals just as much as enriching the few, spoiling the environment, and restricting the ability to vote. Maybe "conservative" means something else to Mr. Bruni, or maybe these kinds of individuals would just end up in the religion department, where belief systems are the subject, not facts. There are often two sides to a story, but in D.C. one side isn't listening to the citizens whose welfare they ostensibly represent, and is actively working to make the country unstable, inequitable, sick, poor, misogynistic and racist. Colleges should not pick faculty due to their political preferences, but because of their knowledge and ability to teach the next generation how to clean up the mess created by all Republican politicians since the first term of Richard Nixon.
33
Thank you for this: "The recommendation to add "conservative faculty" is perplexing. Does that mean climate change deniers would teach chemistry, or Holocaust deniers would teach history? What about political scientists who believe that corporations are people, or psychologists who believe in racial differences in character or ability?
Possibly it would mean that most conservatives are not denying the climate may be changing; they may explore,however, whether the Paris Accord did anything useful to change that, while its "deal" gave a continuing economic competitive advantage to nations who are already eating our lunch (China,India, etc.,through lower wages, etc.);
It would obviously shock you to learn--if learning is possible for you, as you seem over the edge to me--that Trump supporters are not Holocaust deniers. You might pick up on Israel's strengtened positon under Trump; that the daily barrage of anti-Israel "news" has ended; that he has defunded UN anti-Israel groups, and that Israel is now in an alliance with a new, modernizing Saudi Arabian king. And anyway, I thought all you guys were anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, aren't you?
Legally, corporations are people. Talk to the law professors, not to the poli sci profs.If you are grossed out that they can contribute to campaigns, your professor might open your brain to the fact that unions do the same. Are they "people"?
Etc.
1. The conservative movement should be wary of what they wish for. Their kids might not come back the way they left.
2. I do believe in affirmative action, so yes, let's mix it up; and I hope the conservative movement would acknowledge it.
8
When you say you do believe in "Affirmative Action" you don't define it or discuss whether it has succeeded in achieveing its goal or what you think they were. Are you aware that racial preferemces for one minority group discriminates against from other minority groups?
Is that OK with you?
How long should racial discrimination to. favor one group go on?
Yes, I am fully aware. The idea that some conscious effort is needed in creating a just and equal society is OK with me (and will most likely be to the detriment of me). Should we try various ideas and methods, yes. But don't pretend there were no conscious efforts in the past to make one group win and one group lose.
Now Frank will make the case for a Creation Science sequence in the biology curriculum and School of Medicine.
And the sister school program with Liberty University.
And a dual degree in the humanities and conservative economics, emphasis on Dickens by way of Laffer.
Jocks will be introduced to campus with orientation experiences like the gala Day of Forced Standing Up.
Frank, its not new that some Americans believe education, especially college education, is a waste of time. Where were you this past thirty years?
You missed Governor Scott informing Florida that its Universities are now real big trade schools, and history majors should be shot?
The rise of DeVos and her greedy, lying ilk? The endless funding cuts, unfunded mandates, expensive testing regimes demanded by conservative politicians?
Or the decades long calumny visited upon teachers because they're all welfare queens with fun activities to fill their days?
You don't argue for this kind of change unless you believe the academy is indeed infected with liberal bias. What you can do is argue we need to do better at recruiting from remote and undeserved communities.
Trouble is, conservatives took our funding away, its never coming back, and these efforts are expensive.
Now the same people who attack academe for unfair bias when we seek balance by admitting more students of color demand unfair bias to admit more students of their political bent? Students they conditioned to think college is a waste of time?
24
There is a reason why better educated people, like college professors, tend to be more liberal than the uneducated. There are, of course, many well educated conservatives -- William F. Buckley and George Will come to mind -- who have absolutely nothing in common with today's climate-denying Republicans or the average Trump voter. Which brings up the question: Who would you rather have in Congress, someone like Jeff Flake or that loony judge in Tennessee?
23
'There is a reason why better educated people, like college professors, tend to be more liberal than the uneducated. There are, of course, many well educated conservatives -- William F. Buckley and George Will come to mind -- who have absolutely nothing in common with today's climate-denying Republicans or the average Trump voter." The politest response I can come up with is "hogwash".
How kind of you to allow that there are, "of course, many well educated conservatives -- William F. Buckley and George Will come to mind -- who have absolutely nothing in common with today's climate-denying Republicans or the average Trump voter."
Why, your view of the average Trump voter is so misplaced, so absolutely inaccurate, and so self-congratulatory, that it is would be laughable were your people's tremendous misapprehensions regarding Trump's supporters not so serious a national problem.
1
Universities tend to be liberal because they are committed to fact based teaching, research and active pursuit of further knowledge and new ideas. Conservatives cling to old ideas and myths because they are uncomfortable with any form of change or anything that is not the same as it was. That is in fact the definition of conservative.
Trump and his sycophants have taken conservatism to a new low where out right lies are acceptable as long as you can get people to believe them. This is not acceptable in a university and it should not be acceptable in any society.
19
Universities tended to be liberal because during the Vietnam war, students could get a draft deferrment. In those days, being anti-war was a distinctly liberal position--students were anti-authority because authority was sending young men into what was seen as an necessary and unwinnable war which many young communists (especially on West Coast campuses) also saw as immoral.
These students, many of whom had planned on leaving academia after graduation, stayed on for advancedegrees in order to avoid the draft. When they had earned their PhD's, college teaching beckoned as a good career path. Thus were liberals, communists, anarcists and the like entering the professorate in unprecedented proportions.
Although there are many definitions of "democracy" when I was in college (many, many years ago) I was taught that democracy is a "form of government where the majority rules, but the minority (and everyone else) has guaranteed rights." In this respect, Matt W.'s comment is particularly relevant, because as he points out the majority of voters cast its vote for Hillary Clinton, so in terms of the above definition, the real question becomes "Have certain undemocratic aspects of America's Constitution (e.g., the electoral college) put the country at peril?"
15
Having spent almost 40 years teaching at Texas A&M, I didn't see much of a liberal bias. Dominated by depts. of agriculture, engineering, and business, the faculty was not a group of left-leaning folks.
16
When I lived in Texas, conservative parents clearly preferred their kids to go to A&M, rather than the "immoral and liberal" University of Texas at Austin. In fact there are quite a few even more conservative institutions out there, for example the Christian or military-oriented universities and colleges.
Are you suggesting that domination by liberal arts dejpartments equals liberal bias on campus? I hope so.
Georgia, late 60s and 70s. Liberal Dad, Conservative/Born Again Mom. They sent my siblings and me to UGA.
Part 1. Later my Mom concluded we had been indoctrinated with socialist/anti-American ideas. At UGA! We felt simply that we had been exposed to a wide range of ideas and cultural inputs that expanded our worldview beyond hers. She had “lost” us in a way.
Part 2. Her religious beliefs told her that one’s Christian identity depends on faith alone in a personal Savior. College promotes a scientific and analytical approach to everything, so for her it distanced us from personal Salvation. We were lost again. And who was to blame? That “elite”university education.
For conservatives, college is a path for prosperity but is fraught with intellectual and cultural dangers. That's why they are at best ambivalent about it, at worst fearful. And this is at the root of conservative America's anti-elitism. Of course, my siblings and I who went to college became Democrats, my older brother who didn’t was a diehard Christian conservative.
Do we want to foment access to ideas and diversity and tolerance or recreate a safe space for conservatives in higher education? Let’s not lose our Universities, which have long been admired worldwide as one of America's great institutions!
21
Universities should nurture reasoned examination of diverse ideas based on evidence. Principles of reason and evidence create a common ground for productive debate and leave plenty of room for both liberal and conservative ideas. Of course those principles themselves are and should be constantly debated, but there are generally accepted limits that must be respected. For example, lies, logical fallacies, and personal attacks constructed in service of political bias are out of bounds. It is the role of universities to teach students how to identify arguments that stray beyond accepted principles. Ideas may be liberal or conservative, but the principles for evaluating ideas should not be.
Anyone who understands and accepts the boundaries created by principles of reason and evidence should be welcome to the debate. Those who don’t respect those principles cannot usefully participate in the debate or the education of students in the university or any other level.
6
Have you considered the political agenda being advanced by the choice of what to study? And what not to study?
Bruni is right. I teach on a college campus. And I find the reflexively anti-conservative comments in this piece one of the reasons why no one gets along. Liberals are often just as intolerant as conservatives, who are not all Trumpites.
I spent time with a fact-less Tea Party guy one night and decided I would show him we agree on the same things: good schools, faith can be good; hard work; rules; etc. He was stunned I agreed with him on those things, the end points, assuming liberals don't, only hearing talk radio. Just not how we get to the end points there, and he began to listen. Find common ground first, because we mostly agree on the same things, but not all, and just use different ways to get there. Comity not anger. Honey not vinegar.
6
This column misses the mark.
I live in a red state but my career was spent working in major research universities. I encountered very few people in these centers of learning who will accept spoon feeding from Fox News or big industries or advertising. They can think, read, research and examine hard data against whatever claims within an argument are made. And they are maligned as 'liberals'?
Critical thinking is neither conservative nor liberal.
But refusing to think or fact check has become the new conservatism of the day.
18
'Critical thinking is neither conservative nor liberal" and "I encountered very few people in these centers of learning who will accept spoon feeding from Fox News or big industries or advertising.'
But did they accept spoon-feeding from CNN, MSNBC, etc., ultra -lliberal interest groups, or the Democrat political propagada machine and the mass media?
You have demonstated by your post that you only imagine that your own critical thinking is neither conservative nor liberal. it is liberal.
This is really a dangerous idea! So, the institution should offset a scholar who, supposedly, has spent a life time in objective, critical thinking scholarship, with a person who simply "believes" in a particular political or scientific perspective?
Then what is the effect upon an institution whose mission is the search for truth? One might suspect that the presidents of these institutions might be more effective if they were concerned about insuring that their faculties were focused on teaching (like giving exams!) and depending less upon part time, adjunct instructors, the current peasants of higher education. And, specifically, for state institutions like the U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (my university ) insuring that the traditional mission of serving the citizens of NC rather than expanding the enrollment of out of state students to jack up their revenue stream. They, along with tenure faculty, might also pay more attention to what is going on - or not- in the class rooms today.
Clyde Ingle
5
When I got my job as a tenure-track professor at Cornell no one asked if I was liberal or conservative in my politics. So how would anyone know? And to suggest that 18 year olds, barley adults, "know" they are liberal or conservative is just silly. Is someone actually suggesting the college application now have a line, "Do you consider yourself liberal or conservative?" Campuses are not about political affiliation but about education. If the academy, as a whole, seems liberal to outsiders, they might consider that these "liberals" are simply people who have a broad, historical, educated view of the world, and maybe that's what makes them seem liberal, because they are aware of others outside of their own socio-economic status.
8
Tenure track professor in the sciences or liberal arts?
How would they know if they didn't ask? Did you not converse about your subject matter? If you are a iberal arts professor, it would be as obvious from such a discussion.
Whoever teaches at a university should at least agree to support the institution's core values. I learned recently that for some conservatives, the Enlightenment values that commonly inform the mission of universities are perceived to be liberal values.
I have at least one conservative student who is militantly against dialogue between different people and any course content that promotes our institution's core value of diversity. I feel sorry for untenured professors in this climate.
5
The Enlightenment values 'commonly inform the mission of universities' ?
Really?
That is news --big news--incredulous news-- to me. Could you give some examples of what you mean,precisely, by Enlightenment values, and tell us which campuses you are talking about other than Hillsdale?
Of course Enlightenment values are liberal, but today's self-defined "liberal" rejects many of these values on many of our campuses if for no other reason than they were created by dead white Euro0pean males.
That's great for the humanities. Now, what about pushing the Economics departments to do a better job hiring progressive thinkers.
9
I've heard that reality has a liberal bias, but I'm starting to feel the same way about intelligence.
11
I'm shocked that Bruni didn't include the many religion-based schools, mainly evangelical Christian, whose primary purpose is to teach religious dogma and to "protect" students from the thoughts, opinions and knowledge of the wider world. The claimed liberal bias of many universities comes from scholarship which doesn't brook fairy tales on the origin of the earth, evolution, trickle down economics and other such staples of many conservatives and the faculty and administration of many conservative colleges and universities.
5
'religion-based schools, mainly evangelical Christian, whose primary purpose is to teach religious dogma and to "protect" students from the thoughts, opinions and knowledge of the wider world."
That is precisely what liberal schools do, Heart, but you are so much in the bubble of superiority and elitism you are blind to it.
Such "other staples" of conservative thought include free speech. Political correctness is the antithesis of free speech. Do they teach that?
Do you really believe that all conservatives subscribe to hyper-religious notions concerning the earth's origins, or that we are all fundamentalists? You are drinking Democrat propaganda as if it were the truth serum.
I grew up in a conservative community in the Bible Belt, and heard the opinions of Evangelicals and conservatives daily. I went to college to escape that straitjacketed thinking. Now someone thinks we should teach that stuff??
9
It imperative to have conservative thinking, NOT magical thinking, represent the conservative side of things. But I see way too much fantastical thinking from the right (denial of evolution and climate change, conspiracy theories of all kinds, the elevation of Fox News as actual news/journalism). Please include rational thinking and not faith based, make believe “feel good” narratives in your presentation of solid conservative ideas.
And support good governance. it’s way way too easy to tear things down without a clear plan as to what goes in its place. That is NOT critical thinking.
4
College is inherently a liberal (liberating) experience. The nature of leaving one's home where authority resided with someone else to an environment were you make all your choices leads to experiencing new things. That will never change.
Still there is another reason why college's tend to expose liberal thinking and that is the scientific process.
Who in their right mind would argue climate change is not taking place?
Trickle down (Reaganomics) economics will help the working class:
1920's-29 crash 1980's-87 crash, 2001-2008 crash, All of these periods saw the wealthy expand while the income growth for others did not.
Coal industry 50K jobs and shrinking, solar 800k jobs and growing lets bet on coal for our energy future.
ETC.
Either you include these new right wing people in your English departments under fictional writing or you abandon logical thought all together to give a sense of credibility to what they say.
Of course we must do a better job of communicating, both ways. We must listen to the other side and yes maybe create an affirmative action to get our "bucked tooth country cousins" into more higher leaning environments.
However we (the progressive left) can't give up our principles. Yes we have problems and the policies are not perfect and our politicians many times let us down.
BUT at the end of the day 45 and his minions will fail because they ignore the scientific (statistical, etc) evidence that all successful policies must have.
4
Neil deGrasse Tyson:
"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
3
'Who in their right mind would argue climate change is not taking place?"
Who in their right mind would argue that this is the "conservative" position?
If you go on creating straw men, I'm sure you will able to knock down every one.
Why not ask yourselves,instead,whether you really understand American conservatism? Is it because outrage over imagined positons is so much easier to achieve, and so much more politically effective? Emotions over logic?
I usually agree with Mr. Bruni but not in this instance. A college course on Trumpist philosophy basically would have to cover how one needs to effectively lie and cheat on a consistent basis, even when clear unadulterated facts to the contrary prove you are absolutely wrong. Oh, and one must never admit wrong doing or apologize, and must always deflect criticism by attacking someone else. Sending out tons of juvenile Twitter insults on a daily basis is also a critical component of the philosophy.
I think the point is clear. If today's Republicanism rang true, then colleges would reflect that fact. Since it is built on a mound of lies; since it rejects evidence and science; since it replaces reason with religion, it is not worthy of being elevated by our institutions of higher learning. If anything, I fear that today's college students will graduate, determine that our Republican government is a sick joke, and look to other more sane countries to call home.
5
The "election" of tRump wasn't the first time that more than half the country disagreed with bad behavior by other Americans, or fought to reverse the horrific outcome of that behavior. I'm thinking Civil War, and I will fight, with other like minded people, to restore our country to democracy, and civility, whatever it takes.
3
There are plenty conservatively oriented schools to fill this need.
3
Yes, including intellectual conservative thinkers into a college is a great idea. I disagree that this has anything to do with Trump. He is not a true conservative. He is not an intellectual conservative, nor a policy conservative. Give us some smart right wing voices that have a point of view different from the majority of campus professors. But let's not ignore the great big truth here: Trump was not supported by true conservative thinkers, so let's not pretend that they would come to the college and sing his praises.
What you can't find is anyone who can actually intellectually defend his mish mash policy beliefs because they are never clear and are ever changing.
4
"Inquisitive constructive territory," and contemporary conservative thought are a contradiction. American conservatism would 1) deny the science of climate change, 2) falsely claim that tax cuts for the rich will help the poor; 3) cut medicaid and medicare in the name of improving health care for all; 4) threaten a nuclear war with North Korea that could destroy all life on the planet. No, Mr. Bruni -- those ideas are neither inquisitive nor constructive. They are ignorant and destructive and should not be part of any intellectual community based upon research and the shared quest for knowledge.
That sting of conservative lawmakers is their effort to impose their own uncompromising doctrine just like Evangelicals think it is their right to impose their dogma onto others through politics - as evident in their never-ending attacks on education and the educated. There are enough Liberty University type institutions for the uncompromising conservatives to get their flavor of "UN-elite" and "UN-intellectual" flat Earth education. Do we really need dishonest discourse a la trump on campus too? Why should tax paying me care about Liberty University, a tax exempt entity? Shouldn't they feel my progressive sting of disapproval too?
1
People who call themselves conservative, but conserve nothing, are really reactionaries, and have very poor understanding of themselves.
4
Doesn't Wesleyan teach about the philosophical underpinnings of free enterprise in Econ 101?
2
Sorry Frank, but this column should be labeled "fake news." First, conservatives control all areas of the federal government and two-thirds of state governments. Most of the federal judiciary will now be conservative for generations. Yet these poor white, Christian conservatives can't get anyone to listen to their ideas? Please. The war on conservative thought is about as valid as the war on Christmas.
Second, go back and look at the Pew survey. The same majority of conservatives that believe colleges have a negative impact also have a low opinion of the news media and a high opinion of financial and religious institutions. Hmmm...now where would these people hear constant messages that colleges are worthless institutions run by liberals while banks and Christian institutions are helping to save America? I wonder...
4
Colleges that flunk Trump 101 sounds healthy and positive to me. That's similar to flunking Fox/Hannity 101. That kind of radical over the top short on honesty nonsense doesn't belong in a place of higher learning. Colleges are supposed to broaden minds; not shrink them. However, exposure to basic conservative ideology practiced by a McCain, Flake, Corker, Collins, and similar broad-minded others would round out exposure to more liberal progressive views and be a good thing.
2
If only we would teach/learn the meaning of "liberal" and practice a liberal approach to teaching/learning -- irrespective of one's political point of view.
4
Where everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks very much. Diversity of viewpoint is very healthy. That said, these days it is hard to hear a conservative viewpoint without thinking of the monstrous things done in the name of conservatism (or maybe I should say, "under the blanket of" conservatism). Where are the honest conservatives? The few I knew who were Republicans have left their party (honorably, in my opinion). Where are today's Howard Bakers and Lowell Weickers? There just isn't that much daylight between today's Republicans and, frankly, the party of Mussolini. It's very tough to argue with such people, and believe me, I've tried.
2
This way of thinking will help out the Democrats.
Obviously, no one involved in any of the 1200+ losing Democrat candidates' campaigns over the past seven years has demonstrated the first whiff of awareness of why the voters have turned against Washington, D.C.'s arrogance toward them.
This trend of inclusiveness of the politically incorrect can only help our Lenin-wannabes and Obama-wannabes figure out why they fail time after time.
3
Affirmative action for the faculty espousing creationism, the phlogiston theory, Aristotelian laws of motion, genetic/racial determination of intelligence etc. is long overdue.
1
The sad thing is that you need a college education these days to get the irony here!
1
I did an 8-part series in sync with this article in "Should Trump Loathers Talk to Trump Voters?" I argue yes; and provide several attempts at it, some of which fared better than others; and a lot of ideas by others and myself on how to try to do it better.
Of course, academics have a vital role to play, both studying the causes of the now-separate worlds, and attempts to bring them together; as well as to be more welcoming to the conservative students in their classes, while not dropping standards that everything is fair game for the microscope.
Here's Part 8: https://medium.com/@innovator3/the-speaking-to-the-trump-voter-series-un....
This is not a higher education issue, it's a citizen issue, a community issue, a problem that can't be addressed only by colleges. Hopkins' and UNC's initiatives to promote civic engagement need to reach people where they are -- on their phones, in front of their TVs/viewing screens, in their tribal groups. The "people," young and old, in our country learn to think and communicate via a social-media driven culture. Remember back in the day when Sesame Street and The Electric Company taught an entire generation, across political, racial, and class lines, the basics of literary and divil behavior? We need some kind of mass media attempt to engage our dumbed-down, divided, distracted citizens, through some combination of education and entertainment. If only Twitter and Facebook could partner with Hopkins and UNC. Or maybe a spin-off of Dancing with the Stars, Thinking with the Stars, a contest of critical thinking and personal discernment (but who could serve as apolitical expert judges? Lin-Manuel Miranda? Oprah?). Our citizens are learning from Fox News and Twitter trolls on one side, and from the NYTimes, New Yorker on the other. Memes and GIFs sway our people more than any college course syllabus. How do we reach and teach willfully ignorant people about "civic engagement" when they already believe they are the only ones who in fact are active, patriotic citizens? We need to reach them where they are, in the depths of toxic disinformation and hair-trigger emotion.
1
The gist of this argument would seem to be we should be politically correct and throw a little ignorance in the mix. Bad idea.
3
Yes! I'm a dedicated academic liberal and I couldn't agree more. I'm tired of automatic sneers and insults. Borrow a principle from the evangelicals: You persuade no one of anything if you simply look down on them from above and either dismiss them or call them names. You have to look them in the eye and find out why they feel as they do. Then you stand a chance of winning them at least partly to your way of thinking, if that is your aim.
4
This assumption that gathering a variety of opinions is a virtue is in itself an abrogation of critical thinking. What's most important is the degree to which scholars, their works and their perspectives are grounded in reality and provide students with demonstrably effective means of obtaining "the best available version of the truth".
The premise of this article seems to embrace perhaps the most insidious aspect of Trumpism, which is the idea that reality is a matter of perspective. In this construction, passing a final exam "Trump 101" would require the student to remember that Trump would have won the popular vote if it wasn't for the millions of "illegals" who all voted for Clinton, Barack Obama founded ISIS, thousands of Muslims in Jersey City cheered the fall of the Twin Towers, the unemployment rate under Obama may have reached 42%, Ted Cruz' father was with Oswald shortly before the JFK assassination. Trump University received an A Grade from the Better Business Bureau, Obama's American Citizenship is questionable, 81% of White killed in violent crimes are killed by Blacks, and on and on.
We need a re-commitment to intellectual honesty, not an embrace of tribalism.
2
Well, it's nice that you don't want colleges to normalize Trump, or his racism or misogyny. But what is good about "normalizing" today's conservatives, who, if they are members in good standing of the Republican party, are, almost by definition, racist and misogynistic, and, moreover, specifically reject science (climate change, anyone? "life" begins at conception, etc.?). How does that improve education?
1
Frank, is it so difficult to understand just why those drawn to higher education and discovering truth tend to lean liberal? The difference between a classically liberal mind and a conservative one is the difference between an inquisitive puppy and a porcupine.
2
Maybe there is a reason that many conservative "ideas" don't get the scholarly attention some now think they deserve. Maybe trickle-down economics; covert and overt racism; a belief that taxes should always go down and never up (on the wealthy); demanding the populace should be armed to the teeth, with little exception, and replacing science with religion (the Christian one) are just some of the many conservative "ideas" that don't deserve scholarly attention.
1
Please stop refering to a "bubble" that colleges and liberals are in. Trump won, but his voters live in their own conservative bubbles where everyone they know is like-minded.
1
It seems to me that most "liberal" – and let's just check the definition of that word, shall we? Doesn't it have something to do with open-minded study and thought based on reason? – colleges and universities include in required western civ classes a study of nationalism, both white and other, and fascism, nazism, etc. And that is a good thing. But are we now to give lip service to those ideologies as something good and useful to humankind as well? What is Frank thinking? Because that is definitely where his and Yarborough's (fear-based? not to say, paranoid?) rationale is headed. This kind of thinking from supposedly educated folk gives one real pause when considering where the country is headed. What will we be rationalizing next?
1
If elite colleges are, in fact, so hostile to conservatives, then how is it that so many Republicans, including members of Trump's administration went to Ivy Leagues or other elite schools? Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Steve Bannon are all Harvard almuns. Stephen Miller went to Duke.
3
What is conservative about denying science, and seeking to obliterate the safety net?
What is conservative about taxing the wealthiest among us at lower rates than salaried workers?
What is conservative about blatant racism?
We don’t see a lot of conservatives in the top universities because they haven’t done the work to earn their place.
What trump voters really need is a break from Fox News and a civics lesson
Government is much smaller today than it was in the 1970’s..it is too small, it is so small that there is no money for healthcare, education or infrastructure because we have had 40 years of tax breaks for the wealthy
Yet these people just want more...that is not conservative - it is psychopathic.
2
I'd recommend this essay, from August. http://batten.virginia.edu/school/news/listening-tour-through-trump-terr... And _Hillbilly Elegy_ is being read this semester at this school at the University of Virginia.
The late Robert Nisbet, a self-described conservative, published The Degradation of the Academic Dogma in 1971. It was a defense of scholarship, not “intellectuals.” The contemporary world of higher education, including, perhaps especially, its conservative variants, overwhelmingly defends “the intellectual,” as distinct from scholarship. The degradation sometimes seems almost complete.
One wonders if conservatives who oppose affirmative action for say African Americans would oppose affirmative action for conservatives. Me thinks not...
Are working class whites a disenfranchised minority? Should universities create affirmative action programs to attract more children from these families? Examining the meteoric rise of Donald Trump provides some answers these questions.
Trump's support among working class whites reveals the same type of visceral, unquestioning racial unity displayed among African-Americans for icons like Martin Luther King. Despite allegations of MLK's academic plagiarism and marital infidelities, Dr. King has continued to be revered in the black community.
In the same way, despite Trump's obvious character flaws, he has become the face of white disenfranchisement. This fierce, tribal loyalty among lower class whites was created by their widespread frustration with our current system. Ironically, the income inequality and lack of opportunities that plague working class whites were created by Republican policies. The answer, however, is not to shun working class whites and call them stupid. We need to help educate them.
For the sake of justice and national unity, it may behoove universities to acknowledge that working class whites are a disadvantaged group in need of a path out of the pathologies of poverty and ignorance.
1
And ...educators have been wondering aloud if there should be “affirmative action” for conservative professors, .. . They often conclude that outright preferences are a bad idea but that creating an extra position ... would probably up the odds of adding a Republican to the lineup."
1. " outright preferences are a bad idea"--bad for bringing in conservative profs, but good for bringing in certain peferred races?
2. "but that creating an extra position"..."would probably up the odds of adding a Republicam to the line-up" --So, colleges can't add that extra student seat to "up the odds" for Asian applicants, but they can for bringing in a conservative prof. In other words, they are willing to cause the Asian applicant to take the brunt of affirmative action racial preferences, but they are not willing, as professors, to take it themselves?
I’ve read some bone-headed columns, but this one sets a new low for shoddy thinking.
Bruni seems to think that colleges and universities are ALL liberal-minded and that, as a result, all STUDENTS are liberal-minded. In fact, college campuses have always been places where students clash over ideas. In graduate school at the University of Wisconsin back in the day, black students and anti-war activists were countered by conservative students who supported the Vietnam War and despised the notion of separate curricula and buildings for one race.
And like others commenting here, I doubt there is a distinct “ conservative” curriculum that one could argue must be taught to round out a student’s education. Nor is there a unique curriculum for students from rural schools or red states like Alabama. There are subjects undergirded by centuries of scholarly research and writing that are accessible to all learners. The point is learning, not affirming prejudices and uninformed opinions.
Geez!
1
Opinions are not like ethnic, racial or gender. We do not have to 'equalize' those who are in full denial of reality with those who hold beliefs supported by evidence and reason. Trump supporters may or may not be missing front teeth, but they are missing intelligence and conscience. Trump and his supporters are trying to destroy higher education because an educated populace would never give them any power. We must not aid their wrongful cause.
1
Should universities make a point of accommodating people who reject climate science and evolutionary biology?
Most of the comments here (conservatives can't/don't think, conservatives are irrational, conservatives are anti-intellectual) prove Mr. Bruni's point exactly.
2
A thought-provoking piece that invites many questions: What about the business departments which have a profoundly conservative slant, especially with respect to free-market advocacy or libertarianism. Will they be integrated as well? Will the economics departments be required to reach out to Marxist economists or the business schools to those with a more socially democratic orientation? Should these be required to offer courses on the labor movement or the evolution of the regulatory state? Will the service academies hire professors of peace studies or something similar?
Another week, another Frank Bruni piece bemoaning how mean liberal colleges just won't give conservatives a fair shake. Clearly, conservatives need more affirmative action. They only dominate every branch of our government at both the state and federal levels, almost exclusively staff the executive offices of large corporations, run think tanks and foundations with an order of magnitude more funding than their liberal counterparts, and have essentially taken over white Christianity throughout most of the nation. They only have an entire parallel media into which they have siloed the majority of their fellow-travelers, so that they may never hear a contrary thought or opinion. They only control the engineering and business colleges at nearly every college, which between them constitute a substantial plurality of all post-secondary students. Obviously we need to bend over backwards to help right wing fanatics inject their ideas into the last few redoubts that have not yet been thoroughly penetrated already.
How about an essay about how unions need to elect more conservative leaders who don't believe in the right of workers to form a union? Or how the Sierra Club needs to appoint conservative board members to advocate for more coal mining on national lands? This essay is no less ridiculous.
443
Agreed. Mr. Bruni, a competent writer, cries his crocodile tears over his claim that "Too many schools are flunking that assignment." This is patent nonsense, as GMB has noted. Education is the pursuit of truth, something the conservative right is not particularly known for - see Fox News.
You'll find that Engineering faculties are right wing only relative to certain Arts and Science departments where they still debate the merits of Marxism. True, the occasional conservative is not ostracized and made to feel unwelcome as he would likely be in a history or sociology department. But relative to the voting public, Engineering faculties are still solidly left of center. I have not met an Engineering professor who would defend Trump. I teach as an adjunct at a mid-west University Engineering faculty.
So very many great responses to this Frank Bruni mantra, but this one is the best!! Conservative ideology, philosphy and history ARE explored in courses at every first class university. They are not necessarily advocated. There is probably a right that they may be advocated, but there is no requirement that they must be. In fact, they are advocated, by student groups and outside groups. Conservative voices ARE given their due. Affirmative action for privlieged power -- indeed! What more can they actually control that they don't already.
With all the fulminations about colleges and universities having become bastions of liberal intellectual homogeneity that has, so we're told, made life on these campuses so trying for conservatives, I'm surprised there've been no examinations in the media of what white Southern colleges and universities were like during the Jim Crow era--when all of the state-supported schools and most of the private ones adhered to a rigid, politically-enforced racist regime of instruction and a complete exclusion of people of African descent. I'm sure such a study would clarify what "being in a bubble," intellectually speaking and otherwise, really means.
233
Good points. There are a number of exceptions tho - two right off the bat - Rollins College in Orlando, FL and the nearly 200-yr-old Maryville College in East Tennessee - which has admitted both women and blacks since its inception.
Good points. One would find a number of noteworthy exceptions. Right off the bat - Maryville College in East Tennessee. 200-years old and has accepted both blacks - and women - since day one.
My poli-sci prof in Texas was to the right of Nixon. He despised liberals; he was vicious, almost foaming at the mouth. Scary man.
Assuming that colleges are there to teach critical thinking and reasoning, a diversity of ideas is necessary.'For them to be useful, these ideas should be supported by facts and shared openly and fairly.When it comes for facts, it is hard to have a discussion about creationism, denial of climate change or conspiracy theories.Equally ,tolerance of "trigger"and the need for safe places must be eliminated.Men and women old enough to vote and enlist need to be able to tolerate diverse ideas, examine the supporting data and come to their own conclusions.
When I entered college nearly 40 years ago (a selective liberal arts school) there were students on my floor(and elsewhere on campus) who went home for the weekend to help bring in the crops. One of my favorite professors over my 4 years was extremely conservative (the total opposite of me). Where are they now? The students went into careers like medicine -- not likely to still be living a rural life. Last year my favorite professor signed a conservatives against Trump petition. What's keeping Trumpism away from campus? When science is "debated" by tweet and historical facts ignored, it's evidence that there's nothing wrong with the campus , rather Trumpism doesn't want to be a part of the campus.
2
This opinion is the kind of intellectually lazy analysis that is more politically correct than what it purports to criticize. The basic claim that diversity is good and that conservative viewpoints are underrepresented is a statement of faith or value. It is not based on an analysis of ideas or any specific claim made. For example, some conservatives believe that evolution is just a theory and therefore creationism should be given serious consideration. Virtually any academic understands that most important ideas are theories but what distinguishes them are the evidence that can be provided in their defense. The job of academia is not to present all ideas as equal or to make sure that they are presented in proportion to their popularity. It is to critically exam the evidence as it bears on a give idea or theory.
A month ago, a man with whom I am acquainted told me that he was unsure as to whether his grandson should attend community college because of all of the communist professors. This is a man who once told me that he thought Obama was not a good President for "his" people and that he would declare martial law before leaving office. As a second generation academic, I simply responded that community colleges were pretty focused on teachings students basic skills and I didn't think that he had so much to be worried about. Whatever his grandson's politics, I hope he gets a chance at a college education if he wants one. This is the common attitude in academia.
3
I am a professor at a state university and, while completing my doctorate, I taught at a range of public and private institutions. I do not recognize the cosseted students who are mentioned in this op-ed or other articles. My students have included military veterans, police officers, single mothers, first-generation learners, people from high-needs schools, immigrants and conservatives. I, and most of the other professors I have worked with, strive to create inclusive classrooms.
I will note that learning is like exercise. If you are comfortable, you are not learning. I will not tailor facts to make them fit a student's viewpoint or to make anyone feel more comfortable.
5
Aspie - spot on. The whole belief, religious in a sense, that Universities are filled with a certain type of student is nothing but a Right Wing propaganda meme. Its another of their lies, meant to put liberals, and academics, progressives, and generic everyday people on the defense. Forcing them to have to always punch their way out of the corners.
I agree that it’s possible for a brilliant and well educated person to support Trump. But I don’t see how it’s possible for someone with good moral judgment to support him.
In the sixties, psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg theorized six stages of moral development. Most people pass through stages one (fear of punishment) and two (what’s in it for me) as children. They then advance, as teenagers and adults, to stage three (wanting to be a good person) and four (wanting to promote law and order). In stages five and six, people switch their allegiance from laws and social norms to higher moral principles.
Trump obviously has the moral development of a child, so it’s not surprising that his strongest supporters also seem to be morally challenged. Steven Mnuchin, for example, graduated from Yale and was CIO of Goldman Sachs before becoming Treasury Secretary, but he’s lied about tax policy and shown a willingness to exploit his position for personal gain.
I suspect that colleges and universities don’t just look at academic credentials when recruiting new faculty. They also look at moral development. Perhaps that’s why we see so few Trump-supporting professors.
3
For most people, the more educated they become, the more liberal they become. This is why universities may seem to be out of touch, elitist bastions of anti-conservatism to the GOP base. While sometimes universities can and do go too far in the name of "political correctness," and they should be called out when they do, the fact is, most smart, educated people reject conservatism because they know better. Also, Michael Roth of Wesleyan University, not all veterans or "military officials" are conservatives; it's presumptions like this that make it difficult for veterans like me to transition to the civilian sector: discriminated against because people think they know who we are (strict, hierarchical, structure-dependent, etc.) and won't give us a chance; resistance to change coupled with confirmation bias; companies that think every veteran wants to work in "security" even though they may be experts in logistics, planning, public affairs or any other number of disciplines that have direct relevance and value in the private sector.
6
I am a staff member at a university that I would still consider "conservative" but that has also made it a big priority to be inclusive and a safe space to share all ideas. And I still worry that the definition of inclusive is skewed toward a progressive mindset and that those with "opposing" (pro-Trump/conservative) do not feel included in the inclusiveness.
2
The Trump Administration is asking college officials "whether their schools had intensified efforts to recruit students from rural areas."
The Trump Administration should be asking itself whether it's plan for tax cuts will help people from rural areas. That's a rhetorical question. We know it will not help many rural residents.
Those in the first tax bracket, which will be broader, will see their tax rate increased from 10% to 12%. Such individuals and families that itemize deductions will lose because the Trump plan eliminates the personal exemption ($4,050 per person). And, even those families who take the standard deduction will likely pay more taxes because the proposed bigger standard deduction of $24,000 with a 12% tax rate will collect more taxes than the current $12,700 standard deduction, plus the $4,050 exemption per person with a 10% tax rate.
Republicans claim their Child Tax Credit will be higher and will more than make up the difference. That remains to be seen, but it will have to be significantly higher just to make up the difference. That won't help individuals. Republicans have already stated their increase in the Child Tax Credit will be non-refundable, which won't help working families whose incomes are too low to pay federal income taxes. Half the families in W. VA pay no income tax - they will not helped.
The Trump plan fails its rural test. Fox News won't crow about that - only about the $2 trillion cuts to Medicaid and Medicare.
7
Thank you, Mr. Bruni, for this thought provoking piece. My take on this issue is that the more educated you are, the more understanding you are and the more your culture-of-origin point of view is under scrutiny. You no longer see the world through the lens you were brought up with or through any single lens. You're able to step back from your own thoughts and ideas and filter them through several lenses. Once you can look at your thoughts as opposed to only looking through them, you've achieved a kind of freedom that allows you to see that truth can be determined through a variety of viewpoints and then you can consciously choose the one that seems most reasonable. Surely this ability would not lead you to embrace bigotry, policies that prevent millions of people from accessing health care, policies and rhetoric that lead to unending wars, policies that give the one percent tax cuts at the expense of the 99 percent. So if college populations are more liberal than those of surrounding towns, doesn't this say something about the effect of being exposed not only to a wide range of ideas and philosophies but also to people from a broad range of cultures. Therefore it is imperative that colleges reach out to people who might not even apply for admission, people from small towns in rural America or wherever people live who are stuck in worldviews that enslave them.
9
Yeah, as if things are bad enough already, let's bring ignorant stupid intolerant people into our universities to teach our students. Brilliant.
25
Frank---big fan, but you are starting to sound like the incomprehensible Ross Douthat---the idea that a school needs to teach a course in "the underpinnings of free enterprise" seem a little nutty when that is the only thing that every business school in the country teaches--since when does the business of business feel underserved in the academic world?---think your columns are terrific, as are your appearances on CNN, but come on---
20
62 million people voted for Trump because, as they said, "He's just like me". Now we have to have affirmative action for traitors, racists, hatemongers and the criminally insane?
20
This is how liberals brain works: 1+1 = 2 (always)
This is how conservatives brain works: 1+1 = can be anything under the sun, depending on the time of the day, day of the week, their breakfast, temperature, humidity, etc.
Good luck with conservative brains on campus!
15
Wow, it is astounding to read that according to pew research a majority of republicans and conservatives think that colleges are a detriment. Would they prefer the populace remains ignorant? So we can continue electing morons like Trump?
16
I usually agree with Frank Bruni. This may be the worst column I've ever read by him. So much wrong with it, I wouldn't know where to begin. I wish op-ed columnists would stop trying to force a semblance of sanity and planning on that which is inherently insane and chaotic.
11
College priorities should all center around promoting the process of thought and reason. Thought and reason that eventually manage to reach carefully constructed consensus. Consensus that ultimately provides direction and understanding that not all situations are the same and that there is usually more than one way to accomplish goals. That not all goals are going to be the best approach for everyone. In other words they should be helping their students to grow up. To recognize that compromise is a necessity of group life. To recognize that labels such as conservative and liberal when used in the extreme are road blocks to growth, understanding and reason.
9
Including a "conservative" criterion into college search and/or admission criterion does not redress political bias, it introduces bias into a process previously devoid of any but the most accidental forms of bias. (For example, accidental revelation of applicant traits like espousal of creationism or strong pro Life positions might trigger bias among a gatekeeper.) In general the large preponderance of liberal faculty arises from a correlation between liberal inclinations and scientific and scholarly values of rational empiricism.
Studies show (any regional variations aside) that some exceptions arises among business school faculty The liberal leaning, though attenuated among college economists, persists among college economists. For what it's worth physical education folk tend to be republican.
10
As a liberal, I am appalled that conservative philosophy is not well taught: any survey of American history or politics would be risibly deficient without such. So if the curriculum is skewed in that teaching, then the error needs correcting.
But the politics of, say, STEM lectures are irrelevant to their work, and there is a difference between the study and teaching of a subject and its development and advancement: you can teach twentieth century Russian history without being a communist, you can teach Math while counting the days to the rapture.
The whole idea that the politics of university staff should reflect that of the nation is political correctness, thrust upon the universities by conservative spin, they enjoy the irony.
8
The question perhaps needs to be asked: is the purpose of universities to maintain ideological balance or is it to provide education to create critical minds? Is it not likely that if there is an "ideological uniformity of many colleges, where the left holds bold and sometimes imperious sway", that it says more about how higher education effects minds than it does about any bias in student admissions? Is it not possible that meeting a diversity of fellow students and learning to think for oneself leads to open minds and a more liberal attitude?
One last question: Why is it that it always the liberal, the left-leaning that need to search their souls? It seems to me that advice could well be applied at the other end of the political spectrum.
27
Why exclude Liberty University, Oral Roberts University and other conservative colleges from this rant? This is the essence of the double standard: Hold some accountable while excusing or turning a blind eye to others.
The goal of higher education should be to prepare students to be good citizens in our democracy. This means living in the world that is but striving to change it for the better. This requires openness to new ideas, nurturing the ability to discern appeals to emotions and biases rather than fact-based and logical arguments, providing facts, teaching people how to apply what they learn etc. and it does mean listening to ifferent ideas and ways of looking at things.
The goal is best achieved by having teachers whose bias is towards facts and logic without regard to political leanings.
And sorry, openness to new ideas and ways of thinking doesn’t require that you force students to listen to performance artists like Milo Yannoupolis, Anne Coulter, Richard Spencer or anyone else hiding bigotry and anti-democratic fantasies behind the cloak of academic freedom.
40
I strongly agree with you.
"And sorry, openness to new ideas and ways of thinking doesn’t require that you force students to listen to performance artists like Milo Yannoupolis, Anne Coulter, Richard Spencer or anyone else hiding bigotry and anti-democratic fantasies behind the cloak of academic freedom."
That says it all. The requirement of facts and logic is essential to free-speech otherwise it's just propaganda.
2
Well said.
1
I don't recall those universities from preventing anyone to speech on their campus.
When I went to college, if some individual or group wanted to speak on campus and we didn't want to hear the speech, we didn't go. We didn't protest, we just didn't attend.
I'm not sure why the leftists think they have to shout down speech they don't agree with. It certainty not a positive in a democracy. They in really the NAZI's by shutting down speech.
Oh, I know that as a supporter of DT, that I have no right to speak because I'm an old uneducated deplorable white man that lives in a trailer park BUT I do get to vote!
1
Increasing the exchange and vigor of ideas among college students is a decidedly good idea, and if it means actively recruiting politically conservative high school students, especially from rural areas, I'm all for it. But overtly recruiting faculty members based on their political leanings--on whether they're Republican or Democrat--is a truly misguided idea that will destroy higher education.
One thing is clear: Establishing additional faculty lines in military history would probably get more Republican faculty on campus, but it won't change the dynamics of college debates. Instead, it will increase the ghettoization of campus conservatives, who will always form the bulk of the students who choose to study military history.
What's needed is to break up the current leftist lock on the humanities. Always approaching Jane Austen or Wordsworth or the French Revolution or whatever through the lenses of French literary theory or gender studies has run its course. College humanities courses need to balance this with professors who teach the commentary of such thinkers as Tony Tanner, Paul Fry and Edmund Burke. Colleges don't need more Republicans so much as they need to teach more conservative thought.
There are plenty of conservative scholars in the humanities, but hiring them will require college administrations heavily pressure their humanities departments to widen their pool of applicants.
7
The only problem with this is that current conservative thought tends to be in favor of the wealthy and to disparage those who are not and encourages the refusal to help those less fortunate (i.e. no health care for the poor) which combined with the evangelical belief system that agrees with this viewpoint seems to be a recipe for intellectual disaster.
I shudder to imagine the conservative commentary on Jane Eyre versus Gone With The Wind.
1
Diversity in thought in colleges is a swell idea. Does that concept apply equally to evangelical and conservative schools as well? Will they be reaching out to recruit liberals to their staffs and student bodies? If not, then the actions described in Bruni's column are not so much an enlightenment as a capitulation.
36
The assumption here that “the left” holds “imperious sway” over higher education is ridiculous. Do college faculty tend to vote for Democrats? Sure. But that’s largely because Republicans with comparable credentials prefer the better pay offered in the private sector to a life of public service. As institutions, colleges are largely preoccupied with raising money, whether from wealthy donors, state legislatures, or in the form of research grants and avoiding controversies that might interfere with raising money. Might a student at some point encounter a Marxist professor? Yes again. Because some very good minds find a lot of explanatory power in Marx’s critique of capitalism. But most of their faculty will be apolitical or tepid liberals and moderates concerned mainly with their small corner of their discipline. That there is a window in life in which people are briefly exposed to ideas that are prohibited in most other realms is what conservatives are really upset about and what administrators are now being asked to cater to.
19
Struggling to understand who this supporter is - a conundrum. I'm 71 and belong to several womens' groups. In our Crafts meetings which I especially love on Monday mornings, coffee, knitting, needlework and warm and wonderful bunch of women gather. I cannot think of anywhere I'd rather be while there. The quietest loveliest woman, spinning away, often sharing family stories or giving hints and how tos, is a solid Trumpster. So far, we tiptoe around her and haven't dared to ask WHY? HOW? I even recently apologized to her in case I (before knowing) had offended her, I hate him so.
9
The reason colleges and universities tend to have little representation of Trumpism and the current GOP is simple: willful ignorance and rejection of any and all objective data leading to an absence of critical thinking. Demagoguery and academic discourse are oil and water.
27
Bruni falls prey to the most pernicious stereotypes in this weirdly one-sided column. He equates "rural" students and military personnel with "conservative" views. He extrapolates a few random examples to all of higher education. He completely ignores the vast diversity of the collegiate enterprise today, in which nearly half of all college students are working adults, many are parents, most do not live on campus. He ignores the rising numbers of black and Hispanic students and low income students who populate our campuses in greater number than ever before. Most of all, as a matter of mission, he ignores the urgent need that many of us educators feel to do an even better job teaching our students to reject racism and to uphold equality and human dignity for all; to learn how to build peaceful, productive communities that take care of the most vulnerable; to know how to be good advocates for the marginalized and how to speak truth to power. This is not about "liberal" or "conservative" ideologies but rather about the values that a well-functioning democracy must have in its citizen leaders. The story of American Higher Education's responsibility to the nation today is far more nuanced and complicated than Bruni's column depicts. Journalists like Bruni need to spend some time on the campuses of a truly wide-ranging mix of colleges and universities before swinging a broad brush laden with random factoids from unscientific surveys.
23
Yes, "This is not about liberal or conservative ideologies but rather about the values that a well-functioning democracy must have in its citizen leaders." However, there is a problem if the affirmative action policies of elite institutions insist that the only people of lower income status that deserve a spot in their colleges must also be people of color. Having just graduated from Columbia, I can say that the result of this policy is simple: It maintains the white student population (about 40% of the student body) as an overwhelmingly upper-middle class to wealthy demographic, often coming from very priveleged educational backgrounds (private/preparatory schools). Affirmative action must account for socio-economic status as much as race; otherwise, despite their efforts to diversify, elite institutions will keep their white student populations looking exactly the same as they have for the past hundred years.
4
Speaking of inclusion from the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, the decades long attacks on affirmative action in admissions and university programs like black studies have same from the same conservative quarters bemoaning and now demanding inclusion in these "liberal" bastions. Will there be cases working toward the Supreme Court on these affirmative action programs now emerging?
What a world we have been foisted into! I recall the days when we went to college to learn new skills and peruse new knowledge.
Schools don't flunk. Students do. Too many professors have become prosletyzers instead of teachers. The students need to become sapiential learners again.
Keep it simple, Frank. It's been made too divisively complex.
3
Science and engineering are apolitical. Physics, Geology, Chemistry, Biomechanical or structural engineering etc do not comport themselves to politics or ideology. To suggest that increasing the population of teachers and students whose political / religous beliefs deny these science-based endeavors creates any benefit is patently absurd.
15
On the contrary, the geosciences have been strongly politicized in several areas including 1) climate science, 2) age of the Earth, and 3) the evolution of life.
Colleges are more liberal. They are involved in the facts and how they fit together. Doesn’t seem to describe conservatives these days? Facts? Truth? Not a strong suit for today’s non liberal citizens. You want better representation of conservatives, try Congress and the executive branch. How they doing with the facts?
12
Why put this burden on colleges? When we had a military draft, people got to know all kinds of strangers. They served with and saluted all races. A national service might not be a bad thing.
11
The ideological uniformity that prevails on college campuses is an overrated problem. Colleges may point students toward “the world as it should be,” but life teaches graduates they must cope with the word as it is. It turns liberals into conservatives.
1
Students need to speak up. Actually, it's simple. Just ask, why is that true? After a professor or fellow student makes a statement which seems odd or slanted, just ask why it's accurate. What is the factual basis? They will be hard pressed to explain. Of course, this is in the non STEM arena.
1
It seems that Mr Bruni is saying that a form of affirmative action should be implemented to bring in those who oppose affirmative action.
11
Bowdoin's Yarbrough voted for Trump. Enough said. Whatever her expertise in her field, her judgment is suspect.
7
Bruni completely ignores the intellectual bankruptcy of conservative America as it now exists. William F. Buckley is not coming to speak at a campus near you. modern conservatism is grounded in denial of science and the undermining of consensual fact. Like many moderates, Bruni now seeks compromise with forces of unreason and bigotry. Let's hope academics ignore him.
13
So because Republicans, who now openly despise government and learning, where successfull in taking over government in order to destroy it from the inside, they now have to be actively drawn into colleges, so they can destroy it from within? Why would you want that?
9
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored," Huxley wrote many decades ago. Therein lies the problem with most voters who put this discombobulation in office. Facts have been continually ignored. It's hard for even the finest universities to change this sort of brainwashing.
8
Campus affirmative action programs for conservative and libertarian teaching positions is an idea worth serious consideration, given the seeming fragility of the current student generation.
If we start with the premise that there are maybe a baker's dozen of universities and colleges in the US, then the results will not be worth much, will they?
What prospective college students really need to learn: that the job market for professors has an overabundance on the supply side. A student can find professors of the highest caliber anywhere throughout the higher education system.
This celebrity culture of branding and what not impedes critical thinking about what is happening across the spectrum of higher education.
Why do almost all universities whatever size or brand have international students from around the globe?
My own department, which is at a public research university, like several other economics departments nationwide, has been practicing affirmative action for conservatives for about twenty years.
We receive substantial amounts of money from the Koch brothers and other conservative organizations. That money supports visiting faculty and tenure-track appointments for five years, and there is an implicit but binding requirement that the supported faculty have a "free-market" or libertarian ideology. Those of us not in the libertarian "club" have been content with this situation, as long as the faculty hired with Koch money do quality research and teaching, and are collegial.
It has worked out pretty well, though we have missed at least one chance to hire a professor of national prominence who was conservative but not in the free-market "club." There have been two or three instances where those of us outside the club have successfully resisted hiring ideological activists whose research was of low quality. In these days of budget cuts we certainly can use the financial support.
I think that it would be great, both for education and for our national dialog, if progressives with the resources would emulate the long-run perspective of the Koch brothers, and provide support hiring faculty, with a similarly flexible and implicit-but-firm ideological filter, at mid-range public universities that help shape so many young lives. I'm sure my department would welcome the support.
4
Political litmus tests help render the fabric of our country.
Where is the evidence that conservative thought is lacking in higher education? Bruni notes liberal dominance in the Arts and Humanities, but he could have easily cited the conservative dominance in business, engineering, and medical colleges. Why is there no outcry from more liberal voices in those colleges on university campuses?
6
In discussing contentious issues with conservatives it is not surprising that we agree on almost all of the problems: lack of universal accessibility to affordable health care, overpriced prescription drugs, oligarchs in charge, school quality--you name it. Where we differ is in identifying the root causes and agreeing on solutions to those problems. By focusing on root causes, we seem to make some headway. Perhaps academia could mine this approach and help us all get unstuck.
1
What good could come out of hiring civil or aeronautical engineering faculty which do not believe in the scientific method and empirical data based reasoning?
8
The issue of learning how to think cannot be delayed until the college experience. It must start with an overhaul of American education in order to teach reasoning, history and government. By the time someone reaches college age their understanding of the world is already shaped----or bent. College is just the finishing school of what has already been formed.
5
It would sure help if we got away from the memorization = learning approach and that progress can be shown by standardized testing.
1
Colleges do not need to allow Intolerance inside, but rather get a lot better at showing why they provide something better than Trumpghanistan.
One way is to open up the discussion about "Exactly WHY is the US better than other countries - if it is." Answers you get from one side will be "Better opportunity for more people than anywhere else on the planet." The other side will degenerate into "Because I say so." Yes, we have sides, and everything is part of that divide.
Another question to ask is, "If the other side seizes control and makes life in the US intolerable, where would you go?" I would answer many options: Canada? New Zealand? Pre-Brexit UK? Germany? Ask a Trumpanzee. What could one of them answer? "Uh...Russia? North Korea? Some other place that allows intolerance, ignorance, and guns?" There is nowhere else on the planet they can flee, no place else that wants them.
Now colleges should figure out how to welcome even Trumpanzees inside with a better life than Trump offers. Carefully articulate why and how it is better. Sounds impossible but these colleges are supposed to be filled with such smart people. It's time they prove their smarts in ways that matter.
6
Observers who, like myself, are critical of American-style education in general, will object to many of the author's assumptions. One of these assumption is that top-down actions like course catalog additions and faculty changes are effective ways to change the campus experience. They are not. Another assumption is that college life "forms" or "determines" much of a person's subsequent political and cultural beliefs. Not hardly.
An academy that brings in courses and teachers that are in opposition to it's educational mission, for the appearance of fairness and balance and to appease detractors, has lost it's way and lost it's philosophical underpinnings.
Perhaps when schools start considering their students to be partners in creating an educational setting, rather than kids in need of discipline and "forming", school administrators will start making decisions that support their missions.
8
Colleges and universities hire many professors from among the graduate school population, and graduate school tends to have students who are liberal. Should colleges be competing for the small number of conservative graduate students, or should they lower their standards and not require a graduate school education? I don't think so, and most colleges don’t either.
A different question though is how much is the overall well being of a country and society a measure of the well being of the institutions supporting it, where colleges and universities figure prominently? Organic chemistry doesn't have much political content, other subjects do, but when the predominant political party affiliation at colleges aligns along other fracture lines in our country it suggests that something is lacking in the ability of our colleges to acknowledge and address some possible shortcomings.
Major trends influencing our society appear to be happening in increasingly shorter periods of time, outpacing our ability to recognize and comprehend them. Democrats are experiencing their worst position in about a century, and although the party prides itself on being better educated it hasn't been reflected in their ability to win elections. Even in their own states Democrats tend to be islands of Blue in a sea of Red. Colleges and universities are aligned in the same manner, and it seems to be part of problem. What is their role in the state of the union?
1
Frank Bruni’s thoughts got me wondering why so many of Trump's beloved "poorly educated" seem to have completely lost their sense of wonder at the world. The desire to explore, learn, meet different kinds of people, absorb new ideas, wander through museums, and read, read, read. Have these urges, which are so strong in children, become crushed by tedious menial labor and despair? Do they fear social ostracism if they don’t conform? Do people with very little to look forward to want their own children to (metaphorically) labor in the same dangerous coal mines so they don’t ‘leave’ them, either physically to find a better place in the world, or mentally and spiritually to embrace change?
This has made me hate and fear Betsy DeVos, who wants to tilt the playing field even farther towards the top, even more.
7
This has made me "hate and fear" Betsy De Vos.
How about you just disagree with her views, or --better yet--learn to understand and fairly evaluate her position?
Step One: Get it right.
To which "poorly educated" do you refer? Everyone I know who voted for Trump has at least one advanced degree; many of us have more than one: successful small businessmen; professors, lawyers, doctors, etc.
And if you think they lack a sense of wonder, you have not explained where you ever acquired such a preposterous idea.
And Betsy De Vos supports alternative school choice [charters] for the thousands upon thousands of families on waiting lists to escape their childrens' failing public schools. How on earth can you imagine for one moment that offering better educational opportunities is equivalent to"laboring in the same dangerous coal mines?
May I respectfully suggest that you and other Democrats who have been stoked to emotional rage over every issue try to allow quiet reason to take its place?
Among white voters, the single best predictor of voting choice was education level. The higher the level of education, the less likely the voter chose Trump. Your circle of friends is not representative of typical Trump voters.
1
So....people who work to exclude others (gays, immigrants, etc), want themselves to be more included in higher education?
People who want to defund schools for children, want themselves to be included in higher education?
People who suppress others' voices, and distrust science, facts, evidence and logic, want to be included in substantive debates and conversation?
It is not a mystery why closed-minded people find themselves to be a minority in higher ed.--education is about inquiry and being open to new ideas and to learning new things.
It's not about putting up walls and pining for days of yore.
26
very well said ... thank you
Diversity of political views on campus is large independent of Trump. Remember that conservative & Republican intellectuals were opponent and critics of Trump, and he does not represent a coherent ideology, but has built support on lies, dissatisfaction, hate, and greed. The lesson for academia is it has failed to create a society of critical thinkers. And also remember most voters feel constrained to vote for one of just two choices. Trump's victory was more about dislike for Clinton than it was people liking Trump.
More generally it should not be the goal of the university to *persuade* people about what "paths" to take -- that would be indoctrination rather than education -- but rather to illuminate "paths", perhaps find new "paths", especially to critique "paths", and teach people how to critically decide for themselves.
And let us note that the majority of military officers disapprove of Trump.
4
The University of Michigan is sometimes referred to here as "6 square miles surrounded by reality", as if the University itself is a crazy liberal ivory tower enclave separated from the rest of the world. The University has been the defendant in some high profile reverse discrimination lawsuits, but lost in the conservative outrage that they care about minority students as part of their mission, was the fact that their "diversity" admissions actually gave points to students who applied from the Upper Peninsula--not likely to be black.
I had a close friend from the Upper Peninsula as an undergraduate at Michigan State University back in the 70s, and I can speak from experience that she provided about as much "diversity" as an admissions officer could want. So not all universities have had this liberal, urban bias that is so talked about. Some of our institutions have been doing this type of diversity admissions for a long time.
4
You want conservatives on campus? Try the business schools. You want conservative ideas taught? Look into lots of history of philosophy courses, where a hearing is given to classical liberalism--today's ultra conservative thought--and sometimes to anarchist views. You want conservative contemporary arguments by professors, read contractarian ethics, starting with Robert Nozick. Where there is an anti-analytical, left-politicized fragment of the professoriat you will find it chiefly in departments of English and Modern Languages and the various political group specific departments of African American Studies, Chicano Studies, Women's Studies and such. By and large at American universities the political views of the Arts and Sciences faculty lean moderately left, but the curriculum is all over the place. Recruiting students for their conservative political, religious and anti-scientific views (which go together) might be a good idea in this respect: some of them will get educated. But it might be tough on the conscience to tell a hard studying, smart, politically indifferent kid that she did not win a place because there was an applicant who was, all things considered, stupider than she is.
10
As long as we have 1/3 of Americans who can't locate "America" on a world map- we are pretty much doomed. We have a very ill informed and apathetic society on our hands. A large percentage [if not all] of our altruism is grounded in religion, not good nature. The point being- people who are kind in this country also believe in Noah's Ark- and that's almost as bad as not being able to locate America on a map.
3
I don't believe that colleges and universities have a litmus test to find liberal students and reject conservative ones. Colleges are developing strategies to find first generation and able but poor students in their admissions processes that might not otherwise apply. Some are even doing away with legacy points and meeting 100% of need (about time).
Maybe the answer to the problem with colleges lies in the problems of dumbing down high school education. The bulk of our students do more and more poorly in international assessments as they progress through school. Rural areas remain among the least educated.
2
This is an odd column. If many American universities have become strongly left-leaning, to the extent that conservative thought is ignored or disparaged, some balance should be sought. Education cannot be ideologically exclusive. But to tie that into the electoral success of Donald Trump seems tangential at best. First, the current Republican party isn't exactly standing on solid ground in terms of supportable conservative philosophy - they've pretty much abandoned fealty to any principle other than reducing taxes for the wealthy. And second, Donald Trump is conservative in the same sense as Jack the Ripper was British - it may be true but it's irrelevant to the impact of the individual. Trump's appeal and actions have almost nothing to do with conservative philosophy.
6
Thoughtful editorial, and one of the few times I agree with Mr. Bruni. Interesting that the comments disproportionately object, taking the position that there is no need for "narrow conservative thought" on liberal open-minded campuses.
1
Conservatives are underrepresented on faculties because their ideas cannot withstand real scrutiny–fact based, peer reviewed. That is why conservatives own the airwaves because it is opinion based; liberals own universities because they begin with skepticism and experiment until the truth about a topic is discovered. Conservatives, today's anyway, are anti-reality no matter the issue: economics, public health and safety, history, the sciences.
10
Why is there the assumption that Trump has anything to do with conservatism? Writing as someone who retired in 2009 after more than forty years of college teaching, I am appalled at all the college administrators getting the vapors over insufficiently recruiting so-called conservative students and professors. As far as students are concerned, administrators generally look for geographical diversity and this should cover rural students. This can be a problem because rural school systems often pay little attention to offering demanding curricula. Whose fault is that? As for professors, it strikes me that there is in fact little evidence that a hot-shot academic will not be hired because of a tendency to vote Republican. For rural students and conservative professors to plead for special consideration, to be protected categories, is both ironic and absurd.
7
My problem with this commentary is that it tends to consider Trumpism and conservatism as similar issues in education and politics. Trump actually benefits by suggestions that we should be tolerant of him in the name of being respecting conservative views as a legitimate part of the discussion.
But Trump is about lies, and one lie after another. Lies about political opposition, lies about health care, lies about tax cuts, lies about just about everything imaginable, from where our last President was born to the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Accepting Trump on a college campus is to reject the basic principle that facts are the cornerstones of scholarship, even if people from different backgrounds might disagree on their interpretation. You simply cannot reject that principle and remain a student or faculty member at a legitimate institution of higher education. Colleges may accept "conservative" (however that is defined, short of hate speech) students and faculty, and they should, but they can never accept Trump. Senators McCain, Corker and Flake establish this distinction.
At the same time, colleges need to decide how to respond to the threats to speech (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/professors-like-me-cant-stay-sil... and safety (e.g a professor assaulted at Middlebury) that equally challenge what they should be about.
9
As long as the conservatives actually accept facts, and engage in discussion from there, I'm on board. The problem, however, often seems to be stubborn refusal to accept facts. So, I'm not sure how to handle this.
5
Not a problem, use the alternative fact.
The proper response to the Trump phenomenon is not to increase conservative representatives on college faculties, it is to fire them.
5
To anyone in academia but (most of the time) outside the US, this is baffling. I am a professor of political science at a pretty old and renowned university. Of course I teach political ideas from communism to fascism (and everything in between) in my classes. How else are they supposed to understand the whole development of political thought, the consequences of these thoughts, and then make up their mind? If students leave the class and know my own preference, I would be devastated - I'd clearly have failed at teaching. The idea that you have to be conservative to teach a class on conservative thought is revolting. A professor, a department, a university with an agenda instead of simply the pursuit of truth and knowledge and enlightened minds (as in: more informed after class than before) is on the wrong path, even if its name is Yale.
10
Sun-Tzu (I think): Know yourself. Know your enemy. 100 battles, 100 victories.
They're out there, and not going away. Engagement seems inevitable. Preferably peaceful engagement.
1
The attack on higher education is what is at stake. This is just "religious freedom" trying to get a foothold in universities, instead of being confined to Oral Roberts and Liberty University among others. Public education is designed to be open to all and secular, and according to all statistics it is still students in lower economic categories and minorities who are least represented. The "free speech" project by conservatives these days is funded deliberately to attack the open speech and thought in universities, as witnessed by the "free speech essay" competition of Charles Koch and the "Koch Network's Student Protest Ban" that calls itself "Campus Free Speech". This forces hate speakers onto campuses and make campuses the backdrops for hate groups. They are not students but are using campuses as stage sets for outsider invaders, targeting students, costing universities millions in security expenses, and bringing in hate mongers who speak against homosexuality, liberal politics, immigration and minorities. If any tenured professor did this, they would be actually violating free speech.
Students should have a campus dedicated to their education. Professors do not inculcate their political ideas despite what right wing people think. Courses are wide ranging and include different political philosophies, science, art, etc. Trump voters are remarkable in their lack of education. Republicans recently polled for the first time as being against higher education (58%).
8
Civil discussion of competing ideas distinguishes education. In my day that was a "liberal education" before Fox News made "liberal" a profanity in their propaganda. A real difficulty I see is relating current right wingers to classical "conservative" ideas. Delusional is not the same as conservative.
6
Extremes and lack of reasonable discourse in the public square is not related to a lack of conservative students in colleges. It's related to Rush Limbaughs, Bill O'Reillys, Mercers, Koches, Trumps, etc.
There are people who want discord. They want strife.
Sops to the people who have been brainwashed via propaganda from individuals who want to create a single party nation may help. But the irony of higher education is that it tends to create more liberal people because that is a result of better education. So sure bring in conservative students and watch the magic of education turn them into liberals. But that does not stop the people who want to destroy our political culture, our tradition of competition in politics, our tradition of different ideas debating in the public square.
Remove the dark money which seeks to turn the U.S. into the U.S.S.A. That will allow for a nation that can be liberal and conservative and respectful of each other.
4
so now we formalize the very same political divisions into universities?
2
I get so tired of people like Frank repeating the nonsense that the "left" dominates universities. If teaching students the basics of a "liberal" education - learning to critically examine received truth and think for themselves - makes us "left" then I'm certainly guilty as charged. I have no doubt that there are some professors who try to indoctrinate students with their point of view - but most of the ones I know personally happen to be mainstream economists or finance experts. Has it really come to this - that questioning authority makes us "left? If so I fear the American higher education system is doomed.
6
Mr. Bruni conflates separate issues. 1. Colleges admitting more from impoverished white areas. This is great, however live in one of these areas and the level of ignorance and intolerance is staggering. those most in need are not the ones that would go to college. offering civics and teaching civility in middel school would be a better approach. 2. Trump is not conservative and that Mr. Bruni normalized him scares the begeebers out of me. 3. Conservative thinking should be a part of any social curriculum however only if it can be backed up with facts and valid research; not with feelings or faith that Gods wants it therefore you should believe in that which you cannot see.
3
I had to laugh at Yale being considered progressive. Parts of it are certainly more interested in perpetuating privilege than social change, including at the worst the privilege of male harassers, of which the university seems to have more than its share.
6
Mr. Bruni, why not leave Manhattan, turn TV off, and take a tour of colleges, especially ones (junior colleges, 2nd/3rd tier state schools, religious ones) out of the limelight. I've taught for thirty years at a state university in the Southeast (yes, Southeast). This outcry about colleges being dens of far left group think is nonsense. The press is drawn to the loudest students at a few institutions, often elite schools. In addition, much leftwing activism comes from the humanities (which I belong to), regrettably a tiny part of most students' experience. At most colleges --- and in many parts of the most liberal colleges --- students do their work in business, engineering, nursing, psychology etc. (usually while holding down jobs) with surprisingly little engagement in the issues of the day (that's a real problem!). US business schools seldom have affirmative action programs for Marxists or radical economists, and computer science majors are not being brainwashed in the latest leftwing fad. Besides, many "leftists" take our professional responsibility seriously to challenge students to consider viewpoints different from theirs, whatever their starting point. If identity politics (sexuality, race, gender) loom large, it's partly because 19 and 20 year olds are "growing up" and shaping their own identities in a global, changing world. Your column only bolsters Trump/Fox News' caricature of the USA and attack on learning. If it were accurate, Trump and the GOP would not rule.
3
The Achilles Heel of liberalism is that respect for diverse opinions is the Trojan Horse (to mix metaphors) by which Trumpism will infect academia. Bowdoin's Jean Yarbrough, a political science professor and Trump voter, says that her fellow faculty members view 2016 as "an illegitimate election, so they're not worried about their being out of touch with America." There are now two Americas, and I assume she's referring to the "red" one. But here's the thing--it's no longer about the election. Since Hillary Clinton was such an unsavory candidate (full disclosure: I voted for Bernie), Yarbrough can be forgiven for mistakenly believing that Trump would make a better president. But if she STILL supports Trump after seeing him in action for nine months in the Oval Office (note the warnings of Senators Corker and Flake), then there is something profoundly wrong with her. She has obviously been so deeply wounded in some intellectual, emotional or spiritual way that she can no longer think straight.
It's a pity, and part of liberalism's Greek tragedy, that she is still in a position to mold young minds.
2
Any good liberal should welcome sincere conservatives to their university, the problem is with the "sincere" part. Conservatives have spent so much time and effort trying to make their hard free market ideology palatable to a sceptical public with rhetoric, disingenuous arguments, misdirection, and simple lying that they have confused the "game" with the principles they were once intent on advocating. It is thus fascinating to read of the guileless efforts by liberal arts colleges to attract free market advocates just at the time the "Trump voter" has arisen to express their contempt for for it and the establishment can barely get up to mouth 40 year old platitudes.
I thought the purpose of attending college was to learn? If your knowledge and worldview are already fixed in stone at college-entry age and are so fragile that they must be pandered to, why bother with college? You already think you know it all, so make room for someone who can benefit from the experience. Trump University is more your speed.
1
I love your columns Frank but colleges fail when they graduate students with no critical thinking skills. Those who possess years of higher education and still cannot process they've been duped by a conman with a long, well established and well documented history of business failures, bankruptcies, and outright fraud, are the ones who failed this country.
3
Mr. Bruni, this column is simply maddening, and yet another indication that the country is being lost to extreme right wing ideologues. And I say that as 1) one who earned an engineering degree from a top ranked technical institute, hardly anyone's idea of a liberal bastion, and an MBA, and 2) someone who, at times in the (admittedly) distant past voted for Republican candidates. But, as other commenters have so eloquently expressed, virtually every university offers courses in history, political science, comparative religion, pure and applied sciences, art and literature - all neither liberal nor conservative. As with Bruce Rozenblit, when I was an undergrad I saw almost no signs of the political inclinations of my professors, outside one clearly progressive-minded sociology prof. While most NYT readers no doubt abhor the efforts on the part of some students on some campuses (still a small number as far as I can tell) to shut down talks by conservative speakers, and fully support free speech in order to stimulate young minds, I expect that most of us also recognize nonsense when we see it. As is proven beyond any doubt more every day, facts have a distinct liberal bias.
That said, maybe the ideal "fair and balanced" curriculum would include, what - creationism, "scientific" evidence against climate change, hate as a political strategy, tax cuts as a spur to productivity, the subtle benefits of white supremacy, automatic weapon safety? That's sure to hunt on the right.
1
In what other sector of employment are the private political leanings of employees considered fair game for job performance evaluations? Perhaps we should we develop political litmus tests for financial industries, pharmaceuticals or dare say military leaders? Perhaps we need affirmative action to make sure our military leaders are politically diverse? If college graduates leave their universities more open-minded - well that's the goal and not a political agenda.
8
Decades ago I was an undergraduate in political science at a large state university which had been the recipient of an en masse flight of "communist" professors of political science and economics from an elite institution where they had apparently felt unwelcome. At the time I was a young liberal person with some decidedly conservative ideas on economics. I found myself welcomed by these professors in the mostly small discussion based classes. I mentioned this to one of them at the time and he said, in a genuine way, that he was glad to have me. He said, "If you hadn't been here I would have had to make you up". It was such an opportunity to learn in an atmosphere of the genuine exchange of ideas. I fear that this is an uncommon opportunity today and a great loss for the development of the real goal of a college education: the promotion of critical thinking.
8
I attended what could be easily described as an inner city, working class college in the 60’s. I do not recall the labels that are so prominent today ( right, left, liberal, conservative) identifying me. I do recall that I was challenged to think, not to merely react.
That I believe will lead to “inclusive discourse” on our campuses, not the artificial placement of department chairs or programs, that I suspect are being created to protect the flow of Federal money to those campuses.
9