First, faculty attitudes themselves: The most systematic research shows that a majority are moderate liberals, that leftists are a very small minority. See reporting on Gross & Simmons here and here (showing faculty centrism, rejection of political influence over hiring across the political spectrum, and the anti-"PC" views of a majority of faculty "stars"). These studies were conducted by investigators who went out of their way to find evidence of radicalism and PC views. They found moderation, professionalism, and increasing conservatism as one rises in status and influence. (I also work through studies endorsed by David Horowitz and others in a late chapter and appendix of Unmaking the Public University.) This and similar research has been around for years. It shows a relatively small number of self-identified conservatives on faculties, and moderates outnumbering liberals. It does not show a professoriate that is unrepresentative of the electorate when you poll electoral views on particular issues. I don't know party registration of UC faculty, but since Republican registration in CA is now at 28% , it's at least possible that UC is more Republican than the state of California.
Second, there's the question of whether party affiliation or inferred ideological commitments affect professional performance in either instruction or research. One of the insights of the "human sciences" over the past fifty years involves the ways that personal identity and social positioning affect perception and the structuring of knowledge itself. So for human beings the answer for *indirect* influence of outlook on behavior including professional behavior is always yes. This is one reason why professions exist, along with their cumbersome methodologies that are difficult for outsiders to understand or appreciate--protocols of various kinds are put in place to manage perceptions, insure regularity, create reproducibility, etc.
The most important examples are not in the humanities but in clinical testing, where human subjects are in life-or-death situations. There, "double blind" protocols among many other safeguards are put in place to control for the effects of human intention. Something similar happens in non- academic professions like policing. It would be wrong to assume that the party affiliation of police officers controls their professional conduct. You can read on this blog a criticism of what I regard as the overpolicing of this past year's Deltopia event without finding speculation about officers’ ideological bias or dismissing the existence of their professionalism, which they both have in abundance and which affects their behavior. In the humanities, various forms of peer review make the same kind of effort.
Some non-academics have gotten in the habit of dismissing all of this with a wave of the hand as itself a kind of ideology, but that is because of lack of experience with the reality of these generally unforgiving methodologies, which are never applied in everyday conversation or to media discourse, little of which would survive the kind of tests to which academic publishing and teaching are subject.
In short, there is really no evidence that faculty are unable to subject their own views to professional controls in their research or teaching, and, inflammatory exceptions aside, plenty of evidence that they do exactly this in the classroom--teaching by connecting conclusions to evidence, looking at evidence from various angles, making sure the evidence is relatively complete, and teaching students how to follow these procedures on their own. There's quite a bit more to say about academic procedure and why it is so superior to American political discourse in our era, but I will let it go there.
Third, there's the issue of whether citizens can ethically subject public agencies to party affiliation tests and opt out if they perceive, on an individual basis, an imbalance. The answer is no. Police, fire, health, education, road maintenance units could potentially be subject to checks of one's party cards, but the Soviet-like nature of this gesture is obvious and I'm always surprised when conservatives go down the road of making a condition of proper funding (or of reversal of previous cuts in the case of higher ed) their preferred ideological balance on staff. I assume that police officers are as a group more conservative politically than I am. I would never dream of making funding judgments about them on that basis, or think that it's ok for them to have their pensions cut or have inferior equipment because they don't vote like me. Whether the issue is public safety or educational quality, the issue is the professionalism of staff, insured by peer review and qualified, procedurally explicit, systematic judgments, not their political beliefs.
Finally, the hostility of some members of the Santa Barbara community toward their local university is nothing sort of tragic. It overfocuses on isolated (and often sensationalized incidents), and it ignores the fact that UCSB is the backbone of the middle-class economy for the overall county, both in terms of salaries and benefits and in terms of student expenditures in the local economy. Some Santa Barbarans complain all the way to the bank, as they cash rent checks in the amount of $800-1000 per month per bed, with no interest in how the absence of cultural amenities or of even a basic friendly attitude towards students outside of their designated I.V. / Lower State playgrounds affects their behavior, their education, and their well-being. Could we contain our older-and-wealthier disapproval of the younger-and-poorer long enough to actually help them get a proper start in the world, or simply to try to understand their concerns? Will later Californians remember Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz as making active contributions to the future of the state or as dragging their feet the whole way? The most probable answer makes me sad.
27 comments:
Studies can be made to say anything.
A more telling criticism unfolds when you have conservative faculty and not just the public complaining about the alleged liberal bias in public higher education.
I am a (very) active alumnus of CSU, Fresno. Being on campus a minimum of five days a week, sooner or later I hear most things going on.
We have a cadre of self identified conservative faculty that complains about the non hiring of similarly minded instructors, the involvement of the university in immigration reform, and radical environmentalism, and so on. The most famous of our (ex) faculty is Victor Davis Hanson. He regularly aired his dissatisfaction in his columns and blogs.
We've had ambush journalism practiced on our campus that's drawn national attention. Studies are fine, but antedotal evidence is what gets the public's attention.
Chris,
What's your view on public universities (including CSU) imposing rules on how student groups are allowed to choose their leaders.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/us/colleges-and-evangelicals-collide-on-bias-policy.html
I think this sort of thing substantially contributes to perceptions of ideological bias.
Given that the US Supreme Court has decided the CSU's policy meets constitutional muster, this is a non starter. However it brings up an interesting question: should the CSU be providing any benefits to student organizations at all?
The advantage that recognized student organizations receive from the CSU system revolve around the free use of campus facilities, mail boxes, accounting services and funding through student government (although Greeks aren't eligible for that money because the perception is their events are closed to the broader student body).
Let's propose that student groups receive no governmental "benefits" at all. In that case they have to pay to use campus facilities and receive no government funding. Then they might be free to manage their affairs as they see fit.
As long as any group is dependent on government largesse of any sort, the government gets to make the rules.
Joel I see your point. Diluting federal non-discrim statutes that set up a framework for the receipt of federal funds would cause huge practical problems, but I could see allowing non-sanctioned religious groups given religion's first amendment status with a different financial arrangement. I haven't thought this through--thanks for raising it.
Chris,
So far as I have heard, no student religious organizations have ever received funds from a public university or through student fees. The issue is whether these student organizations can use university facilities like meeting rooms on the same basis as other student organizations. CSU now says no unless the student organization adheres to administration policy on how it chooses its leadership. It seems like a step back in terms of free speech.
To say that "The most systematic research shows that a majority are moderate liberals, that leftists are a very small minority is to say least fantasy and to say the most a lie.In typical leftist fashion you define the argument before it can be made by using your own definitions of liberal and leftist and at the same time verbally photo shopping the word conservative out of the equation. That very closed minded way of presenting data is a stunning example of creating plausible deniability for the data presented.To accuse anyone of Soviet style tactics while you practice those tactics in your classrooms everyday is so intellectually dishonest , so mind numbingly over the top ,it is laughable.Especially when you removed my past comments and threatened to censor my future comments. The next stunning bit if hypocrisy comes from the unmitigated gall of citing state party affiliation percentages as an excuse for the very bias that you claim does not exist, There are two lies in play here. The first is the straw man argument that this is about party affiliation. It isn't. It is about silencing conservative views and discouraging free thought and expression by not representing those views. The second is building an argument on the dishonesty of the first claim. The only public agency using a political litmus test is UC. Your university, your classes, campus culture and the very thought process put forth this editorial is left leaning and dogmatic. Conservative views are presented therefore they are not heard
Correction. Conservative views are not presented therefore they are not heard.
Anon, it's my blog and I'll do whatever I want with it. I have zero obligation to publish you, now or ever. Secondly, the problem with your statements is that you don't seem to know how to cite evidence, analyze it, and then draw conclusions. Instead you name-call without actually dealing with the studies that I linked to (on a different post), which in fact don't support your belief. If you think someone has misinterpreted a piece of data, you cite the data, then cite the interpretation you dispute, then explain how they don't match. You don't do these things. You express outrage and make accusations. People often don't respond to this kind of argument not because they don't "hear" it, but because they just don't find it to be substantive or intelligent.
Chris, Anonymous2 here. I believe academics ignore the accusations of bias at their peril. The recent court ruling wiping out tenure in California K12 public education was widely applauded as long overdue.
Academics can cite "studies" til the cow come home (and we all know what's said about statistics-the numbers can be made to say whatever we want them to), but perception is what truly matters. All you have to do is look at the comments about the Santa Barbara City College bond measure in local on line media.
@Anonymous
Isn't the issue what sort of response one makes? Chris didn't ignore the criticism but responded with evidence to show that it was misplaced. Your response (I think it was yours at least if not I apologize but with all the anonymous comments it is hard to be sure) was to say that "Studies can be made to say anything." But if that is the rule of the game then there is really no way to respond. You made the point in a different comment when you pointed to “gotcha journalism.” But one of the things about “gotcha journalism” is that there is always going to be some case that can be made into something that looks bad. If people are trying to prevent that then they are going to spend their whole lives making no progress because the people behind that sort of journalism aren’t really engaged in a discussion. They are just trying to eliminate their opposition (figuratively speaking).
Take Chris’ original post. In it he laid out a series of claims that are dominant in public policy and in the media and offered reasons why they were not true. He also made a series of arguments in favor of a different way to deal with the issue of funding and tuition. If those arguments are wrong then anonymous 1 could have simply offered counter-evidence or pointed to flaws in the reasoning. Instead he or she attacked it as being “lefty” as if that made it wrong. He or she then followed up with a series of claims (without any evidence) about what goes on in classrooms and the ideological makeup of faculty. But if the issue is how should we fund higher education then the response should, I think, be about that issue.
One final thing. You say that there is more ideological concern about higher ed than anytime since the 1960s. I’m not sure about that (the 1980s were pretty bad). But as far as I can see the greatest criticism of higher ed (both in California and elsewhere) is more about costs and price, administrators salaries, enrollment of out of state students, worries about the job market etc. Chris’ post took on those issues in a way that was counter to the conventional wisdom and sought to show a different way to look at the issues. This is a blog; its point is to offer analyses and arguments. There is a generic confusion here if you think that if, say I was teaching a course on debates on higher ed funding, that I would structure the discussion the same way. But here we try to provide alternatives with arguments.
The angry declarative statement that "it's my blog and I'll do whatever I want with it. I have zero obligation to publish you, now or ever" is a stunning example of the very problem we are discussing.You have zero obligation to publish but I have every obligation to call you on your hypocrisy. I didn't cite the evidence you did.You cited it by setting up a false scenario where only one outcome is possible and you continue to cite it in your very words .They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I can not post a picture but I can give you a thousand words through the real life experience of the Mohler family.The Mohler family went to California for vacation and had the authentic Left Coast experience.Yes, that's right. Dear old Dad dragged the family to the University of California at Berkeley campus in order to visit the bookstores and see the campus. The experience will not soon be forgotten. Street 'artists' shouted obscenities as they walked along the sidewalks. The sights and smells of the street were a bit too biological for their taste. they even took their teenage daughter into Revolution Books, which is still keeping the flame alive, selling the latest volumes by Marx and Mao at retail.She was not impressed. At one of the city's main bookstores, mainstream conservative political books were found under the category "alternative press." To further demonstrate the fascist nature of the bias that exists and to further explain that the data can produce only one outcome that is acceptable, I turn your attention to a study conducted by UC. researchers at Berkeley. They released the findings of a study that defines the psychological makeup of political conservatives. It's not pretty. After culling through "50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism," the researchers have decided that they are paranoid nuts who are infatuated with inequality. But, as the university's press release states:"They also stressed that their findings are not judgmental." Of course, those who think this claim is silly are paranoid nuts. So there.
The research team claims that political conservatives are driven by deep psychological factors including fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure, and terror management. "From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," they summarized. To further illustrate the intellectual sickness, that has infected data collection,that can have only one outcome the study in question uses"ten meta-analytical calculations" on samples of articles, books, and conference papers by--guess who?--other psychologists and researchers. They then illustrated their 'findings' with a look at Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Ronald Reagan--all supposedly famous conservatives. UC Is comparing Ronald Reagan to Adolf Hitler. Now can anyone,that isn't literally outside their mind trust the authors claims that UC doesn't have a problem ? These Berkeley 'researchers' are a parody of themselves, producing a slanderous profile of political conservatives under the guise of academic research and it goes on every single day. Theses are not educators these are ideologues. They teach with an agenda and anyone who doesn't tow the leftist line is shunned.If you are a conservative tax [payer not only are your views not represented you are portrayed as sick.UC goes beyond bias, It has turned free thinking into an exclusionary art form designed to have a predetermined outcome.
Michael, Anon2 here. Thanks for your response. To clarify, my comment about "studies can be made to..." did not originate with me-a prof I had for statistics classes when I was an undergrad would make the statement regularly when he'd discuss the misuse of the discipline.
The concept of "free" higher education is, to most people I talk to, a bit offensive. They (including more than a few liberals) believe this is merely redistribution of other peoples money. What they're willing to support is a reduction in fees/tuition.
However that support by many is predicated upon the elimination of majors with dim employment prospects. The suggestion has been made that not all majors be offered at all UC or CSU campuses-achieve efficiencies by regionalization. I won't get into the layers of management, both academic and administration on the average campus.
In closing, one can cite studies endlessly, but perception is what gets people to vote to support higher ed. Right now, California public higher ed isn't winning the perception war.
Joel - I assumed recognized student religious groups were eligible for university funds but I may be remembering my private U grad school. Thanks for the tip--I'll do some research.
Anon2 - I agree with you that CA higher ed is losing the perception war. This has a lot to do with higher ed admin’s conduct, but blame game aside, the deeper problem is that the perceptions are wrong. In the 19th century, the US did unusually well economically in part because many states decided to make K-12 education free and universal. California later made the choice to make K-16 free, for the simple reason that mid-20th century social and technological challenges demanded a higher-skilled workforce and intellectually more sophisticated citizens. In the following decades, even as global standards went higher and higher, California's public funding for free K-16 went lower and lower—politicians and business leaders simply undid the free K-16 decision. As this does is move costs around, and often increases them. Locally, the Santa Barbara City College bond proposition is a direct result of the decline of public funding: part of proceeds would go to mitigate housing and related impacts of SBCC’s admission of out-of-town and non-resident students because they need their fees to fill in budget gaps created by cuts. More generally, the economic results were predictable. California has the highest poverty rate in the nation when one accounts for cost of living (I'm citing the Republican gubernatorial candidate), is in the top three for income inequality, has a public infrastructure that no longer attracts industry to put it politely, etc. Higher ed has been massively cut and isn't back to where it was in the 1990s. As costs for students have risen (while costs for society fall), student debt has exploded and attainment for the bottom 3/4ths of the US population by income has stagnated. The debt burden on the rising generation is unjust, and it will also hurt their ability to pay for medical services and income transfers for the elderly. During this time, California has lost most of its income advantage over other states, is near the bottom nationally in many measures of educational achievement, and is still trying to be a high-tech economy with an increasingly low-tech workforce. To get out of a mess caused by decades of persistent squeezing and chopping of the public sector, we need citizens who can find data, process it, make causal connections between different elements in complicated social and cultural systems, and then come to decisions informed by their best understanding of how these systems work. That's what we try to do in universities--including in arts and humanities courses where human factors are given a central place. We have common problems that can only be solved in common. That’s what both public education and public funding try to support.
btw the definitive work on the relation between US economic growth and free schools is Claudia Golden & Lawrence F. Katz, The Race Between Education and TEchnology (Harvard, 2008). They list six crucial features of the US system, and correlate their local presence with local growth rates. The features include "public provision of education, and the establishment of common schools . . . public funding of schools, thus a free education for all . . . nonsectarian public schools . . . gender neutrality in access to public education, thus a public education regardless of sex" (pp 134-35). See the data and analysis in this very significant book.
Because you can not win on the merits of your argument in Alinsky like fashion you ignore me, not realizing that your very actions strengthen my argument. Need I remind you that in the very paragraph you discuss radicalism and PC views Refusing go outside the expertise of your people is as radical and PC as it gets."higher ed is losing the perception war" because perception is not reality Trying to win a war of perception is by its very nature deceptive. It is for all intents and purposes, a sales job. Trying to get the tax payer to perceive you in a way that is favorable to get their money. You demand collective action yet you ignore the views of the many that have to pay for it.The fact of the matter is, that free education isn't free it has to be paid for by all tax payers. So the question still stands. Why should any conservative support giving you a dime when their views are not only not represented,but mocked ? And what are you doing to address this problem . Are there any programs in place to create a diversity of opinion ? Is there any criteria to assure conservative students that their grades will not be jeopardized because of their political views. Are there any lesson plans in place that represent the conservative point of view ? These are important questions that demand answers, I await your response,
Wonderfully designed superb site.
@Anonymous
Anonymous—
Part of the difficulty with responding to your comments is that you don’t seem to be interested in responses so much as with agreement to your positions. You made a claim about alleged faculty politics and Chris responded by pointing to studies that argued that your claim was inaccurate so you just dismissed the studies. In addition, your questions are of the “when did you stop abusing your pets?” type of question—they assume as established something that hasn’t been established. So at the end of your latest comment you ask what rules there are to ensure that conservative students’ grades are not affected by their politics. First off the answer is the same as to ensure that left students grades are not affected by their politics—the normal academic review mechanisms and the fact that students are graded on their work in the course. But I haven’t seen any evidence it is the problem you think it is. You ask what programs there are to ensure diversity of thought on campus but actually there already is diversity of thought on campuses. I suspect that Milton Friedman and his students have a lot more influence in economics departments and business schools than Karl Marx and his students do to give just one example. Conservative thinkers are taught in intellectual history classes and I assume in philosophy and political theory classes as well. And then there is the whole question of what “conservative” thinker would actually mean in terms of the physical or life sciences which make up a lot of the faculty on most campuses. One of my main touchstones is Jonathan Swift who was a pretty conservative thinker. Granted he wouldn’t have much sympathy with contemporary libertarianism (neither would Burke or Oakshott or Cardinal Newman or Matthew Arnold to mention just a few important conservative thinkers) but is that really supposed to be the criteria for deciding whether a university has open discussions?
As to why the wider public would be interested in supporting funding to enable a roll-back in tuition the answer is that it would be good for students—and in the long run for society and the economy. Students and their families today are being burdened with a great deal of debt. In order to keep it from being even more forces them to work a lot of hours at jobs which slows down their time to degree. The debt inhibits their freedom after graduation, cuts back on their ability to start families and move into the economy thereby slowing down economic growth (I will leave aside the effects of the Great Recession which makes all of this worth). The present financing system, as Chris noted in his original post, has led to stagnating educational achievement among the poorer parts of the society thereby contributing both to growing inequality and a loss of creative capacity for society as a whole. Now if you want to argue that it is a conservative value to create an increasingly unequal and stagnating society that fails to provide equal opportunities for all of its members and loses huge amount of human talent then I suppose you should oppose seeking to find ways to fund higher education without burdening students. But is that really a conservative value?
Finally, seeking to engage the battle over perception is not a question of public relations but a question of opposing inaccurate assumptions that are dominant in the media and among the political class. The blog offers analysis and arguments to offer better alternatives to the present situation.
Anon2 here. Chris, I lived through IV 1969-1970 (when I was 15), and recently was reminded why tuition came to be-because of unrest at Berkeley and UCSB. Angry legislators and citizens wanted the radicals off campus.
People keep on bringing up the Master Plan. By the time I started college in 1972, the MP was on life support. I believe its death was caused by the public blow back to the free speech and anti-war movements. Many people saw them (as the Occupy movement more recently) as Communist inspired (if not directed). In fact, the slope towards today's surveillance society started with Chicago 1968 as far as I'm concerned.
I think conservatives would like a return to pre WWII higher education. Then, only those who could afford to go (or worked their way through) did. Here in the Central Valley, student aid is seen as just another form of welfare, especially in the community colleges. Too many students enroll just for the aid and then bail once they've gotten that check. Tea Party activists have taken this issue on, attacking State Center Community College District on line for its "dismal" drop out and graduation rates.
Michael Meranze you claim that Chris responded by pointing to studies that argued that my claim was inaccurate.Here is his quote. "that a majority are moderate liberals and that leftists are a very small minority" Chris never mentioned the word conservative in his answer because he did not want to give the answer that we all know to be the truth. The question was and is,why aren't there conservative professors at UC ? Why aren't conservative views expressed inside and outside the classroom and why should conservative residents agree to shell out funding to an educational environment that locks their views and ideas out ? He used his data, based on his definition, of who is a leftest and who is a liberal ! Using a study and a baseline of his choosing. The fact of the matter is that conservative ides and conservative thought is not represented in any substantive way at UC and if there are conservative professors at UC then they are in the witness protection program. "Chris pointed to studies" ? One would need to use theoretical physics inside the classroom, to invalidate my claims and be deaf dumb and blind outside the classroom to invalidate my claims. Milton Friedman ? At this point we would settle for Milton Berle ! You want us to pay for the debt that "inhibits their freedoms" give us the freedom to express our views. This is what John Ellis said "I don't know any polite way of putting this -- but he's lying," said professor John Ellis, president of the National Association of Scholars' California division. Ellis was reacting to a critic's characterization of the NAS's damning report, "A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California." $2.8 billion to educate the more than 230,000 students at the 10 campuses that comprise the UC system. But the report says the UC system does not help students learn how to think, but rather teaches them what to think. And what they "learn" is that they are victims -- whether of racism, sexism, classism or discrimination because of sexual orientation. Liberal profs, says the report, turn the UC campuses into "a sanctuary for a narrow ideological segment of the spectrum of social and political ideas." I see nothing. Absolutely nothing, in any of your comments to refute these claims. If anything Chris's own words validate what I am saying.
Michael Meranze and Chris Newfield. This one is probably more applicable to Chris.I am making the assumption that Chris is sensitive to grammatical errors and sentence structure. I freely admit that both are atrocious, but I will not back down from my positions when the content of my work is correct. I am neither afraid nor am I intimidated by anyone when I have the truth on my side.
Michael Meranze I couldn't get this into my last post because I did not want to get off the subject at hand but you did bring it up so I think it is important to address.You want to discus the "great recession"? Your own words show your bias by repeating a phrase in leftist jargon to start a discussion. Making an assumption based on your narrative with language of your choosing.Do you know what caused the "great recession" ? Do you know who caused the great rescission to the tune of 800 billion dollars per year ? The cause and effect ? The people, their names ? Why certain people were persecuted and why hardly anyone was prosecuted ? The culture of greed that was created in the name of philosophy ? The incontinent consumption that was not based on economic reality ? The $100 million dollars that went to one man ? The utter stupidity of creating market forces out of a philosophical idea using our assets ? Yours and mine. $3.4 trillion on the street with nobody taking responsibility. And just to show you I'm not a total partisan on this issue I not only blame those social engineers and those nitwits in congress I blame Bush and Clinton who I consider accessories after the fact.Great rescission" my rear end. The only thing that made it great was that it took thirty years to create and one year to implode.
Anonymous, you make me laugh! Anon2 here. The American home mortgage industry was described as a Ponzi game in the 1920s. The 1920s! Long before Clinton and Bush.
Americans, especially conservative Americans, are generally fools. They yearn for the "good old days" without taking a critical look at what the "good old days" were really like. This stubborn refusal to learn from history will be this country's undoing.
It's far easier for the far left and far right to spout their ideologies (which are essentially one and the same) of dictatorship by one group or another, than to work to solve the real problems that confront us. The radical Islamists smile at this-they see us as bankrupt and weak. We'd rather ignore the threat and have hysterics over Ebola instead.
In closing the study you claim proves UC is biased against conservatives is fraught with bias-the same sort of alleged bias you whine about. I've read it-it's a pathetic joke.
Anon2 If you are an educator or a student at UC, based on your post the situation is worse than I thought. You are a parody of every ignoramus who walked the earth in arrogance confident in a false intellectual superiority that doesn't exist. Lol and you have the dumb sense to call us fools? You can't learn from history because you don't understand history. In your feeble mind history begins and ends when you want it to, so you can reenforce the things you already do not understand. The 1920s had about as much to do with the the current mortgage crisis and the rescission that followed as a cat has to do with a rotary engine.The "counties undoing" begins and ends with declarative statements without empirical data or a lick of common sense. I have no idea what the radical Islamists have to do with the subject at hand, but if they are "smiling" it is because you have proven that neanderthals who think they understand what is going on are almost as dangerous as neanderthals who don't know what is going on. It is interesting that you have a closing based on nothing because you had an opening based on nothing and if you are going to "whine" for money then we are going to demand representation. The study is damning and the reality at UC is worse.If you are a professor and I hope you are not the situation at UC is critical because the thought process is not. No pathetic joke intended.
Anon2 Correction ,country's undoing. My apologizes.
Anonymous, let me conclude my discussion with you by saying: no, I'm not connected with the UC system. However, I have questioned the psychological stability of conservatives for years. Signed, Anon2
Anon2 Chris Newfield and Michael Meranze Let me give you my conclusions about your ideology, I can not call you Liberals because the British Empiricists would be stunned at what passes for progressive thought in today's university setting. I think Locke himself would be insulted by the mistreatment of a lifetime of work, not because you don't understand his work , but because you mistreat the principles of his work. Since Anon2 brought up the psychological stability of conservatives allow me to give you my conclusions as to the psychological stability of progressives. You are experts at Pavlovian response conditioning. There is an Intellectual cowardice that makes you afraid to debate real issues. I see a sanctimonious objectors stance that creates scapegoats in furtherance of a pop culture agenda,that enthusiastically forces us to participate in a scenario that pits us against our neighbors. I think you participate in a victims based ideology that takes away freedom of thought, because that freedom takes away your control.I think you are, wittingly or unwittingly, intellectually dishonest and that you have turned the truth into a moving target. I think you participate in a a feelings based ideology that believes the rights of others end where your feelings begin.Debate makes you uncomfortable, causing you to suffer from cognitive dissonance and when confronted by new information that conflicts with your existing ideas you avoid that information. I see some adult form of Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Not because you exhibit defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward adults but because you you exhibit defiant disobedient and hostile behavior toward dissenting opinions. One of the few disorders you don't suffer from is dissociative identity disorder. You are so monolithic in your thinking, so fascistic in your resistance to any and all ideas that don't fall dogmatically in line with your own, that your identity and personality take on only one form. Thank you for letting me exercise my right of free speech.
In anticipation of your response to the word fascistic it was used to describe dictatorial behavior and not politics.
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