Change in conservative fears about higher education?

Great Debates
102

Yes. Also, to be fair, “conservative beliefs” are a lot more extreme than they used to be when I was in college nearly forty years ago.

Back then, “conservative beliefts” generally meant you were in favor of lower taxes, “trickle-down” economic policies, and anti-Soviet hawkishness, and you opposed calls for nuclear disarmament and abandoning nuclear fission power plants as an energy source. (They also meant that you were opposed to gay marriage and transgender rights, but those were pretty standard views back then across most of the political spectrum.)

Nowadays, “conservative beliefs” means that you espouse evidence-free claims about massive electoral fraud and the nonexistence of climate change, and you think a global pandemic is a hoax to trick you into following public-health protocols that the “Deep State” is manipulating to deprive you of your basic liberties.

It’s not hard to see why institutions of higher education and scientific research would be, on principle, more critical of the modern incarnation of ideological conservatism than they were of its counterpart several decades ago.

Sorry, missed that request while writing my previous post, will not return to that subject in this thread.

103

I don’t think it was true when I was at university 20 years ago, but things are a little different in Britain. Still, I have seen current academics and students here saying they are afraid to speak up about their views

Only one of those was relevant when the survey was done.

But it is hard to understand why a significant fraction of moderates and liberals would feel similarly constrained in expressing their views.

Thanks.

104

And I recall academics and students being afraid to speak up when I was at university. And if you think moderates and liberals wouldn’t feel constrained, you didn’t attend the same law lectures I did in the late eighties.

Look I did combined arts and law. I went from sociology tutorials where the only two male students (myself being one) got bullied severely by the butch lesbian tutor for the crime of having a penis, to law lectures where lecturers belittled liberal ideas with such force there is no way anyone would have dared open their mouths to offer an alternate point of view. And not only that but the demographics as between the sociology and law students were similarly skewed and fervent.

I’d take some convincing that anything’s changed.

105

Any of those would understandably be pretty abhorrent in an institutional environment that places a high value on scientific knowledge and critical thinking.

If what you’re referring to is the finding that “Students across political perspectives engage in classroom self-censorship”, I don’t think that’s anything new either. Students are almost always wary of expressing controversial views in a classroom setting, and even those who feel confident that their views are considered the normal majority position in that environment have some fears about rocking the boat.

It’s quite true that liberalism of some form is considered “the normal majority position” in higher education to a much greater extent than it is in the society at large. But that was true forty years ago too. MAGA’s not popular on campuses now; the “Moral Majority” wasn’t popular on campuses back then.

That, perhaps, may explain some evolution in the nature of conservative parents’ fears, if the change that you ask about in your OP is really a thing (not being a conservative parent myself, or knowing any conservative parents very well, I don’t have my finger on that particular pulse).

In my young day, the mindset of conservatism was heavily enmeshed with what we still occasionally called “squareness”. Conservatives self-identified as supporting “family values”, religious traditionalism, quasi-authoritarian patriotism, conventional careers, etc. What conservative parents feared (at least, according to the comparatively few people with conservative family backgrounds I knew in college) was that their kids would be lured away by the appeal of the “lifestyle” of “hedonistic”, sex-having, substance-consuming, art-class-taking, swear-word-using, hair-growing liberals.

Then came Rambo, and the rise of the “antisocial conservative” hero figure in general. The conservative self-image shifted (not entirely, but substantially) toward the “badass lone wolf” model, the beleaguered and disillusioned (but extremely cool, unlike his “square” predecessor) anti-hero type, who has to fight to survive in a hostile environment. (Mad Max is another avatar of this transition.)

So we segue from Moral Majority to militias and then MAGA. A significant chunk of conservatism is radicalized and aggressive, perceiving itself now as the “outsider” rather than the dominant “establishment” (despite the fact that people who identify as conservative, especially conservative white men, still have hugely disproportionate power in our society). Moreover, many self-identified conservatives nowadays are having, or at least think themselves entitled to have, all the sex and drugs and swearing and hedonism that they want, so the seductive-sinfulness aspect of the so-called “liberal lifestyle” is not really an issue for most of them.

So maybe that’s the zeitgeist that some conservative parents are experiencing? They perceive their kids as heading off into the “liberal environment” of college, not like a Mormon missionary crossing paths with a Mardi Gras parade and about to get his personal purity seriously tested, but like Jack Reacher or somebody walking into a den of villains who are out to get him.

Just a speculation.

Say that to many pro-gun-rights conservatives, and you’ll get complaints that you’re “vilifying” and “silencing” them and making them “self-censor” with your “disparagement”. Reacher needs his guns, you see: the world is a dangerous place, especially for freedom-loving non-conforming badasses like him.

106

I say bullshit. That is tortured rationalization. She chose the word catcalling, I didn’t. Words matter.

Like I said, if you want to open a new thread in great debates, you can do so but this is clearly a wild tangent.

107

See posts #97 and #102.

108

I don’t know. I recall the college republicans being pretty visible. I recall the federalist society being pretty visible. I don’t recall politically disparaging comments being particularly common or there being a lot of political animosity. But maybe I was just not paying attention. But we do not have a longitudinal study. What we do have is a snapshot picture that shows that kids in college are vilifying each other based on political beliefs and that the disparaging comments are commonly directed at conservatives.

109

What law school did you go to? I can’t think of many where this would be true. Certainly not in america.

110

That’s interesting. I never really thought of that movie as being that kind of watershed but maybe…

I’m about as pro-gun as it gets on this site and I did not find the question particularly offensive. It seems like you are caricaturizing your opposition.

111

I’m in Australia.

There were conservative student groups. There was plenty of ridicule directed their way.

And while my post didn’t make this clear, the lecturers and tutor in question weren’t typical or outstandingly atypical. The law school as a whole wasn’t one thing or the other. There were a couple of lecturers however who never missed an opportunity to inject their views on what the law should be instead of sticking to what it was; and to a lesser extent what they thought of people who disagreed with them.

The four points from your Atlantic article are little better than statements of the obvious and you could make them about any group of people, anywhere, ever. They amount to “some people are intolerant of and would silence people with different views, people tend to keep to their own, don’t necessarily speak up when they disagree, and can be abusive of others’ viewpoints”.

Well, duh!

112

I don’t know if you read the article but those 4 points were the conclusions reached by a survey.

113

Yes. Which is about as surprising as death and taxes. My point is so what?

The survey is about as meaningful in this context as surveying a bunch of bricklayers, in 2021, about whether they would like to die a slow death from cancer - the answer would be “no”. That doesn’t mean bricklayers are particularly different from non-bricklayers, nor that 2021 bricklayers differ in this respect from 1970’s bricklayers.

Without a point of comparison, the fact that some people think something at a particular time provides no useful data in the context of an OP that is about difference and change.

114

This is a really good explanation. A lot of liberal ideas have become mainstream and are supported by the establishment, they’re being promoted by banks and supermarkets in a cynical attempt to make themselves look good, and it’s even the progressives who are preaching moderation and self-sacrifice these days, while the right say it’s okay to indulge in SUVs and factory farmed beef, lol. It makes sense that conservatives would no longer see it as seductive, but as something forced on them by those in power.

115

This may be correct but ironically I would say that colleges are one of the places where it’s always been somewhat true that liberal ideas have been the dominant paradigm

116

That’s a very fair question and I hope you’ll read everything I say carefully so as to not be offended by my answer.

First, my answer: While, I’m sure there may be some, I don’t think there are many.

So why this answer, and again understanding why I’m saying this is critical.

1 - Unless something major is happening in the world, I do not watch the news.
2 - I do not generally read the newspaper, and I even more rarely read opinion pieces.
2a - This is particularly important because if there are honest intellectual conservatives they are probably writing opinion pieces for high-quality newspapers
3 - You may be wondering: “How do you stay informed?” Well, I don’t unless there is something major going on. The news media doesn’t sell information, they primarily sell fear to keep people coming back. They’re selling a product meant to be consumed just like a meal. It is intended to fulfil a psychological need related to one’s political/psychological biases. If I feel like I need to know something, then I try to go to the same primary sources a journalist might use for factual information.
4 - Conservatism, and especially (imo) Republicans, have become an anti-intellectual movement [1,2] Anti-intellectualism is not exclusive to the right, it varies from issue to issue. For example, GMOs are an anti-intellectual topic associated with the left but it is more prevalent on the right [3]. I think this has created a situation where there isn’t a lot of demand, or even a disdain, for conservative intellectualism. I think that’s why Shapiro has been gradually shifting his presentation style. We are in the era of grievance politics, and if you look at what, and more importantly, how Shapiro says things (who again, I think is probably one of the better examples of intellectual conservatism even if I’m not that impressed).

So, that’s my answer. Hopefully, you can recognize the nuance with it. In other words, I’m not saying conservative be dumb, yo. There are a lot of factors involved with my answer, including my own willful ignorance on the subject.

[1] Motta, M. (2018). The dynamics and political implications of anti-intellectualism in the United States. American Politics Research , 46 (3), 465-498.
[2] Merkley, E. (2020). Anti-intellectualism, populism, and motivated resistance to expert consensus. Public Opinion Quarterly , 84 (1), 24-48.
[3] Oliver, J. E., & Rahn, W. M. (2016). Rise of the Trumpenvolk: Populism in the 2016 Election. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , 667 (1), 189-206.

117

Yes, it wasn’t a longitudinal study that provides evidence of increased hostility against conservative kids. It does provide evidence that hostility against conservative kids exists.

Perhaps things are different in australia, perhaps what passes for conservative and liberal are different in australia.

118

I agree its a pretty small minority.

I put almost every federally elected republican that has been fighting trump for the last 4 years into this category. This includes 1 senator and 3 congressmen. Romney is a senator from a deep red state that has been anti-trump for almost the entire duration. A lot of conservative politicians are engaging in political opportunism and showing a lack of political courage.

I put most “never trump” political commentators in this category. There are significantly more of these. George Will stands out.

I agree there is ideologically driven anti-intellectualism at both extremes. The mid-1990s is when the partisan divergence in anti-intellectualism seems to have occurred. This is when global warming started to become a thing. Conservative trust in science not only dropped, liberal trust in science INCREASED. There may be more visible manifestation of anti-intellectualism on the right because there is more scientific consensus that contradicts elements of conservative ideology than there is that contradicts liberal ideology. Global warming is the primary example of this. Global warming meshes well with liberal environmental concerns and contrary to conservative free market principles.

It has been said that the facts have a liberal bias. This may be as much a source for increase in liberal trust of science as it has been a source of conservative mistrust of science. To a large extent, liberals are not really on the side of facts, facts just happen to be on the side of liberals. And if/when that changes, liberals may change their view of the facts.

IOW, conservatives mistrust science because it says things they don’t like and liberals may trust science more because it is saying things that liberals like.

I think there has been a recent shift in how liberals and conservatives view the judiciary. A prolonged focus by conservatives to move the judiciary to the right has (not surprisingly) resulted in a more conservative judiciary. This has led to more faith in the fairness and integrity of the judiciary by the right and less by the left.

For too many people, the first question after reading a news report, seeing a scientific study or reading a court opinion is “what is this person’s political alignment?”

119

This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of why people become liberal. I am not a liberal who is happy the facts agree with me. I became a liberal because I realized that I could not come up with substantive fact-based arguments to support my conservative positions, and so (after much angst) I abandoned those positions. This process happened to occur during and shortly after my time at college, mostly because I was surrounded by people who felt no obligation to coddle my fact free conservative bias.

I hold no love for the term “liberal”, and if it comes to stand for something other than my beliefs, or if newly revealed facts make me change my mind, I will happily stop calling myself liberal.

IOW, I am not a liberal because I think being liberal is good. I try to base my views on facts, and if the worldview I constructed based on my understanding of the facts is described by others as “liberal”, so be it.

120

You are one person. There examples of fact denial by liberals. GMOs were mentioned.

Once again, you are one person. How would you explain the rise in liberal faith in science at the same time there was a drop in conservative faith in science?

121

I think that’s really well expressed. I agree with everything.