# Higher education leans left: why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 20, 2006, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859 "2006-01-20T18:58:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/101 "2006-01-27T12:35:39Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Conservatives believe that free markets and free flow of capital and labor is the best way to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to provide for themselves And **that** over-broad generalization makes it impossible to explain the existence of the numerous conservatives who support protectionism. Give it up, **Sam**. There simply is no meaningful, specific ideological claim you can make about “conservatives” that applies to **all** conservatives, so you’re just going to have to bite the bullet and use qualifiers on your statements. Making meaningful statements about broad ideological categories is tough enough already, without having to clean up after all these sweeping generalizations. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/102 "2006-01-27T13:51:57Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I’m afraid I didn’t read the whole thread; I gave up once the tit-for-tat name-calling began, so forgive me if this has already been mentioned. Pooh head. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/103 "2006-01-27T15:39:12Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Pooh head. Stinky pants. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/104 "2006-01-27T21:12:17Z")
Left wing hippy! Right-wing fundie! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/105 "2006-01-27T21:47:55Z")
Here’s an interesting article on Campus Progress, a liberal campus organization founded quite recently by the Center for American Progress: [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/grahamfelsen](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/grahamfelsen) > [@](#): > > The assumption that America’s campuses are impenetrable bastions of liberalism–where left-leaning faculty predominate, progressive student activism flourishes and conservatism is fiercely marginalized–still rules the day. But in reality, since the 1970s the conservative movement has become the dominant political force on many American campuses. This sea change is not simply a reflection of some students’ increasingly right-wing views. Each year, conservative groups pour more than $35 million into hundreds of college campuses. They pay for right-wing speakers, underwrite scores of student papers, provide free leadership training and cushy internships, and equip thousands of new activists with talking points, discipline and missionary zeal. > > Today’s campus right is unified, on-message and passionate–in other words, part of a genuine movement. By contrast, the campus left is disparate, undisciplined and segmented along ideological and issue-based lines. Student progressives have struggled for decades with not only a lack of cohesion but a dearth of resources. “We didn’t have our act together,” says Joshua Holland, a fair-trade and antiwar activist who graduated from the University of Southern California this past spring. “We tried to keep things nonhierarchical and loosely structured, but at the end of the day, there was a lot of running around in circles, and we weren’t getting anything done.” > > It’s a familiar lament among the two dozen student progressives I talked with for this article. But help has arrived. After three decades of unanswered advances by the right, the progressive movement is no longer leaving students to fend for themselves. Campus Progress–a project of the Center for American Progress (CAP), one of the country’s premier think tanks–is the largest of a handful of organizations that have emerged in the past year to counter the right’s campus operations. These groups are offering resources, ideas and training designed to patch up many of the holes that have long deflated the student left. But in attempting to forge a widespread student progressive movement, they face many of the same quandaries that loom large for American progressivism as a whole: What values should define the movement? What tactics should be embraced? And perhaps most difficult of all, to what extent does striving for results mean sacrificing strong principles? > > \ > > Frustrations abound, but the emergence of national progressive organizations on campus has given many student activists renewed hope. In its first year Campus Progress has provided progressive students with tools they’ve never had before: money and a sense of unity. While its $1.25 million projected budget falls well below the more than $10 million of the right-wing Young America’s Foundation, Campus Progress has made an immediate impact. Wayne Huang, editor of Cornell’s student progressive publication, Turn Left, has seen his paper “go through a shocking transformation in little under a year,” thanks to funding from Campus Progress. On twenty-seven other campuses, formerly cash-strapped student left publications are finally competing with conservative papers, publishing regularly and printing on high-quality paper. At its virtual meeting place, [CampusProgress.org](http://CampusProgress.org), students from across the country are sharing ideas and getting advice on how to communicate their values from the likes of Senator Barack Obama. Features like “Know Your Right-Wing Speakers” and “Crib Sheet” provide concise talking points for fighting the right. Campus Progress website: [http://www.campusprogress.org/](http://www.campusprogress.org/) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/106 "2006-01-28T00:41:42Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > And **that** over-broad generalization makes it impossible to explain the existence of the numerous conservatives who support protectionism. > > Give it up, **Sam**. There simply is no meaningful, specific ideological claim you can make about “conservatives” that applies to **all** conservatives, so you’re just going to have to bite the bullet and use qualifiers on your statements. > > Making meaningful statements about broad ideological categories is tough enough already, without having to clean up after all these sweeping generalizations. The reason it’s an over-generalization is because it’s completely tiresome to have to explain every fringe movement and sub-movement difference within conservatism. It should also go without saying that, while conservatism itself is pro-market, pro-free trade, and anti-regulation, _individual conservatives_ may be none of the above, for the simple reason that they are hypocrites. Just like there are plenty of leftists who claim to be all about sharing and caring for the poor and helping the environment, yet live in big mansions, get easements passed to kick the poor off of beaches near their homes, oppose wind power where they can see it, and fly around in personal jet aircraft (see: hollywood). ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/107 "2006-01-28T10:07:19Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] The reason it’s an over-generalization is because it’s completely tiresome to have to explain every fringe movement and sub-movement difference within conservatism. [\QUOTE] The problem is, who is to say what true conservatism, or true liberalism are? When discussing the topic, you continually end up with counterexamples thrown into your face, but if you try to say “oh yes, but they are a sub movement or a fringe movement” then you are dancing with a True Scotsman. I don’t say this to be combative, it’s just a problem for all sides. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/108 "2006-01-28T20:27:31Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > It should also go without saying that, while conservatism itself is pro-market, pro-free trade, and anti-regulation, individual conservatives may be none of the above, for the simple reason that they are hypocrites. All right, now this rhetoric has passed out of the realm of over-generalization into the realm of batshit craziness, if you ask me. As **Princhester** notes, this is a True Scotsman argument, pure and simple. It certainly does **not** go without saying that “conservatism itself” is necessarily, e.g., pro-free trade or anti-regulation; it depends on the circumstances of the trade, the kind of regulation, and which conservative(s) you’re talking to. There are respectable traditions of conservative thought on both sides of many major issues. You can’t simply declare that “conservatism itself” agrees with the position you happen to favor and expect to get away with it. ---
**Author:** ![Charger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df788c/32.png) [@Charger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charger)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/109 "2006-01-28T22:45:15Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Has no one considered the possibility that academics lean left because they’re **smart?!** It’s just as likely to be because they are **vain.** After all, one could know all the intricacies of the human nervous system, or how to design a rocket, but know remarkably little about political issues. In my experience, scientists and engineers tend to be astonishingly arrogant, often without knowing it, which _could_ affect their view on political issues and will affect their stubbornness. ---
**Author:** ![Orbifold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/779978/32.png) [@Orbifold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orbifold)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/110 "2006-01-28T22:56:27Z")
> [@Charger](#): > > It’s just as likely to be because they are **vain.** Wow. Personally I find that making unfounded and insulting generalizations about an entire group of people based on their profession displays a remarkably arrogance and vanity. Namely, the arrogance to believe that one’s personal observations generalize to populations as a whole, as well as the vanity to belief that one’s pre-conceived notions aren’t full of crap. In my experience, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Orbifold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/779978/32.png) [@Orbifold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orbifold)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/111 "2006-01-28T22:58:19Z")
> [@Orbifold](#): > > …a remarkably arrogance… “…a remarkabl **e** arrogance…” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/112 "2006-01-29T00:05:39Z")
> [@Charger](#): > > It’s just as likely to be because they are **vain.** > > After all, one could know all the intricacies of the human nervous system, or how to design a rocket, but know remarkably little about political issues. In my experience, scientists and engineers tend to be astonishingly arrogant, often without knowing it, which _could_ affect their view on political issues and will affect their stubbornness. That is merely a possible explanation of why academics (in subjects not directly related to politics) would have and proclaim political views at all. But why would vanity dispose them mostly to one side of the political spectrum and not the other? ---
**Author:** ![Bomzaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e480ec/32.png) [@Bomzaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bomzaway)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/113 "2006-02-16T04:08:29Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > My take on the situation is that academia skews Left because very few of them have ever held a real job in their lives. Living in the “ivory tower” enables you to be as idealistic and righteous as you like, becuase you never have to meet a payroll or deal with the thousands of petty annoyances that real people with real jobs have to deal with. Note that engineers and the like skew Right, because they actually have to deal with the Real World. > > Yes, this is a broad brush. So how about jounalists? They’re more entrenched in “the Real World” than most people by virtue of their jobs. They’re exposed to a wide variety of people and situations, and they see them first hand. And yes, they too have to deal with all the crap that a “regular job” can carry with it. Yet, the media is liberally biased. Broadly brushed, of course. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859/114 "2006-02-16T20:24:19Z")
> [@Bomzaway](#): > > Yet, the media is liberally biased. Broadly brushed, of course. This is a joke, right? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higher-education-leans-left-why/340859.md?page=5)