# Poll: id your teachers and professors try to influence your political thinking? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 23, 2018, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439 "2018-02-23T23:08:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/41 "2018-02-24T20:14:29Z")
Not in college, unless you consider learning that Claude Shannon was cool was part of my political thinking. In high school my History teacher was more conservative than most of the class, which in those circumstances meant he was a Roosevelt liberal. I was a conservative in college, so I think I would have noticed. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/42 "2018-02-24T20:44:54Z")
Well, I studied engineering, so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for anything political or controversial or even _subjective_. The closest we got was Euclidian vs. Non-Euclidian geometry. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/43 "2018-02-24T20:53:16Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > Well, I studied engineering, so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for anything political or controversial or even _subjective_. The closest we got was Euclidian vs. Non-Euclidian geometry. Yeah right! I learned about non-Euclidean geometry, and next thing I knew I was a slave in a cult building a temple to Nyarlahotep. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/44 "2018-02-24T20:57:05Z")
My high school senior history teacher in 1966-67 tried to teach us, among other things, that it was wrong to call Asians by racial slurs, as some were doing to the Vietnamese, had done before to the Koreans and before that the Japanese and before that to the Chinese. You can call that an attempt to influence us politically, or you can call it common human decency. We had an English teacher in high school who made an effort to teach us rhetoric and rational argument. I don’t remember any other even remotely political comments from any teachers. History teachers generally followed whatever was printed in the history books. I took Russian language in high school, our teacher was an American and there was nothing political in the class. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/45 "2018-02-24T22:01:49Z")
> [@BeeGee](#): > > The problem with the wording on this poll is that it still sort of assumes that they were trying to influence me to become a liberal. How about “No, because it was a math class and the subject never came up”? Or “No, the subject never came up”? Or “I went to a Baptist university and some of my professors thought Regan was too middle of the road.”? Right. I went to Catholic grade school and high school in the 1960s and both my religious and lay teachers were for the most part extremely conservative. In fact, my history teacher in high school, who was somewhat to the right of Barry Goldwater, organized a group of us to march in a pro-Vietnam War parade. (This was about 1966.) I was brainwashed enough to participate. By the next year I had started to think more for myself and was pro-Eugene McCarthy. I came by my liberalism in direct opposition to what I had been taught. In college, I have no idea of most of my professors were liberal or conservative. Some of them may have participated in anti-war activities but they never brought it up in class. The strongest influence on us students was other students. I didn’t vote in the poll, because as you say the way it is worded suggests that teachers tried to influence us to be liberal. In my case it was quite the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/46 "2018-02-24T22:13:12Z")
If they did, I was too occupied to notice. Hell, I got into my university with an essay praising Rush Limbaugh, and I was unapologetically conservative my freshman year, and nobody gave a fuck. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/47 "2018-02-24T22:22:37Z")
I once got mark-downed and corrected on a college paper in an “Introduction to Ethics” class for making an off-hand statement about the rising obesity rates in China. Apparently my teacher was a firm believer in “People in China can’t be fat because they ride bicycles everywhere and eat rice” and I got chided in-class for even suggesting that a Communist country like China could fall victim to things that only happen to Capitalist countries. I’m still angry about that to this day. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/48 "2018-02-24T23:30:00Z")
Several of the most heavy-handed indoctrinators I can remember from college were right-wingers. There was the asshole grad student TA who was a big fan of Cecil Rhodes – god, I wanted to smack him when he talked about the British Empire and/or any war. Several disciples of [Leo Strauss](https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2483/whats-the-story-on-leo-strauss/), who tended to be somewhat quieter about their odd beliefs. The one openly Marxist professor I remember never seemed to bother trying to indoctrinate anyone; she seemed to think we were all pretty hopeless running dogs or whatever. Looks like she’s still teaching, but hasn’t shown up on the [TPUSA Blacklist](http://www.professorwatchlist.org/index.php/component/search/?searchword=gloria%20monti&searchphrase=all&Itemid=101). Which makes me a little sad, frankly. She was often quite funny – I remember her lecture on Mira Nair’s _Mississippi Masala_ was titled “Third World Representations (and Denzel’s Butt)” or something like that. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/49 "2018-02-25T18:40:21Z")
I had at least two teachers in high school who were visibly and unapologetically liberal and didn’t care who knew it. I wouldn’t say that they deliberately tried to make me a liberal, but they sure as hell weren’t afraid to preach on about liberal causes (in their cases, underfunding of public education and the influence of nefariousness (abstinence-based sex ed, creationism, that sort of thing)). Can’t say it made a lick of difference either way. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/50 "2018-02-25T21:04:34Z")
> [@BeeGee](#): > > The problem with the wording on this poll is that it still sort of assumes that they were trying to influence me to become a liberal. How about “No, because it was a math class and the subject never came up”? Or “No, the subject never came up”? Or “I went to a Baptist university and some of my professors thought Regan was too middle of the road.”? Yeah, I went to Yeshiva University, and the students and faculty were largely (but not entirely) conservative. Not that I remember my teachers pushing me one way or the other, but if they did, it probably wouldn’t be towards the left. ---
**Author:** ![Helena330](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/helena330/32/531_2.png) [@Helena330](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helena330)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/51 "2018-02-25T21:25:52Z")
I’m currently IN college and I haven’t encountered any professors trying to indoctrinate us. Quite the opposite: Politics is such a volatile subject that they don’t want to deal with any problems arising from it. We’re constantly cautioned not to include political opinion in our discussion board posts. What they do is drum critical thinking into our heads. Credible sources, citations, look for bias, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/52 "2018-02-25T23:25:10Z")
I had a history teacher in high school who kinda did, but he was fairly conservative, so I’m sure most of the people who whine about the **Liberal-Educational Complex** would be just fine with it. Also, I was a Libertarian back then and had a weekly opinion column in my local newspaper, so I was primed to discuss politics regardless. One of my college professors tried to influence my politics. He was a… well, let’s just say he was late for class once, and he was a bit put out we _didn’t_ collectively march on the bursar’s office to demand a partial refund. He was deeply, deeply power-to-the-people. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/53 "2018-02-25T23:48:30Z")
I’m glad the poll was tongue-in-cheek, because of course it doesn’t prove anything. (What would the headline be? “POSTERS FROM PROGRESSIVE-LEANING MESSAGE BOARD SAY THEIR PROFESSORS NEVER INAPPROPRIATELY PUSHED LIBERAL VIEWS.” Well, yeah. Of course we think that.) As to my personal experience in high school and college, I would say most instructors tried to maintain impartiality, but they would occasionally share their views, which tended to be liberal. At the back of my mind, I’m vaguely recalling one jerk who shoved his leftist views down our throats, but I’m having trouble getting more specific than thinking “this guy is inappropriate.” Naturally, I do remember when more conservative views were expressed as well. They were in the minority. Overall, my professors were really good about encouraging debate and listening to views counter to their own. Sure, they might be challenging and ask people to defend their views, but I always thought diversity of thought was welcome. Why not - it makes class more interesting, and if appropriately moderated it is a great way to learn. Being a good liberal myself, I can’t help but share one anecdote about a right-wing economics prof I had at Harvard. This was back when Harvard, in a move that seemed calculated to curry favor with the Reagan Administration, suddenly announced that they were going to rename the Kennedy School of Government the Harvard School of Government. (Cambridge city government, bless 'em, immediately pushed back with a bill to rename Harvard Street, on which the main KSG building was located, as Kennedy Street, so that the name “Kennedy” would still appear on KSG stationery, something that mattered back in 1981). Anyway, it was just a proposition at that point and there was tremendous pushback from the student body. However, the right-wing prof immediately reprinted his problem sets and hand-outs with HSG replacing KSG. When a student asked about it in class, he answered in a pretty threatening tone that it was NOT a subject open to discussion. Asshole. (Anyway, years later the school was renamed the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. I get that they wanted us KSG grads to have a bigger piece of that prestige that goes along with being a Harvard grad, but political views aside I’d have been happy to leave the name alone.) ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/54 "2018-02-26T00:10:03Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > Thanks for the thoughtful and insightful responses everybody. I set up the choices with tongue planted firmly in cheek, so don’t worry about me sending this on to some data collection site. I was trying to make a point to **Starving Artist** , but I doubt he even looked at this. > > I don’t recall any attempts by my college professors to influence my political thinking, or high school for that matter. I do remember in 6th grade our teacher had us debate Nixon vs McGovern in the 1972 election, and she clearly wanted us to favor Nixon. That of course was mauled to oblivion two years later when Watergate broke out. In this case, it wasn’t a liberal trying to brainwash me. He’s right; there most certainly is a well-funded effort underway at many universities to politically influence students. But it’s being done by the Koch brothers, who have donated millions to universities with the caveat that they teach free-market economics to their students, and hire professors who buy into voodoo economics. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/55 "2018-02-26T01:19:53Z")
Some degree of free market is the dominant economic system in 99% of countries. From way before the Koch brothers were even born. Maybe the Koch brother will eat Soros in the conspiracy Olympics. Or vice versa. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/56 "2018-02-26T01:25:37Z")
My college major was physics and politics played no roll at all. The closest I can think of that any liberal ideas were promoted was hearing the Einstein quote “God doesn’t play dice” and that’s hardly political. This was from 1967-71 so about the height of when you might expect such might happen. It did not. Earlier in school, the only thing I can recall was my sixth grade teacher who was incredibly pro Nixon (that’s 1960 young-uns not 1968 or 1972). He went so far as to hand out Nixon-Lodge bumper stickers to all of us. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/57 "2018-02-26T02:19:01Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > I had at least two teachers in high school who were visibly and unapologetically liberal and didn’t care who knew it. I wouldn’t say that they deliberately tried to make me a liberal, but they sure as hell weren’t afraid to preach on about liberal causes (in their cases, underfunding of public education and the influence of nefariousness (abstinence-based sex ed, creationism, that sort of thing)). > > Can’t say it made a lick of difference either way. Underfunding of public education affected their paychecks and working conditions. That’s no more a liberal position, under the circumstances, than asking for a raise is a radical demand for income equality. If you consider creationism a conservative position, you have just smeared conservatism. ---
**Author:** ![apLundell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aplundell/32/14656_2.png) [@apLundell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/apLundell)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/58 "2018-02-26T19:28:14Z")
I’m not sure I even understand the question. How can you educate someone without “influencing their thinking”? The implication of this question is that political opinion should be separate, distinct, and uncontaminated by any knowledge or facts you might possess or learn. ( Of course, If my CompSci professors took time out of class to lecture about their amateur take on political science, that’d be another thing all together. I don’t recall them ever doing that, and would probably have complained to the department, regardless of whether or not I agreed with their take.) ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/59 "2018-02-26T20:09:48Z")
> [@apLundell](#): > > I’m not sure I even understand the question. How can you educate someone without “influencing their thinking”? > The implication of this question is that political opinion should be separate, distinct, and uncontaminated by any knowledge or facts you might possess or learn. Indeed, and I do have one more example of a professor who… took a specific political stance in class and was not going to brook any disagreement on a certain topic… > [@](#): > > ( Of course, If my CompSci professors took time out of class to lecture about their amateur take on political science, that’d be another thing all together. I don’t recall them ever doing that, and would probably have complained to the department, regardless of whether or not I agreed with their take.) … he _was_ a CS professor, as a matter of fact, and the topic was the factual existence of global warming. See, he did embedded systems design for probes which got inserted into the Greenland ice sheet. He damned well wasn’t going to play nice with someone who was so rock-ignorant as to deny global warming was going on, when a large part of his career included looking at the data those probes were returning. You can certainly argue that facts can’t be debated, in that if something happened, claiming it didn’t isn’t a “political position” but simple dishonesty. I’d agree they _shouldn’t be_, in that debate cannot change reality, but I can give you multiple examples of times when facts were debated and outright denied. And, yes, the existence of global warming is definitely among those facts. ---
**Author:** ![jonesj2205](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecc23a/32.png) [@jonesj2205](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jonesj2205)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439/60 "2018-02-26T20:18:09Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > There is also a difference between expressing their own views and opinions in a class and trying to actively influence or force them on students (or not tolerate and respect different views). This would be what I would say I experienced. In most cases it probably didn’t come up at all but if it did it was a side note, just something thrown in to personalize the conversation really. In the few cases where it was presented as central to the theme the professors encouraged their views to be challenged. Not that it was really a fair fight, some 18-year-old vs an expert in the field who knew the subject ahead of time, but the point wasn’t to convince anyone but to learn how to think and present a cogent argument. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-id-your-teachers-and-professors-try-to-influence-your-political-thinking/809439.md?page=4)