Question for college professors: What should a conservative do?

Ok, its a given that most colleges tilt to the left. However that doesnt mean every professor is a leftist or that even liberal professors are “out to get” students with conservative values. I think most professors (especially the ones I’ve listened to on this board) want to encourage open discussion, do their homework, and most important - to learn the topic.

Students OTOH, well their young and can be quick to judgement and action.

So that’s what I want to ask. What should a conservative student do if:

  1. They have a liberal professor who’s openly against and targets conservative students?

  2. They are around far leftist students who find out he/she is conservative and immediately target them as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc…

So please. Those of you who work in academia. You get a conservative student in your class who doesnt push it but wont back down and who does a good job on assignments, what would you tell them to help them succeed in college?

Leftist and liberal aren’t synonyms.

Not a college professor (though I know some), but what is the subject of the class, and how does it relate to the student being conservative?

While there are certainly fields in which such discussion would be relevant, I wouldn’t think, in most classes, that the topic would even come up; or would be applicable if it did.

Not to poison the well, and to learn the difference between ‘their’ and ‘they’re’?

Don’t support policies that are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and you should be OK.

Are the students there to learn from the professor, or to bring their preconceived notions to the class? What do you consider to be"conservative values"?

Plenty of conservative students get through college just fine. Those who don’t just want an excuse to be an asshole.

This is a classic “if everyone has a problem with you, then you’re probably the problem” issue.

I’m not in academia, but I would encourage all students to keep an open mind and be tolerant of others.

If they can’t cope with the open world and think everyone’s out to get them, they can always go to Brigham Young or Liberty University and stay in their safe space bubble. Otherwise suck it up, learn not to be a whiny self-proclaimed conservative martyr just because people disagree with you and you should get along fine.

Well, IMHO, the first thing the student should do is figure out the difference between ‘targeting a conservative student’ and ‘making the student give valid arguments and supporting facts for statements’ or just ‘not letting the student get away with being a dick to other people’. Believe me, if a student can make a coherent, fact-based argument for a conservative policy, professors will respect that. But it is not a professor’s job to praise ignorance, illogical thinking and an unexamined, unsupported belief in one’s superiority.

I think you’ll also have to define what type of “conservative student” we’re talking about. Pro-market? Small government? Socially conservative? Anti-abortion? Religious? Creationist? Anti-vaccine? MAGA?

I’m don’t work in academia, but here’s my two cents.

This shouldn’t be allowed if it’s totally irrelevant to the course. Keep a record of harassment and talk to the dean.

If you’re in some political science class, and you just mean the teacher doesn’t like you or your views - if they aren’t actually harassing you - then get over it. Your professor sucks, but that’s life.

Also, and this may not apply to you, unless you are called upon to offer your opinion, don’t stand up and correct flippant remarks you consider “leftist” or “liberal”.

Conservatism is not a protected class, and you are fair game for other students. You will just have to stand up for yourself and explain, over and over and over again, why you are not racist/sexist/homophobic. There is a point at which it becomes harassment, and if students are threatening or actually committing violent acts, at that point you should go to campus or municipal authorities.

And then of course, there are some mainstream conservative ideas which are racist, sexist, or homophobic. I’m not saying such ideas are moral or immoral, or that you support them, but for example, a ban on homosexual marriage is inherently homophobic because it prejudices homosexuals. There’s no getting around that.

~Max

I doubt that any more than a few Dopers are actually college faculty, so most responses in this thread will be from non-faculty like us:

In the 1# situation, I would say that the conservative student should document what is going on, then go to the school administration. Gather evidence and report. If that does not work, go to the media.

In the 2# situation, the faculty should implement and execute a strong anti-bullying program. Do not let the majority bully a minority. (I would say this just as much if it were the other way around; a majority of conservative students targeting a minority of liberals)

It could reasonably be considered to be a liberal (or leftish) position on education itself that the student’s legitimate purpose in the classroom is to push boundaries, to integrate their actual felt experience into the assignments, to stand up for what they believe in etc AS WELL AS to demonstrate appropriate proficiency in the materials and concepts assigned. And reciprocally, it could reasonably be considered to be a more conservative position that, no, the pupil’s purpose in the classroom is to learn the material and demonstrate the proficiency, and leave their social or political or personal axes at the door to be ground in some more appropriate place.

In light of that I’m gonna give you TWO answers, one reflecting the more liberal attitude and one the more conservative.
Yes, some of the people teaching at the college level (ranging from people like me, grad students teaching incoming freshmen in intro courses to fully tenured published importantly-ensconced professors teaching grad student seminars) are not only liberal (or leftish) but also harbor contemptuous attitudes towards people with more conservative perspectives and consider it to be part of their role to challenge and discredit that crap and pour their more correct understandings into those stupid student skulls. Not all, by any means, but yeah it’s a thing.

The conservative reaction, as described up above, would be to keep your head down, learn how to apply Theory X to Situation A as a tool of analysis or how to set up a statistics study or whatever, and don’t bristle or attempt to negate the liberal-lefty socialist example or bring in your own conservative points as a subtext, including deliberately choosing something like that as your selected subject to analyze or whatever. Get your grade and then go forth, purpose at university accomplished.

The liberal progressive reaction, to which the conservative-minded student is paradoxically but legitimately entitled, is to engage and confront. It may cost you a grade point here and there, and is more likely to expose you to argument, belittling or condescending responses in the classroom, etc. You wanna be an inverse social justice warrior, that’s the price tag you’ve decided to risk paying. Show that you understand how to apply that theory, such as the conflict theory in sociology, to a situation where the oppressor, the one with the power, is a liberal establishment, and the people the oppressor is keeping down through false consciousness and the manipulation of definitions and whatnot, are some conservative people. A fair professor (or grad student) will acknowledge the proficient use of the theory. A less fair instructor will engage with the subtext and ignore or sideline the actual assignment in order to correct your horrible perspective, but may still not keep you from getting due credit. An even less fair instructor will then hold all this against you and grade you unfairly at every opportunity. Don’t lose track of the fact that you (the hypothetical student, I mean) did choose to engage on this level, you’re being an activist. You can choose to appeal to the structures of authority that sit above the instructor and attempt to get a redress of grievances, but don’t expect them to white-knight you. At some point the paradoxical nature of your quest is going to bite you, as you find yourself railing against injustice and oppression that is built into the structure of authority and the vested interest that the institution has in preserving that authority-structure, quite aside from the original conservatism of your views and the liberal ones of your instructor that shape and color the course you were taking. But that’s between you and your own paradigm.

It’s interesting, because one of the students I most enjoyed teaching to told me during the run-up to the 2016 election that they supported Trump. And this was in a small French-speaking Canadian university, where you wouldn’t necessarily expect this. Now I cannot say for sure that they’re still a Trump supporter, what with the way his presidency is going, but they’re obviously still quite conservative and pro-market, which isn’t so surprising from a business student.

Just like the OP, I really did think the student might get into trouble for their political views, but it didn’t happen. They seem to be very well-liked, not only by me, and have been active in the student radio, student newspaper, and so on. So while it is true that universities lean left, and the student body (and some professors as well, as I’ve witnessed) can at times quite forcefully try to enforce identity politics or social justice values, this has somewhat changed my opinion of how well conservative students can fare in this environment. Maybe things would be different for a conservative student in an “<identity> studies” department, but I don’t expect they’d be interested to study there in the first place.

Generally this.

If you go around confronting people with your views (regardless of what those views are), people are going to respond in kind. Don’t want trouble? Don’t cause trouble.

I was a CS college prof for many years. I never ran into anything political between myself and my students. The closest was when I met my first openly conservative fellow prof (also in CS). Turns out he was a “me first” type of person. Okay, got it (in this particular case). But still a nice enough person and we got along fine.

It depends on what course you’re taking. In objective fields like the hard sciences, it shouldn’t come up and is inappropriate if it does. In softer fields like the humanities or sociology or political science, it depends on what you want. If you just need the course credits, keep your head down and get what you can out of the non-propagandizing parts.

IME it is a lot like the SDMB. There will be a certain amount of sniping, mostly but not all from the other students, and the rest of it might be interesting and informative, as long as you give up the expectation of complete fairness. You’ll need your A game if you want to speak up, and most but not all professors will respect a well-reasoned position, although you can forget about grad school in non-STEM fields.

Maybe it’s not fair to expect of a student without a lot of life experience, but you need to treat it like diversity training at work or the like. Get thru it, so you can move on to real work, either in that class or in the rest of your course load. If you want to push back, go ahead, but as AHunter3 says, it’ll cost you.

Regards,
Shodan

How is this hypothetical liberal professor “targeting” their conservative students?

Not in academia either, but studied economics and political science at a large school and I had professors of all political persuasions. Of course politics is going to come up in classes such as I took, everyone just got along. While we may all have had political opinions on all sorts of topics, in the end we all wanted an A. And yes, there were plenty of late night dorm room discussions over weed and cheap beer.

Dr H is a fairly well known libertarian and I took two classes from him. Sure we disagreed in the classroom a few times, but, you know wait? I probably studied harder for his class so I could point out flaws in his arguments that government was always the problem.

Dr. M always kept telling us about how it wasn’t rational to vote and you’d better believe I prepared every single argument to try to disprove him.

It kinda sounds like some campus conservatives have a victim complex.

There’s a line between being conservative, which while I’d be wary of the student due to my own circumstances, wouldn’t mean anything. However, expressing opinions making other students feel unwelcome in any way for their race, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, sexuality etc would create problems. Especially in computer science where we already struggle to retain certain demographics.

Also I haven’t heard of many professors targeting students but boy have I heard about conservative students targeting TAs and graduate student instructors, including my friend in the math department whose conservative student doxxed them on 4chan and flooded them with targeted misogynistic and transphobic harassment.

The department did nothing to rectify this except barring him from their office hours and uh… Disallowing my friend from grading his papers which is more for the harasser’s protection than my friend’s.