I teach at a well-regarded journalism school. Myself and another colleague are the only conservatives that we are aware of. We joke that we are the real diversity hires. I'll have students sit in my office and "come out" as conservative, as if they were coming out as gay. I more or less keep my head down and go about my business. I don't think politics belong in the classroom. Many of my colleagues disagree - they DO think it's their job to breed activists.
I love this Substack, because this is my day-to-day experience.
If ever you encounter an academic tethered to reality please do the right thing and cut the cord. It's not morally responsible to sit and watch people suffer like that.
This is great. I do wish there were a category of praise or recognition for those of us who didn’t use these terms, who ignored all that, and just published good work. We are more than just the background against which bias can be seen…
At film school in NY in the late '80s, the professor told our class -- all aspiring Spielbergs -- that we would be selling out to corporatism if we ever worked in Hollywood. We were instead supposed to follow her lead and make unwatchable documentaries about the plight of the Eskimo. I can't even imagine what the place is like these days.
Two generations of K-12 School Union indoctrination didn't teach public HS grads to read, write, or calculate the massive cost of student loans, but it groomed them well: they're powerless when confronted with a college faculty hired to indoctrinate, not educate; to "mobilize," not let them learn; but to resent society, rather than use their talents to lead a productive life to contribute to it.
My first college teaching job was in 1975. I loved it. But my younger colleagues who are still teaching have to "lay low"; their students can't read any more, can't write, can hardly count... while the provost threatens them: "Don't give any grade below a B - those students are paying your salary!"
So what are parents to do? Find a decent home-school co-op?
And what are smart and well-taught high-school grads to do? Go to college and be harassed, downgraded, even denigrated?
They are unlikely to be educated at all.
My HVAC guy's 30. No college, some inextpensive community college tech courses. His employer paid for his specialist training - all of it, every field. He has no debt. He's getting married next month and they're buying a house.
All those recent Ivy-League grads in NYC who voted for Mamdani last fall were onto something. But they hadn't been taught enough to figure it out. They'd been trained to resent and mobilize. Instead of to be productive
But hey, so what? They ooze with anger and depend on the welfare state. Free buses! Free rent!
Just like North Korea.
Parents: should you spend real money to send your kids to college?
Kids: should you waste your money to go there?
Even if it's "free," it's four years out of your life. Think about it.
In your experience, are there any researchers at these conferences who still primarily pursue truth in some form? Or are 100% of them primarily activists now?
Yes. But the ratio has shifted dramatically, and it varies a lot by field. Communications is among the most ideologically homogeneous disciplines by any measurable metric — donation records, survey data, faculty self-identification. You're not going to AEJMC or NCA to encounter a diversity of viewpoints. That ship sailed a while ago.
STEM conferences are better. The empirical tradition is harder to fully capture, but it's creeping in there too. I've written about a colleague who published a piece arguing that chemistry needs to be "decolonized." Chemistry. If it's reached the lab, it's reached everywhere.
The genuine truth-seekers are still out there. They're just increasingly quiet, increasingly marginalized, and increasingly likely to have learned which panels to skip. Same way students learn which departments to avoid. You learn the geography.
I teach at a well-regarded journalism school. Myself and another colleague are the only conservatives that we are aware of. We joke that we are the real diversity hires. I'll have students sit in my office and "come out" as conservative, as if they were coming out as gay. I more or less keep my head down and go about my business. I don't think politics belong in the classroom. Many of my colleagues disagree - they DO think it's their job to breed activists.
I love this Substack, because this is my day-to-day experience.
Same.
If ever you encounter an academic tethered to reality please do the right thing and cut the cord. It's not morally responsible to sit and watch people suffer like that.
This is great. I do wish there were a category of praise or recognition for those of us who didn’t use these terms, who ignored all that, and just published good work. We are more than just the background against which bias can be seen…
At film school in NY in the late '80s, the professor told our class -- all aspiring Spielbergs -- that we would be selling out to corporatism if we ever worked in Hollywood. We were instead supposed to follow her lead and make unwatchable documentaries about the plight of the Eskimo. I can't even imagine what the place is like these days.
I wonder how many authors of the “papers” listed were female.
Two generations of K-12 School Union indoctrination didn't teach public HS grads to read, write, or calculate the massive cost of student loans, but it groomed them well: they're powerless when confronted with a college faculty hired to indoctrinate, not educate; to "mobilize," not let them learn; but to resent society, rather than use their talents to lead a productive life to contribute to it.
My first college teaching job was in 1975. I loved it. But my younger colleagues who are still teaching have to "lay low"; their students can't read any more, can't write, can hardly count... while the provost threatens them: "Don't give any grade below a B - those students are paying your salary!"
So what are parents to do? Find a decent home-school co-op?
And what are smart and well-taught high-school grads to do? Go to college and be harassed, downgraded, even denigrated?
They are unlikely to be educated at all.
My HVAC guy's 30. No college, some inextpensive community college tech courses. His employer paid for his specialist training - all of it, every field. He has no debt. He's getting married next month and they're buying a house.
All those recent Ivy-League grads in NYC who voted for Mamdani last fall were onto something. But they hadn't been taught enough to figure it out. They'd been trained to resent and mobilize. Instead of to be productive
But hey, so what? They ooze with anger and depend on the welfare state. Free buses! Free rent!
Just like North Korea.
Parents: should you spend real money to send your kids to college?
Kids: should you waste your money to go there?
Even if it's "free," it's four years out of your life. Think about it.
In your experience, are there any researchers at these conferences who still primarily pursue truth in some form? Or are 100% of them primarily activists now?
Yes. But the ratio has shifted dramatically, and it varies a lot by field. Communications is among the most ideologically homogeneous disciplines by any measurable metric — donation records, survey data, faculty self-identification. You're not going to AEJMC or NCA to encounter a diversity of viewpoints. That ship sailed a while ago.
STEM conferences are better. The empirical tradition is harder to fully capture, but it's creeping in there too. I've written about a colleague who published a piece arguing that chemistry needs to be "decolonized." Chemistry. If it's reached the lab, it's reached everywhere.
The genuine truth-seekers are still out there. They're just increasingly quiet, increasingly marginalized, and increasingly likely to have learned which panels to skip. Same way students learn which departments to avoid. You learn the geography.
Worthwhile to peruse the following (at https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/policy-statements/1940-statement-principles-academic):
AAUP 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with 1970 Interpretive Comments