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Notably, Roth acknowledged that the current lack of intellectual diversity in higher education had become so extreme that there might be a need for “an affirmative action program for conservatives.”
an affirmative action program" means in all cases "a patch on symptoms to conceal causes". The reason is underneath the symptom: the incentives scheme. Always, ALWAYS check the incentives scheme, for it's the root of all superficial symptoms.
The reason for academia leaning towards socialism as been largely discussed:
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Ego Entitled Resentment
Academics and intellectuals in general have a high opinion of themselves. They should have more money than business men who lack advanced degrees. Yet capitalism seems to ignore intellectuals especially academics.
Academics also love central planning because they don’t understand how markets work. Hayek calls this the conceit of knowledge.
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I worked for Virginia Commonwealth University in the 1990s. Every year they would publish the earnings of professors. The Painting and fine arts professors made about 30,000, the commercial art professor made 50,000 and he always had side gigs for big advertisers. The business professor made 150,000 because he knew how to make money.
I got paid $7 an hour which was double minimum wage as a nude model. Fortunately I got paid minimum 3 hours for each class. And I worked about 25 hours a week.
Back then it was a lot of liberal nonsense in the developing stage but conservatives where about 40 percent. Now it's just Hitler youth pointing at everyone else as Hitler youth.
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Econ and Business school professors are paid the most because they have prospects outside of academia, in the private sector
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As they should.
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Exactly
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I meant to say the fatal conceit, the pretense of knowledge
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Is this how it played out in Argentina: i.e. one party came to dominate all of academia, media, and government?
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Quite the racket. Go into massive amounts of debt to get indoctrinated by wannabe political activists.
Don't get me wrong. If you want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer etc I think higher education is amazing but for most people it's a racket.
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Another distortion caused by government money.
Doctors, lawyers, engineers; heck even writers (who know how to write), actually have market value.
But because gov't money isn't allocated by market forces, we have proliferation of useless departments and useless degrees.
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Substack is great for writers with a large following
Matt Taibbi for example
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1000 percent
Exhibit A: journalism school graduates
Journalists are non essential workers. One reporter quits, his spot will be filled in one hour or less
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Somehow, liberals have done a good job of painting all republicans as anti-science religious zealots.
How did it get that way, I'm not sure.
But the professors are behind the times. These days I'd argue the Left is much more religious than conservatives, and much less capable of balancing their religious fervor with productive public discourse.
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They control television and media
They control the narrative
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The only place the Democrats do not control is the Internet. They've captured education, and the media. The sad part is that liberals are not really liberals but authoritarian goons. They have worked within a system that is corrupt and they are so blind to the machinations that they tell themselves it's due the common good to have authority figures who will do what is right. Meanwhile doing what is right is always someone else's job and never to be owned by those doing actions.
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It's because democrats are so much smarter and Republicans are far too stupid to be professors.
That's sarcasm just incase it wasn't clear.
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I am discovering that I am misunderstood frequently. I think I need to start labelling comments sarcasm more frequently.
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It can be difficult to tell, and I'm sarcastic often enough that it just saves me trouble to label it.
Also sometimes there's language barriers online.
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Good idea.
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In an op-ed this week, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth called on universities to reject “institutional neutrality” and officially support Kamala Harris. Calling neutrality “a retreat,” Roth compared Trump’s election to the rise of the Nazis and insisted that schools should “give up the popular pastime of criticizing the woke and call out instead the overt racism.”
A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.
There is little evidence that faculty members have any interest in changing this culture or creating greater diversity at schools. In places like North Carolina State University a study found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 20 to 1.
The Harvard Crimson has documented how the school’s departments have virtually eliminated Republicans. In one study of multiple departments last year, they found that more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.”
Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
Consider that, according to Gallup, the U.S. population is roughly equally divided among conservatives (36%), moderates (35%), and liberals (26%).
This does not happen randomly. Indeed, if a business reduced the number of women or minorities to less than 5 percent, a court would likely find de facto discrimination.
Yet, Kennedy rejected the notion that the elite school should strive to “look more like America.”
It is not just that schools like Harvard “do not look like America,” it does not even look like liberal Massachusetts, which is almost 30 percent Republican.
Given my respect for Professor Kennedy, I was surprised that he dismissed the sharp rise in students saying that they did not feel comfortable speaking in classes. Referring to them as “conservative snowflakes,” he insisted that they simply had to have the courage of their convictions.
There is little likelihood that Harvard or higher education will change. It is like the old joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb. The answer is just one but the bulb really has to want to change.
The political polling of professors reflects the near complete cleansing of colleges of conservative faculty. The question is whether donors or applicants will continue to support an echo chamber that has become ideologically deafening.
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43 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 29 Oct
Universities: where cutting edge research in clownworldology takes place.
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The proper realignment of us vs them is almost complete.
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