Just one more side comment: The Corporation - 13 members including the President - selects its own nominees to continue itself; and with the asset of the Overseers, the larger and older body (~1640 rather than 1650), the continues business. As a result, at the moment, the Fellows who selected Gay will select the next President, and if any resign, the remaining ones select the next ones.
The Overseers are elected by the Alumni; but in an attempt (failed) to defeat what became at Supreme Court case, they have limited the number of Overseers who can serve from a 'petition' mechanism as opposed to the 'nominating committee' mechanism - in which the Overseers basically select the new Overseers. This was, ironically, to 'avoid politicizing' the process - it makes the Overseers strong and brittle. Along with changes meant to make it easy for young alumni to serve, it was meant to accelerate the social transformation and harden Harvard as an ever more Progressive institution.
> Is its main mission advocacy for, advancement of, and indoctrination in a particular political and ideological cause[?]
To make a tedious point, Harvard was established in 1636 by the Great and General Court of the theocratic Massachusetts Bay Colony to train Puritan clergy for the new commonwealth's "church in the wilderness". So it started out with its main mission being advocacy for, advancement of, and indoctrination in a particular political and ideological cause (religion being both in the XVII century), and arguably kept to this role for the almost four centuries it has been in existence. Also, since public religion of one sort or another appears to be an indispensable component of any functioning society, this role is indispensable too. The argument is really about whether a given public religion went nuts in some sense. It is certainly not without precedent.
Not every opinion piece needs to act as a full argumentative essay, especially when a regular columnist’s basic position is defensible and well understood.
I think Cochrane is mistaken. It would be much easier to make a change of institutional direction in a "smoke-filled room" than to announce the change publicly; a public announcement would involve an open fight with the entrenched power base it has, itself, created. If Harvard and the other universities ever decide to move back, again, to the pursuit of truth, knowledge and excellence, they are much more likely to do it quietly than publicly.
Early in my career, I spent some time at Harvard's Russian/Eurasian studies center, and once in a while I check to see what is going on there. When I checked this morning, the first topic posted under the topic 'insights' is 'Event Series: Queer Focus.' Early in 2023, there was an announcement of a seminar series devoted to 'decolonizing Slavic studies.' Climate change is also a prominent focus (i.e. controlling the oil and gas industry in Russia and Central Asia). So I would say the forces of social justice activism have already won. Now I know some will think who cares, Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin is a bad guy, and so on. The point is, however, if they have taken over Russian area studies, they have taken over practically everything else, except perhaps STEM (?). Also, how does focusing on topics like gender, decolonization, and climate change help students and future foreign policy makers understand the basis of, and develop countermeasures against, Russia's geopolitical strategy? Finally, there is the question of whether the focus on social justice activism helps to justify Russian paranoia about the West's policy goals towards Russia.
Claudine Gay is exactly who they wanted her to be. But I think that's worth examining a little.
I noticed that she attended Phillips Exeter. My father-in-law did as well. Much, much earlier in time of course. Yet for some reason I immediately pictured him throwing snowballs with Claudine.
All these decades he's watched C-Span or the like and seen old classmates on TV.
To say that he's not been part of the inner circle in the manner of those old classmates would be to understate it by a million miles. But of course, as is often the case with intellectual outsiders, he's exerted influence in more valuable ways.
Anyway, I see from Google that Phillips Exeter has indeed been a (very) early adopter of DEI - just as you would expect - what could be more Yankee WASP-ish than that/it? And despite that, they are still wearing hairshirts over the issue - most recently an editorial from a scholarship alumna complaining that when she got there she found that some others still pay to attend, and that wasn't fair.
But the thing about Yankee do-gooders is - they like to keep a string attached: they like to retain a little shutoff switch so that they remain in control. Sometimes it's in the form of a little moral judgment they secretly keep in their pockets, as when they legalize drugs for the masses.
Other times it's their careful choice of plebeian, as with Gay, whom they've basically created. They paid to transplant her to New Hampshire. They paid to send her to Princeton. For whatever reason that didn't suit so they arranged Stanford instead. Of course this was leading up to grad school at Harvard, the mecca of the do-gooding Yankees. They gave her what I read is "the revered top prize" for her dissertation - a fact more salient than any cribbing.
To her credit, she signalled what she needed to signal - no small feat, I couldn't do it - by sticking with this trajectory that others laid out for her, culminating in her being labeled on the basis of her "dissertation" a "recognized expert" in a gobbledygook field that they had just invented and directed minority students to enter; and a "visionary" - the latter a stand-alone label that never needs elaboration. And thus: "first black-ish president of Harvard"!
People saying, I can't believe they didn't catch her poor citation practices, her failure to take sources and rearrange token words in the accepted academic manner - are wide of the mark. Do you imagine anyone read the papers she wrote? Do you further imagine anyone read those sources? Let alone compared them? Good Lord.
Does she know that? I doubt it. Academia seems to have taken the invocation to truth-seeking and twisted it around so that nobody in the humanities or social sciences ever utters a true word. Again: not her fault.
Here's where I depart from the rest of you: I feel sorry for her. It's a woman thing, perhaps. I can't help but get a cringey-creepy feeling when I think about her and what a bad month she's having.
And part of why I feel sorry for her is I see that the "elite" do this time and again - they stand someone up whom they know - if only in that cynical innermost circle - is hollow.
People might say, well, this was the best candidate they could find, for their diversity dreams.
I don't believe that a minute! There are certainly black intellectuals (not groomed by themselves) whom they could have chosen, and who would not - when something like this occurred (which, to be clear, is merely that she doggedly stuck to the script they and their lawyers gave her!) - have been easily ridiculed as this woman has been.
But that's just it: she wasn't really part of the inner circle, and they never meant her to be.
To me it's kind of tragic. It's not kind to pull the rug out from under people, to embarrass them; and it's doubly not kind to set things up so it will be easy to do so.
As Cochrane details, she used her power to punish black and female faculty members who went off the DEI reservation (Hooven, Fryer and Sullivan), and in this way, climbed up the ladder at Harvard by stepping on the heads of more qualified representatives of the 'diversity community.' For that reason alone, I cannot muster any sympathy for her.
You express very gently what I often think in much harsher terms. "Affirmative Action" in college admissions survives because the connected have learned they can game the system by excluding real qualified students that "aren't our kind" while admitting those who won't knock their scions off their undeserved perch, all the while congratulating themselves on their virtuous policies.
Arnold frames the issue as a conflict between those who see the mission of the university as the promotion of all that is encompassed by the term woke, versus those who wish to restore its great traditional mission. I would put it differently. The first category I would describe as those who push a specious moralizing narrative for status, social leverage, and outright grift, and are insouciant about the consequent harm to others. The second category are those who passively let themselves be shoved around, and the institutions they value be destroyed, rather than face the ugly facts about what was happening and what needed to be done.
You can say it that way, and might not be wrong, but that language will be rejected by people on the other side, most people with no strong opinions on the issue, and quite a few people who should be in your tribe.
The language was confrontational, not persuasive. The way Kling framed it seems good to me. I doubt his framing convinces anyone to correct anything but it starts a conversation without bias.
What language would you use after initiation of a conversation without bias to convince someone who currently supports them that the social justice distortions should be purged from the Academy?
I'd like to hear the best reasons for higher education to focus on social justice. No strawman please.
You kind of touched on it but maybe Claudine Gay is the only thing she can be. How much more could she be like Lawrence Summers (in the best, least caustic ways) without meeting his fate?
While Arnold's comments are familiar to me, and I largely agree with them, they don't make me "feel good." They make me sad. Two points.
1) I disagree, or at least hope to disagree, that the current academy is a lost cause. I'm hoping competition will set it straight, for example, pressures from withholding of significant alumni contributions; competition from other academic institutions that have maintained their focus on truth-seeking, e.g. U. Chicago; and the loss of applicants for admission to some of the more notorious campuses.
2) What's happening in the academy is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. For some reason, King Lear comes to mind.
I’m considering a connection (maybe) of woke and anti-semitism.
Both reject (abhor) Jewish bible. New Testament also written by Jews.
Jesus was a Jew. Name means ‘Jehovah is salvation’.
Absolute despicable to them.
Where starts?
First page of bible . . .
“Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every creeping animal that is moving on the earth.’’
Humans are image of god - not smarter animals. Free will and only god has right to make law.
Animals are to be in subjection to humans. Not worshiped.
Also ‘fill the earth and subdue it.’ Not protect wilderness. Change into park and use for human flourishing.
All this directly, deeply, adamantly rejected in current culture.
The only solution is new universities. Ave Maria and Hillsdale are the model. Fortunately the US is very different from countries like UK and Canada in that it is relatively easy to create new universities. If Ackman and the other donors had put their money in new institutions their values would be better expressed. As it is Ackman tried to find a go-around (I the donor get to spend any excess over $10mm, which Harvard saw right through) in order to spend the money as he saw fit when he could have just given the money to a smaller university.
I don't think it's much of an institution yet, but they at least have an impressive group of people listed on their Board of Advisors, so....I dunno, I guess that counts for something, anyway.
The ratio of conservative students to progressive students at Hillsdale is 12:1.
Imagine sending your son or daughter to a school in which the viewpoint ratio was flipped; so 1:12, or 12 progressives students for every 1 conservative student. I don’t think either is a good model in general.
I think Hillsdale is a great fit for some conservatives, especially those looking for a faith-based school, where non-believers make up a small fraction of the school. I don’t think Hillsdale is a good fit for most secular libertarians, and certainly not for 99.9% of progressives.
I think BYU is a great fit for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but not a great fit for other Christians, but keep in mind that both Hillsdale and BYU have been labeled as Warning schools by FIRE. At these schools, free speech is held to a lower standard than other values. That might be okay for some, but be aware, these schools are not for everyone, and certainly if pursuit of truth is a priority then be prepared to be disappointed by the lack of free discourse around certain delicate topics.
FYI - there are only 13 colleges on FIRE’s list of 250 top colleges that have a more skewed viewpoint ratio than Hillsdale. Viewpoint ratio being the ratio of progressive students to conservative students or vice versa.
Here they are for comparison. A negative number indicates a conservative majority; positive is a progressive majority.
Liberty University: -20
Hillsdale: -12
Johns Hopkins: 13
Haverford: 13
Wellesley: 13
Howard: 14
Skidmore: 15
Rochester: 15
Macalester College: 16
Oberlin: 21
Scripps: 24
Grinnell College: 24
Occidental College: 36
Smith: 55
And here are the viewpoint ratios for some colleges with extremely high average SAT scores. Not as skewed as Hillsdale in terms of viewpoints ratio.
Yale: 4
MIT: 4
UC Berkeley: 5
Stanford: 5
Vanderbilt: 6
U. Of Chicago: 4
Duke: 3
Harvard: 3
But you bring up a great point. Hillsdale is a great fit for certain conservatives, just as Harvard is a great fit for certain progressives.
But where is the college for those who are neither conservative, progressive or religious?
Further, we need to think more carefully about the appropriateness of free speech in the case of a given classroom, on given college campus, within a certain church or faith-based school. Free speech is certainly not a good thing in all learning environments. Maintaining order, being productive, and being respectful might be more important. So in this sense, you’re right: Hillsdale might be a great model.
Can we get a Hillsdale College that has a more universal appeal? One in which the ratio of conservatives to progressives is closer to 1:1?
Is it possible to build a university system which actively institutionalizes a balance of near 1/1 for faculty, admin and students? How would this be done? Should it be done?
Oddly, it makes me think of a political Harry Potter, and the need to bring in more Griffendorfs or whatever.
A dozen or so universities have approximately 1:1 at the student level, but it’s almost certainly not intentional. It could be done quite easily though, but I doubt any are trying,
Should it be done? Like any entrepreneurial venture, it depends; if people demand it, then yes, but it’s an emergent phenomenon. If people don’t want it, your business should suffer losses.
I have no data on the faculty or admin being anywhere near 1:1, but it could be done as well. Schools hire for bias on certain topics. Churches hire based on beliefs. You could hire based on belief with a balanced target rather than a biased target.
Thanks for the reply. It seems like a valuable way to market and differentiate a university. "Our students represent the top 5000 conservative and top 5000 liberal minds."
The lukewarm students are always going to be attracted to the mainstream universities, new universities attract extremists. You can take the top 20% of Ivy league rejects and create a student body that is more impressive than Harvard, at least by the time the students graduate.
I agree. Comparing ratios of progressives to conservatives as I’ve done here pretends that 12:1 is as bad as 1:12. Of course Hillsdale’s 12:1 is better than John Hopkins approximately 1:12. My simplistic magnitude comparison doesn’t capture the difference in potency between today’s progressive and today’s conservative, especially a Hillsdale conservative.
Hillsdale is 12:1 with an average SAT of 1425. Pretty darn good for a compromise, but I’m looking for better than Hillsdale.
Just one more side comment: The Corporation - 13 members including the President - selects its own nominees to continue itself; and with the asset of the Overseers, the larger and older body (~1640 rather than 1650), the continues business. As a result, at the moment, the Fellows who selected Gay will select the next President, and if any resign, the remaining ones select the next ones.
The Overseers are elected by the Alumni; but in an attempt (failed) to defeat what became at Supreme Court case, they have limited the number of Overseers who can serve from a 'petition' mechanism as opposed to the 'nominating committee' mechanism - in which the Overseers basically select the new Overseers. This was, ironically, to 'avoid politicizing' the process - it makes the Overseers strong and brittle. Along with changes meant to make it easy for young alumni to serve, it was meant to accelerate the social transformation and harden Harvard as an ever more Progressive institution.
> Is its main mission advocacy for, advancement of, and indoctrination in a particular political and ideological cause[?]
To make a tedious point, Harvard was established in 1636 by the Great and General Court of the theocratic Massachusetts Bay Colony to train Puritan clergy for the new commonwealth's "church in the wilderness". So it started out with its main mission being advocacy for, advancement of, and indoctrination in a particular political and ideological cause (religion being both in the XVII century), and arguably kept to this role for the almost four centuries it has been in existence. Also, since public religion of one sort or another appears to be an indispensable component of any functioning society, this role is indispensable too. The argument is really about whether a given public religion went nuts in some sense. It is certainly not without precedent.
“ So this essay does not deserve a good grade.”.
Hoist by your own petard :) …..again.
Not every opinion piece needs to act as a full argumentative essay, especially when a regular columnist’s basic position is defensible and well understood.
Now we shall have a test of the Cochrane-Kling hypothesis. Gay has resigned.
Arnold, Claudine Gray or Claudine Gay?
Well, interesting .. she's gone
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/3/claudine-gay-resign-harvard/
I think Cochrane is mistaken. It would be much easier to make a change of institutional direction in a "smoke-filled room" than to announce the change publicly; a public announcement would involve an open fight with the entrenched power base it has, itself, created. If Harvard and the other universities ever decide to move back, again, to the pursuit of truth, knowledge and excellence, they are much more likely to do it quietly than publicly.
The woke got Larry Summers. The anti-woke got Claudine Gay.
The dogs bark. That hardly matters if the caravan just moves on.
Early in my career, I spent some time at Harvard's Russian/Eurasian studies center, and once in a while I check to see what is going on there. When I checked this morning, the first topic posted under the topic 'insights' is 'Event Series: Queer Focus.' Early in 2023, there was an announcement of a seminar series devoted to 'decolonizing Slavic studies.' Climate change is also a prominent focus (i.e. controlling the oil and gas industry in Russia and Central Asia). So I would say the forces of social justice activism have already won. Now I know some will think who cares, Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin is a bad guy, and so on. The point is, however, if they have taken over Russian area studies, they have taken over practically everything else, except perhaps STEM (?). Also, how does focusing on topics like gender, decolonization, and climate change help students and future foreign policy makers understand the basis of, and develop countermeasures against, Russia's geopolitical strategy? Finally, there is the question of whether the focus on social justice activism helps to justify Russian paranoia about the West's policy goals towards Russia.
Claudine Gay is exactly who they wanted her to be. But I think that's worth examining a little.
I noticed that she attended Phillips Exeter. My father-in-law did as well. Much, much earlier in time of course. Yet for some reason I immediately pictured him throwing snowballs with Claudine.
All these decades he's watched C-Span or the like and seen old classmates on TV.
To say that he's not been part of the inner circle in the manner of those old classmates would be to understate it by a million miles. But of course, as is often the case with intellectual outsiders, he's exerted influence in more valuable ways.
Anyway, I see from Google that Phillips Exeter has indeed been a (very) early adopter of DEI - just as you would expect - what could be more Yankee WASP-ish than that/it? And despite that, they are still wearing hairshirts over the issue - most recently an editorial from a scholarship alumna complaining that when she got there she found that some others still pay to attend, and that wasn't fair.
But the thing about Yankee do-gooders is - they like to keep a string attached: they like to retain a little shutoff switch so that they remain in control. Sometimes it's in the form of a little moral judgment they secretly keep in their pockets, as when they legalize drugs for the masses.
Other times it's their careful choice of plebeian, as with Gay, whom they've basically created. They paid to transplant her to New Hampshire. They paid to send her to Princeton. For whatever reason that didn't suit so they arranged Stanford instead. Of course this was leading up to grad school at Harvard, the mecca of the do-gooding Yankees. They gave her what I read is "the revered top prize" for her dissertation - a fact more salient than any cribbing.
To her credit, she signalled what she needed to signal - no small feat, I couldn't do it - by sticking with this trajectory that others laid out for her, culminating in her being labeled on the basis of her "dissertation" a "recognized expert" in a gobbledygook field that they had just invented and directed minority students to enter; and a "visionary" - the latter a stand-alone label that never needs elaboration. And thus: "first black-ish president of Harvard"!
People saying, I can't believe they didn't catch her poor citation practices, her failure to take sources and rearrange token words in the accepted academic manner - are wide of the mark. Do you imagine anyone read the papers she wrote? Do you further imagine anyone read those sources? Let alone compared them? Good Lord.
Does she know that? I doubt it. Academia seems to have taken the invocation to truth-seeking and twisted it around so that nobody in the humanities or social sciences ever utters a true word. Again: not her fault.
Here's where I depart from the rest of you: I feel sorry for her. It's a woman thing, perhaps. I can't help but get a cringey-creepy feeling when I think about her and what a bad month she's having.
And part of why I feel sorry for her is I see that the "elite" do this time and again - they stand someone up whom they know - if only in that cynical innermost circle - is hollow.
People might say, well, this was the best candidate they could find, for their diversity dreams.
I don't believe that a minute! There are certainly black intellectuals (not groomed by themselves) whom they could have chosen, and who would not - when something like this occurred (which, to be clear, is merely that she doggedly stuck to the script they and their lawyers gave her!) - have been easily ridiculed as this woman has been.
But that's just it: she wasn't really part of the inner circle, and they never meant her to be.
To me it's kind of tragic. It's not kind to pull the rug out from under people, to embarrass them; and it's doubly not kind to set things up so it will be easy to do so.
I hope she doesn't get fired.
As Cochrane details, she used her power to punish black and female faculty members who went off the DEI reservation (Hooven, Fryer and Sullivan), and in this way, climbed up the ladder at Harvard by stepping on the heads of more qualified representatives of the 'diversity community.' For that reason alone, I cannot muster any sympathy for her.
She resigned.
You express very gently what I often think in much harsher terms. "Affirmative Action" in college admissions survives because the connected have learned they can game the system by excluding real qualified students that "aren't our kind" while admitting those who won't knock their scions off their undeserved perch, all the while congratulating themselves on their virtuous policies.
Arnold frames the issue as a conflict between those who see the mission of the university as the promotion of all that is encompassed by the term woke, versus those who wish to restore its great traditional mission. I would put it differently. The first category I would describe as those who push a specious moralizing narrative for status, social leverage, and outright grift, and are insouciant about the consequent harm to others. The second category are those who passively let themselves be shoved around, and the institutions they value be destroyed, rather than face the ugly facts about what was happening and what needed to be done.
You can say it that way, and might not be wrong, but that language will be rejected by people on the other side, most people with no strong opinions on the issue, and quite a few people who should be in your tribe.
What language would you use to convince those people to purge all the social justice distortions out of the Academy?
The language was confrontational, not persuasive. The way Kling framed it seems good to me. I doubt his framing convinces anyone to correct anything but it starts a conversation without bias.
What language would you use after initiation of a conversation without bias to convince someone who currently supports them that the social justice distortions should be purged from the Academy?
I'd like to hear the best reasons for higher education to focus on social justice. No strawman please.
You kind of touched on it but maybe Claudine Gay is the only thing she can be. How much more could she be like Lawrence Summers (in the best, least caustic ways) without meeting his fate?
While Arnold's comments are familiar to me, and I largely agree with them, they don't make me "feel good." They make me sad. Two points.
1) I disagree, or at least hope to disagree, that the current academy is a lost cause. I'm hoping competition will set it straight, for example, pressures from withholding of significant alumni contributions; competition from other academic institutions that have maintained their focus on truth-seeking, e.g. U. Chicago; and the loss of applicants for admission to some of the more notorious campuses.
2) What's happening in the academy is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. For some reason, King Lear comes to mind.
I think the biggest factor in competition setting this straight is whether employers hire less from these schools.
What do you make of the Bill Ackman's claim that the board asked Gay to resign, she refused, and they caved?
"Pics or it didn't happen."
Well . . .
I’m considering a connection (maybe) of woke and anti-semitism.
Both reject (abhor) Jewish bible. New Testament also written by Jews.
Jesus was a Jew. Name means ‘Jehovah is salvation’.
Absolute despicable to them.
Where starts?
First page of bible . . .
“Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every creeping animal that is moving on the earth.’’
Humans are image of god - not smarter animals. Free will and only god has right to make law.
Animals are to be in subjection to humans. Not worshiped.
Also ‘fill the earth and subdue it.’ Not protect wilderness. Change into park and use for human flourishing.
All this directly, deeply, adamantly rejected in current culture.
Initial premises matter. Foundational ideas important.
‘Wisdom proved righteous by its fruits’
‘Wisdom calling out’ - proverbs.
Who is listening?
Thanks
Clay
The only solution is new universities. Ave Maria and Hillsdale are the model. Fortunately the US is very different from countries like UK and Canada in that it is relatively easy to create new universities. If Ackman and the other donors had put their money in new institutions their values would be better expressed. As it is Ackman tried to find a go-around (I the donor get to spend any excess over $10mm, which Harvard saw right through) in order to spend the money as he saw fit when he could have just given the money to a smaller university.
University of Austin, too: https://www.uaustin.org/
I don't think it's much of an institution yet, but they at least have an impressive group of people listed on their Board of Advisors, so....I dunno, I guess that counts for something, anyway.
Yeah, give it five or ten years.
The ratio of conservative students to progressive students at Hillsdale is 12:1.
Imagine sending your son or daughter to a school in which the viewpoint ratio was flipped; so 1:12, or 12 progressives students for every 1 conservative student. I don’t think either is a good model in general.
I think Hillsdale is a great fit for some conservatives, especially those looking for a faith-based school, where non-believers make up a small fraction of the school. I don’t think Hillsdale is a good fit for most secular libertarians, and certainly not for 99.9% of progressives.
I think BYU is a great fit for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but not a great fit for other Christians, but keep in mind that both Hillsdale and BYU have been labeled as Warning schools by FIRE. At these schools, free speech is held to a lower standard than other values. That might be okay for some, but be aware, these schools are not for everyone, and certainly if pursuit of truth is a priority then be prepared to be disappointed by the lack of free discourse around certain delicate topics.
FYI - there are only 13 colleges on FIRE’s list of 250 top colleges that have a more skewed viewpoint ratio than Hillsdale. Viewpoint ratio being the ratio of progressive students to conservative students or vice versa.
Here they are for comparison. A negative number indicates a conservative majority; positive is a progressive majority.
Liberty University: -20
Hillsdale: -12
Johns Hopkins: 13
Haverford: 13
Wellesley: 13
Howard: 14
Skidmore: 15
Rochester: 15
Macalester College: 16
Oberlin: 21
Scripps: 24
Grinnell College: 24
Occidental College: 36
Smith: 55
And here are the viewpoint ratios for some colleges with extremely high average SAT scores. Not as skewed as Hillsdale in terms of viewpoints ratio.
Yale: 4
MIT: 4
UC Berkeley: 5
Stanford: 5
Vanderbilt: 6
U. Of Chicago: 4
Duke: 3
Harvard: 3
But you bring up a great point. Hillsdale is a great fit for certain conservatives, just as Harvard is a great fit for certain progressives.
But where is the college for those who are neither conservative, progressive or religious?
Further, we need to think more carefully about the appropriateness of free speech in the case of a given classroom, on given college campus, within a certain church or faith-based school. Free speech is certainly not a good thing in all learning environments. Maintaining order, being productive, and being respectful might be more important. So in this sense, you’re right: Hillsdale might be a great model.
Can we get a Hillsdale College that has a more universal appeal? One in which the ratio of conservatives to progressives is closer to 1:1?
Is it possible to build a university system which actively institutionalizes a balance of near 1/1 for faculty, admin and students? How would this be done? Should it be done?
Oddly, it makes me think of a political Harry Potter, and the need to bring in more Griffendorfs or whatever.
A dozen or so universities have approximately 1:1 at the student level, but it’s almost certainly not intentional. It could be done quite easily though, but I doubt any are trying,
Should it be done? Like any entrepreneurial venture, it depends; if people demand it, then yes, but it’s an emergent phenomenon. If people don’t want it, your business should suffer losses.
I have no data on the faculty or admin being anywhere near 1:1, but it could be done as well. Schools hire for bias on certain topics. Churches hire based on beliefs. You could hire based on belief with a balanced target rather than a biased target.
Thanks for the reply. It seems like a valuable way to market and differentiate a university. "Our students represent the top 5000 conservative and top 5000 liberal minds."
That would be cool, especially if students were respectful.
The lukewarm students are always going to be attracted to the mainstream universities, new universities attract extremists. You can take the top 20% of Ivy league rejects and create a student body that is more impressive than Harvard, at least by the time the students graduate.
"Can we get a Hillsdale College that has a more universal appeal? One in which the ratio of conservatives to progressives is closer to 1:1?"
Conquests Second Law:
2. Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.
If you ask yourself deep down where you are most likely to be free, don't you already know 12:1 would be wildly better then 1:12?
I'm not deeply religious but I sent my kids to a religious because they didn't mask my kids and let them have a normal childhood.
I agree. Comparing ratios of progressives to conservatives as I’ve done here pretends that 12:1 is as bad as 1:12. Of course Hillsdale’s 12:1 is better than John Hopkins approximately 1:12. My simplistic magnitude comparison doesn’t capture the difference in potency between today’s progressive and today’s conservative, especially a Hillsdale conservative.
Hillsdale is 12:1 with an average SAT of 1425. Pretty darn good for a compromise, but I’m looking for better than Hillsdale.
I would prefer a Hillsdale for agnostics, or the college version of this K-8 https://www.challengerschool.com or this K-12 https://www.thalesacademy.org.