Comment by wredcoll
5 days ago
> Because almost all of the universities' leadership has shifted far to the left side of the US political spectrum over the last 50 years, there is now a hostile environment to many right leaning values. You can argue that this was natural and that right leaning values are worse, but that would be unwise. There is good and bad in everything, and it's not helpful to over generalize
Good lord that was a lot of words that said very little.
I'll try to be more concise and take an actual position: there's no such thing as a leftward shift, it's just people adopting the good ideas and abandoning the bad ideas.
The reality is definitely not that simple. There are many ideas that are good in one context and bad in others, but have been adopted (and imposed) far beyond the context they are good.
I've seen first hand many examples where leadership (within specific schools, probably with a highest concentration within liberal arts schools), consistently value the jobs of the faculty over the future wellbeing of the students. They don't value providing students with knowledge and skills that will make them successful in life after they graduate, and they do value growing their own staff and power within the organization. They value adding more rules and avoiding making any mistakes over taking risks and evolving the education to keep up with the rest of the world. Some of them value short-term benefits for themselves over long-term benefits of their students. I've seen this first hand on many occasions, so many it's beyond anecdote. It's not all bad, that's not my point, but to assume that all their judgement is perfect and they haven't made any mistakes and they have it all figured out and shouldn't reconsider anything... Well, that sounds more like faith and church to me. You're treating them like bishops not academics.
The topic of the conversation is the government requiring right-wing ideas be taught in schools. It has nothing to do with your anecdotes about educators valuing their own wellbeing over their students or whatever.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Are schools and their professors perfect? Obviously not. Should they be improved? Sure. Is this trump driven ideological attack related to improving schools? Again, obviously not.
You stated: "I don't understand why "rightward" viewpoints need affirmative action in the form of government regulations?"
And I attempted to explain (steelman) why some people may feel that this is necessary. For the record I think that this government letter, the precedent for it, etc. are authoritarian, and I don't support it.
My point is that schools have drifted in the values they support, and distinctly away from politically right values (both the good ones and the bad ones), which has made America more fragile and led to an increase in authoritarianism. I am not condoning an authoritarian solution to the problem, but I am aware of and attempting to explain the problem, because I thought you were inviting an explanation.
Little did I know your "I don't understand" wasn't an expression of curiosity. This is a great example of expressing values, since I place a higher value on curiosity, and I guess you place a higher value on judgement?
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