I used to be somewhat anti-tenure due to the potential level of abuse it enables. With the rise of anti-academia sentiment fostered by right-wing propaganda networks, I am not so sure anymore.

Actually, concern about the conservative right unduly influencing academia is probably traditionally the reason for tenure in the first place. The fact that in our current paradigm that the left is increasingly becoming a bigger threat to real academic inquiry and freedom of speech is a very novel, and many think very problematic, development.



This kind of stat is pretty standard for what you see on college campuses today, and if you really think about it, pretty bizarre.

The truth is that as a general rule most people aren't particularly liberal and aren't all that interested in promoting individual freedom, especially other peoples freedom. Most people like to be told what to do, and especially to tell others what to do. And this general behavioral trait transcends culture and time and is mostly hardwired, and was probably even adaptive and selected for.

In a weird way, it is almost the problem is that liberalism has become too popular and has been nominally adopted by too many. The problem with the left, especially on college campuses, isn't that it is liberal; the problem is that it actually isn't very liberal at all. It is increasingly becoming more and more conservative, just with a non-traditional orthodoxy.

lol ok kel

The Syracuse stuff going on right now just seems like your standard run of the mill moral panic. Not any different than moral panics that have been going on in human societies for the last several thousand years.

Ironically, the problem probably isn't that there is too much racism in Syracuse, the problem is there isn't enough. Everyone has worked themselves into a frenzy to find racists and punish them, and there aren't any to be found, so they are chasing ghosts.

I am sure the chancellor fully sympathies with the students and would like nothing more than to find white supremacist Syracuse students drawing swastikas in the snow, yelling out racial slurs at frat parties, and disseminating death threats to minorities in libraries.

The problem is that none of these things probably even happened, and even if they did happen it probably wasn't even Syracuse students and didn't happen on campus, which puts him in a tough spot when there are mobs outside his house chanting he must go because he is not doing enough to stop these mostly fictional transgressions.

Biological mind viruses, nature takes it a step further and even gives humans this illusion of having a moral high ground over the other tribe. This is why conservatives honestly think they have the moral high ground over liberals and vise-versa, liberals honestly believe they have a moral high ground over conservatives. This is why this tribalism behavior is almost near impossible to stop, it clouds judgement/reason like a computer virus.

I think we need better education obviously, teach young people how to think more reasonably/critically. This is one of the biggest flaws with the grade system, there is no class that focuses on this specifically.

Pushing back against bigotry is a result of thinking reasonably/critically. You guys pouring through evolutionary biology research for anything that can be bent to defend bigotry are the ones that need to learn it.

Really? So why is someone such as Richard Dawkins who is a liberal being attacked by the left? This is a serious issue in the scientific community and it is extremely harmful.

Poker phenom, please lay out your thesis so we don't have to play the same game we have already played several times in this forum. Linking articles about the "real" attack on science coming from the left is a big tell. (Even coming from a not a conservative!) Please tell us what you think the science tells us in terms of political issues.

Both liberals and conservatives are anti-science in different manners. Conservatives are particularly anti-science when it comes to micro/macro evolution. Liberals are more anti-science when it comes to the evolutionary/biological reasons for human behavior.

Honestly, I am not willing to lay out any thesis, it is impossible to have a healthy discussion with the more regressive liberals. You people (not all) are incapable of having a healthy discussion unfortunately.

Kelhus, you're either a Trump supporter, a college student who's fed up with seeing this on their own campus, spend too much time on fb/twitter, or watch too much Tim Pool/Ben Shapiro/Rubin Report. When you consistently push these conservative talking points and attribute them to all liberals, you are, at the very least, deep down the rabbit hole of the "'intellectual' dark web", if not a full blown Trumpist. I ask for your political affiliation, if you voted for Trump in 2016 and if you will vote for him in 2020 because you suggest you are liberal leaning. I'm not sure what to make of seeing more and more 2p2ers not take ownership of their opinions. You and lagtight make a similar excuse as the professor who says that all he did was quote a line from an article and that he doesn't agree with the rest of what was said, as if what he quoted wasn't bad enough, nor the article's title. So, I'd appreciate if you answered the questions so that I don't mislabel you in the future, otherwise I think it would be fair to consider you a conflicted Trump supporter.

Let me clarify what I was saying real quick because I think you are misinterpreting what I am saying to a degree. On average I believe liberals in the general public are generally more scientific literature compared to conservatives in the general public. Actually, I personally find libertarians tend to be more scientific literature then either liberals or conservatives, of course this is just anecdotally and I am not saying this is a fact, I think there may have been some research on this I am not sure.

There is one fundamental difference though between liberals and conservatives, liberals hold the power in academia. They have more of an ability to push certain ideologies that conservatives simply can't. A great example of this is in the social sciences, a lot of pseudoscience is coming out from these various fields that are composed of 98% liberals, they are pushing an ideology and are not doing good scientific work, and the biologist are sick and tired of it. My point is that liberals simply hold the power in academia, and because of this they can use the term "science", to push certain ideologies.

The mystery isn't very deep.

For the last three decades conservatism has increasingly abandoned fact and skepticism, and conservatives which don't are getting rarer. Even mainstream conservatism thought these days is dripping with anti-intellectualism and sees conspiracies in science it doesn't like.

For evidence, just look to the conservatism movement as led by Trump in the US is basically taking place in la-land and links to reality only exist when it is politically convenient. Scientists that don't tow the ideological line working in central departments are increasingly censured, so they won't reach the public.

It's not exactly the kind of political movement which is going to be the biggest seller in an academic environment.

what is the sCieNcE behind self-banning your account and then starting a new one thinking we won't know who you are?

You are not understanding what I am saying. The majority of the scientific community is liberal, and this is not actually an issue. The liberals that exist in physics/ biology/ astrophysics/ biochemistry/ microbiology. The liberals in these fields are actual liberals, the social sciences have been infected with more of the regressive liberal types, a lot of these people are doing bad scientific work. They are trying to push a certain ideology in the name of science, this is the issue.

Don't tell me what I think or understand. Nothing you said it was a mystery.

Contemporary conservatism is losing ground in academia because it is anti-scientific, anti-intellectual, is based on lies and has the same relationship to skepticism that vampires have to holy water.

I am not refuting this, I agree with this.

Yea, because when right-wing ideology controls the sciences, things go so much better. cough*Nazi Germany*cough*Imperial Japan*cough

This is a freind of matt, we went to school together. He told me not to interact with you and I see why now.

I told you I don't care if you continue to use a gimmick but I do care if you lie blatantly about it.

DDoS attack?

The correct play in these cases is to fire the professor for research misconduct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

No one ever believed you would stay away ishitinvegas.

Lol. What is the purpose of the gimmick if everyone knows who it is?

You are arguing that conservatives are controlling higher academia and censoring it? I am going to go ahead and push back and say this is absolutely 100% wrong. I am sure conservatives would love to have influence over academia, and love to have the ability to censor it, but the truth is they have no influence. The Chinese government has more influence in academia in the US than Trump Republicans (which is why they have successfully been able to suppress criticism of China in academia much more than Trump/the Republican Party has been able to, but that is a different topic for maybe a different day).

I would be extremely interested in you actually showing some kind of evidence to support your claims.

This could be rephrased as "what's the purpose of a gimmick if you're going to make it really obvious who you are from your posting and then troll about it when someone makes the connection?" It's the trolling/derailing that I'd like to avoid. Probably more trolling than lying in this case, but same difference to me.

Anyway, what happened, AFAIK, is that he wanted to post something but the matt hirschhorn account was still self-banned, so he made a gimmick. That's fine with me. I unbanned his original account and sent a PM saying I had done so, in case he would prefer to use it, but that I didn't really care which account he used.