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No, Professors Aren't Discriminating Against Conservative Students

32 pointsby lnguyenalmost 6 years ago

5 comments

istoricalalmost 6 years ago
Study results demonstrated that the grades after 4 years for conservative students were not lower than for liberal students. There is a material difference between proving the former and proving that conservative students aren&#x27;t discriminated against for espousing conservative ideas.<p>Their data did not capture whether these conservative students kept their ideas to themselves and adopted the socially acceptable positions and beliefs they would assume their professors were seeking in order to get the grades. Why rock the boat when a college degree is an economic instrument and not some kind of political debate?<p>&quot;Over the phone, Woessner stresses that, in the end, he and his co-authors had &#x27;to engage in speculation, trying to map our possible explanation ranging from discrimination to skills to interests. [Conservative students] may be not as engaged&#x27; when it comes to the humanities, whereas &#x27;liberal students are much less happy with their math classes.&#x27;&quot;<p>Nonetheless interesting study, but headline writers once again drawing conclusions beyond the scope of a study. Yay social science journalism. We&#x27;ll all continue on agreeing with headlines that conform to our echo chambers and dismissing out of hand those that do not, regardless of what the actual study truly demonstrated. Let&#x27;s just infer explanations that makes sense to us and interpret our findings the way that suits our agenda.
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mighty_banderalmost 6 years ago
I&#x27;m prepared to believe that unconscious bias or systemic discrimination is preferentially benefiting liberal students. What alarms me about this idea, and the related one of group privilege, is not that they are necessarily wrong (they quite possibly aren&#x27;t), but that once you&#x27;ve convinced somebody that they are subject to being unfair in a way that is invisible to them, it&#x27;s not hard to pull them around by the nose in whatever direction you like.<p>For that reason, if there&#x27;s some activity or structure that discriminates against someone who is acting in good faith, it should be addressed specifically. In other words, it should be possible to clearly explain what a problem is and how it functions, rather than tossing around vague accusations of unfairness. By doing so, everybody benefits, and everybody has a fair chance to be heard.
listenallyallalmost 6 years ago
Pacific Standard&#x27;s headline is flat wrong: &quot;when controlling for SAT scores and demographics, differences between liberal and conservative students are modest. For example, holding all else constant, the most liberal student would enjoy a 0.16 point advantage over the most conservative student on a 7 point scale. Given our large sample size, this difference is statistically significant.&quot; (page 11 of the actual paper)<p>Modest. And statistically significant.
geebeealmost 6 years ago
I&#x27;m actually not terribly surprised to hear this. Bret Weinstein may have been (and continue to be) a lifelong liberal, but from what I know about him, I wouldn&#x27;t expect him or professors like him to discriminate against conservative students. Nor would I expect Nicolas Christakis to discriminate against conservatives, I don&#x27;t know him other than by what I&#x27;ve seen and heard on the media, but this would seem very out of character. Yes, professors lean left, but these are still, by and large, people who devoted their lives to scholarly pursuits, and often show a very deep and principled adherence to the pursuit of truth, where data and analysis takes you. Professors have long been further to the left of mainstream society and their students, but until very recently, conservatives and republicans, in polls, have viewed universities as having a very positive effect on society. The collapse and political divide is recent. It is driven, to an extent, by a effort to associate liberal professors with the very worst attributes of &quot;cancel&quot; culture. Unfortunately, while I continue to feel positively about universities, I can no longer agree that this narrative is entirely fabricated, either.<p>My understanding is that college administrators tend to run more left wing than college professors, and they may contribute more to the campus climate than professors do - their ranks have swelled considerably in recent years. I also suspect that professors self-censor, and that students do this as well - not just conservatives, but moderates and liberals. I brought up Bret Weinstein for a reason - liberal professors giving conservative students bad grades simply to punish politics they don&#x27;t like would be reprehensible, but I don&#x27;t think this is the elephant in the room.
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martin1balmost 6 years ago
Maybe not grades. However, I&#x27;ve seen and heard from others of their professors routinely berating conservatives of their beliefs in front of the class.
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