Any first hand accounts of professors indoctrinating students against conservatives?

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Is nobody wandering if the attitudes displayed above ie ' Of course I hate conservatives and am liberal and left, I'm not an idiot' , aren't part of the reason that you have things like the alt-right and a big conservative over reaction. A little bit of humility and open mindedness might be helpful sometimes. 

When I look across the world at the election of Donald Trump, the rise of the alt-right, UKIP, the FN, and so forth, I do feel that we on the left need to take a lesson from how their success was founded on the values of humility and open-mindedness.

[DMC]

5 hours ago, chuck norris 42 said:

Was it a gentle clarification  such as "'It is all well and good to dispel the misconception that the timeline for the civil war was "the slaves were freed and the south attacked' However it should be acknowledged that the war ended slavery."?

Yeah as mentioned above it was more about clarifying and detailing how slavery caused the war.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Just now, mormont said:

When I look across the world at the election of Donald Trump, the rise of the alt-right, UKIP, the FN, and so forth, I do feel that we on the left need to take a lesson from how their success was founded on the values of humility and open-mindedness.

I doubt you would be able to spot the lefts lack of humility or open-mindedness anyway. That the rise of the alt-right might be some sort of reaction to that sort of blindness I'm sure doesn't occur to you. 

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

7 hours ago, S John said:

For the record, I was fairly moderate and even a bit of a conservative lean when I was in undergrad, mainly due to the cultural influences where I grew up.  I don't really recall any overtures from professors to switch sides so to speak.  

There were a handful of professors who were obviously liberal, but I really can't recall anything other than a more or less professional presentation of facts at hand.  I didn't really swing to the left politically until a few years after college and it was a number of life experiences that did it - living in a big city for the first time, and visiting other parts of the world - not anything a professor told me.  

Unless something major has changed in the last 11 years, I think most of the outcry about liberal indoctrination in universities is just one of many BS talking points where a handful of egregious but (more importantly) rare examples are trotted out on Fox or Rush in an effort to discredit the whole system and make room in the political arena for fact denial.  Sadly, I'm pretty sure it's working.

While it's been many years since I was in school, I was like you, moderate to conservative, and in the army to boot. My first obviously liberal teacher was a lawyer who was teaching Business Law (and this was in Alabama).  I had some very hard core views on crime and criminal justice/punishment, the way only an naïve 18 yr old with no real world experience can.  The discussion involved the punishment for kidnapping and rape.  I was on the more extreme side, treat them the same as murder (I wasn't alone either, and most of the class were older than me). He calmly used logic to show why making the punishment for those crimes the same as murder would likely result in more murders.

It was the first time I ever had to rethink one of my positions. (certainly not the last)

He didn't spout liberal talking points about the criminal justice system or anything, just plain logic and facts, and then left us to make our own decisions. 

Over the years (12, actually) I had a lot more liberal professors, and never did one try to push liberal views. (I took night classes when I could while in the army and having kids, and alternating classes with my husband, with 4 different colleges, did 1 full time semester at Clinton Community College in NY to finish my associates, and then 2 years full time at Towson University in MD to finish my BA, so I had a very wide variety of instructors)

To me, this is one of the most useful aspects of college/university, the exposure to new views, while allowing you to form your own opinions on them.

 

That puts me firmly in the "no" camp

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 minutes ago, mormont said:

When I look across the world at the election of Donald Trump, the rise of the alt-right, UKIP, the FN, and so forth, I do feel that we on the left need to take a lesson from how their success was founded on the values of humility and open-mindedness.

+1

[mormont]

Just now, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I doubt you would be able to spot the lefts lack of humility or open-mindedness anyway. That the rise of the alt-right might be some sort of reaction to that sort of blindness I'm sure doesn't occur to you. 

Here's the thing. You drone on and on about how awful it is for the left to demonise their political opponents and how this will simply drive voters into the arms of the right.

Yet you cannot see that the reason why these left-wingers are so pissed off in the first place is that the right have done exactly the same thing to them. The right have demonised left voters for years and pissed them off, and this is why the left are so angry.

You see anger on the right and excuse it because you blame the left for causing it. You see anger on the left and blame the left for it because you never stop to think whether it's valid. It's myopic, one-sided bullshit.

I apologise for derailing the thread but you've been playing this one note constantly across multiple threads for months now and it's so stupid.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I doubt you would be able to spot the lefts lack of humility or open-mindedness anyway. That the rise of the alt-right might be some sort of reaction to that sort of blindness I'm sure doesn't occur to you. 

Could you please clarify.  Are you really attempting to claim that if those on the left were simply "nicer" that their points of view wouldn't prompt the reaction we're seeing from the reactionary right?

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

3 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I'm sure most young people are already pretty left leaning and hardly need much indoctrination by the time they get to college.

This depends on where you live.  I happen to live in a rural area that went 70% for Trump, and according to my son, at least 70% of the kids in his high school are Trump supporters.  Kids often start off with views similar to how they were raised, and it's exposure to the wider world when they start thinking on their own and changing

[Dr. Pepper]

58 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Conservatism isn't just global change and evolution though is it. 

Yes, I know.  If you want to also know, then there are several different country specific politics threads that often discuss conservatism and break down why it's so fucking stupid.  

5 minutes ago, Lany Freelove Cassandra said:

This depends on where you live.  I happen to live in a rural area that went 70% for Trump, and according to my son, at least 70% of the kids in his high school are Trump supporters.  Kids often start off with views similar to how they were raised, and it's exposure to the wider world when they start thinking on their own and changing

Same.  I'm in a county that went Trump by 80% and the kids definitely lean conservative because that's what they are taught by their parents, their churches, their coaches, their other friends.  I grew up in a similar county and while I thought I was super liberal as a teen, once I left I realized that I had a lot of backwards backwoods ultra conservative views of the world.  Exposure taught me better ways.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

15 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Could you please clarify.  Are you really attempting to claim that if those on the left were simply "nicer" that their points of view wouldn't prompt the reaction we're seeing from the reactionary right?

I'm not defending conservative viewpoints at all, or claiming they haven't been exactly as petty and close minded in the past. I have been very anti Fox news /  daily mail methods of thinking for a very long time. 

My point is that there is a level of indoctrination generally in our society / media that creates a very limited spectrum of what people are allowed to think. Points of view are often shut down with personal attacks, vilification and insult. This occurs on both sides, but I think there is a distinct lack of self awareness in many who are on the left. Seeing themselves as 'good' and in the right the whole time allows them to point fingers and vilify whoever they want. 

I think that conservative viewpoints are gaining traction because more people are becoming aware of this. They see a number of current affair situations which they know they simply cannot make their views known on because the reaction will crucify them. They see trends in society that they might not agree with and don't feel they can speak up about them for fear of being demonised. 

The above posts just highlighted this 'I believe this because I am simply intelligent and anyone who believes anything differently is simply ignorant' point of view. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Jon,

I agree that the left and the right both attempt to shout down people who they disagree with and who disagree with them.   What is frustrating about your prior comments is that they seem to heap opprobrium upon the Left exclusively.  This is the first post, in this thread, where you acknowledge that this is a universal problem across the political spectrum not one from the Left alone.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Jon,

I agree that the left and the right both attempt to shout down people who they disagree with and who disagree with them.   What is frustrating about your prior comments is that they seem to heap opprobrium upon the Left exclusively.  This is the first post, in this thread, where you acknowledge that this is a universal problem across the political spectrum not one from the Left alone.

Generally that is because most people here are left leaning and seem unaware that there is an issue. For me the right's attitudes are obvious, and have been for years. Its hardly worth saying ' Fox News is worthless' because that is there for everyone to see. 
 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Generally that is because most people here are left leaning and seem unaware that there is an issue. For me the right's attitudes are obvious, and have been for years. Its hardly worth saying ' Fox News is worthless' because that is there for everyone to see. 
 

Your points, if coming from the center, will carry more weight if you make a point to show you are coming from the center.  In my opinion.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Nope. I was an honors grad who majored in political science and psychology and also got a generic minor in business, and I can't recall a single professor who tried to indoctrinate me with left wing politics. Practically all of my left wing professors went out of their way to be as fair as possible.

On the other hand, almost all of my conservative professors actively promoted conservatism and bashed left wingers. It reminds me of the saying, "Every thief thinks everyone else is a thief too." Conservatives always complain about liberal bias, whether it be in the media, education system, the courts etc, yet they seem to be totally unaware of how biased they are themselves. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Nope. I was an honors grad who majored in political science and psychology and also got a generic minor in business, and I can't recall a single professor who tried to indoctrinate me with left wing politics. Practically all of my left wing professors went out of their way to be as fair as possible.

On the other hand, almost all of my conservative professors actively promoted conservatism and bashed left wingers. It reminds me of the saying, "Every thief thinks everyone else is a thief too." Conservatives always complain about liberal bias, whether it be in the media, education system, the courts etc, yet they seem to be totally unaware of how biased they are themselves. 

Really?  I was a history major and a political science minor.  I don't think I had any right of center professors in Undergrad.  One of my favorite professors from undergrad is an avowed communist.  This is at a Public University in South Carolina.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Fair points. I can go overboard at times.

But on the other hand, it's interesting that those that assume I am speaking from a right perspective then automatically jump down my throat. That is a little telling and illustrates my point.

[Reny of Storms End]

The only bias I observed was in a class on the Crusades, and the teacher was conservative. He was a great teacher and was extremely passionate about the Crusades (even made the first English translation of the Templar of Tyre), but he was also a pretty devote Christian and on rare occasions he would let that side of him out. It certainly wasn't a lot, but it happened enough that I left the class at the end of the semester feeling like this Professor strongly disliked Islam. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Really?  I was a history major and a political science minor.  I don't think I had any right of center professors in Undergrad.  One of my favorite professors from undergrad is an avowed communist.  This is at a Public University in South Carolina.

Yep. I had two very conservative poli sci professors and several conservative business professors, and almost all of them either pushed conservative ideas or bashed liberal ones. Sometimes both.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yep. I had two very conservative poli sci professors and several conservative business professors, and almost all of them either pushed conservative ideas or bashed liberal ones. Sometimes both.  

Interesting.  May I ask where you went to Undergrad?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Interesting.  May I ask where you went to Undergrad?

University of Minnesota. I also studied at the University of Buenos Aires for what it's worth.