American college professors are becoming increasingly open about their politics in the classroom, even in unrelated subjects. A new survey has found that in response, students are much less comfortable sharing their views on politics, especially if they disagree. It also affects differences between students.
Most U.S. College Students Afraid to Disagree with Professors
Many U.S. college professors now regularly share their own social and political beliefs in class, and their students feel increasingly afraid to disagree. That’s according to a new national survey of undergraduates due out next week.
When students were asked if they’ve had “any professors or course instructors that have used class time to express their own social or political beliefs that are completely unrelated to the subject of the course,” 52% of respondents said that this occurs “often,” while 47% responded, “not often.”
A majority—53%—also reported that they often “felt intimidated” in sharing their ideas, opinions or beliefs in class because they were different from those of the professors. A slightly larger majority feared expressing themselves because of differences with classmates. On this question 54% said they often felt intimidated in expressing themselves when their views conflicted with those of their peers, compared to 44% who said they didn’t often feel this way.
As we’ve pointed out many times, free speech continues to be an issue on college campuses and this survey found some troubling things on that front:
As for the students, there’s at least a mixed message in the latest survey results. On the downside, the fact that so many students are afraid of disagreeing with their peers does not suggest a healthy intellectual atmosphere even outside the classroom. There’s more disappointing news in the answers to other survey questions. For example, 59% of respondents agreed with this statement:
My college or university should forbid people from speaking on campus who have a history of engaging in hate speech.
The survey also found that while a majority of students support the First Amendment, 17% backed rewriting it.
Freeman discussed this on FOX and Friends:
The amazing thing about this is that college is the one place most people agree should be the most free when it comes to speech. The whole point of higher education is to be exposed to new ideas, to be challenged and to have robust debate about ideas.
Laclau and Mouffe, however, would beg to differ with Doherty’s casual
dismissal of any link between socialist revolutionaries and identity
politics. Indeed, they insisted that the only way to achieve
their socialist ends was to create a new conception of the “exploited
class,” one that would be identified not in traditional Marxist economic
terms, but by “forms of domination different to that of economic
exploitation.”
Because, as the authors explained, this society “is indeed
capitalist, but this is not its only characteristic; it is sexist and
patriarchal as well, not to mention racist.”
“These new political subjects: women, students, young people, racial,
sexual and regional minorities, as well as the various
anti-institutional and ecological struggles,” Laclau and Mouffe
continued, “not only cannot be located at the level of relations of
production…on top of this, they define their objectives in a radically
different way.”
Notice that the say that you have in the market is always real and effective. Unlike in political elections, if you prefer to dine this evening at a Japanese restaurant rather than at an Italian restaurant, you will dine at a Japanese restaurant. No one overrides or ignores your choice. And you don’t have to spend precious time and energy convincing a majority of your fellow citizens to expressly give you permission to dine at the restaurant of your choice.
Notice also that your say in the market is more articulate than is your say in political elections. By voluntarily spending your money on the spicy-roll combo, the signal that you send is precise and clear: this evening you want the spicy-roll combo and not any of the many other menu items. In contrast, by voting for candidate Smith rather than candidate Jones, the signal that you send is cloudy. Did you vote for Smith because of her opposition to tariffs or in spite of her opposition to tariffs? No one other than you – and certainly not Smith – knows.
Or perhaps you voted not so much for Smith as against Jones, whose promise to raise the minimum wage intensely frightens you. But if Smith wins, you and other voters get not only her opposition to raising the minimum wage – a policy position that you favor – you also get Smith’s policy positions on countless other issues, not all of which you support. Voting at best allows you to express your opinion about which candidate you prefer; it does not allow you to express your opinion on each of the many different individual issues that are at stake.
The maintenance of any acceptable degree of stable social order is
dependent on the ability of people to be able to rely upon the truth of
the information they receive from others.
However, when people no
longer share a common moral language by which truth can be defined and
relied upon, their reliance on truth can only be replaced by distrust.
As
a result, that people’s willingness to engage in many socially
productive activities cannot avoid becoming inhibited, and in some cases
will cease altogether.
Eventually, a consequent fog of fear, menace, division, and inevitable hate
will cause meaningful social communications, negotiations, and
compromises to be replaced by a corrupted social order where conflicts
come to be resolved by methods that are — shall we say — less than civilized.
He’s using less power than he himself generates (at his cost) and is actually feeding power back to the grid for credits. So he’s not just being taxed for not using government services he’s providing a service to the government and the public and is being taxed for it.
This is also a government that wants to tax the fuck out of people “for the environment” actively de-incentivizing the same “green” technologies it subsidizes with tax money.
A 2015
Gallup poll showed 63% of Americans say that money and wealth should be more evenly
distributed among a larger percentage of the people. Bernie Sanders has said
that income inequality is immoral, unsustainable. Former Secretary of Labor
Robert Reich made a whole film about it. The media agrees too, with sources like CNN, The Washington Post, CNBC, and even Scientific American providing coverage.
But
guess what? It turns out all of these people believe in a myth. The United States
is actually about as equal as our progressive northern neighbor Canada. A
nation’s income inequality is judged with the figure named the Gini Coefficient. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the
United States has a score of 0.39, right behind oligarchical Russia and Lithuania.
But unlike most other nations ranked by the OECD, our ranking excludes our large
government welfare programs including Medicare, Medicaid, and 93 other redistribution
programs. If you include all that shared wealth, the US’s score becomes 0.32, putting us right next to Canada, Japan, and the European homogeneous micro nation
of Luxembourg.
Why do so many people think income inequality is a problem to
begin with? Many more myths. For example, the myth that the “one-percent” is hoarding all the
wealth, keeping it from the poor who need it. Bernie Sanders claimed income
inequality is undermining our middle class and of the needs of our kids.
In fact, while the rich have gotten richer, so have the poor. The proportion of the world’s
population living in extreme poverty has dropped drastically over the last 200
years, and it’s dropped faster than ever since the turn of the millennium. The
underlying myth that confuses people is the unspoken assumption that a nation’s
wealth is a fixed pie. So if some people get more pie others receive less. But that’s
false. The pie can and does expand. Which means even if the poor get a smaller
share, they’re still getting richer.
Another myth is that all poor persons stay
poor. One study looked at income mobility over 16 years and found only 5% of
households that started in the bottom 20% of income stayed there; 95% rose out.
Once one understands all the myths surrounding income
inequality the picture changes. Those who know these facts and still choose the
negative and divisive rhetoric of income inequality look a lot less like people
compassionate towards the poor, and a lot more like people jealous of the rich.
CultML 