Universities have become nothing but places of indoctrination in leftist, woke ideology and are no longer places of learning, questioning and the search for truth!
Vague, data-free article. No mention of the "conservative" views themselves. Pro-enslavement? Pro-child labor? Maybe the lack of support for conservatives is because they are people with vile belief systems out of step with American values??
How were conversatives and liberals defined in this survey? I tried to find that (seems relevant), but didn't see anything about it. There's a difference between "Republican conservative" and "Trump illiberalism." I did notice it said it "relied on self-reported data." I'm no expert in surveys, but how effective is research based on that kind of data? (Honest question.)
Leg 1: the Christian right - many are hostile to research that contradicts biblical literalism. Geology, evolution, archeology? Can't poke around in those areas too much without losing some support from the literalist crowd. Hostility to vaccines falls in this bucket, too: https://lizbucar.substack.com/p/the-hidden-religion-behind-americas ¹
Leg 2: fiscal conservatives - many want to defund university, foundation and government research at the federal and state level. Some believe that research has benefits but believe these come mostly from corporate R&D. This group also strongly overlaps with the people who funded the merchants of doubt (not the book Merchants of Doubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt - the merchants of doubt that the book is talking about)
It's certainly true that not all the constituents of the 3 legs hold these kinds of views. It's also true that favoring scientific research, evidence-based public health policy, etc. was going to alienate some people in each of these legs.
All of this was accelerated by the death of expertise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise - again, not the book, the phenomenon the book was talking about. The author, Tom Nichols, was a conservative in good standing until things got weird. Perhaps he still _is_ a conservative in good standing and Republicans are not)
So, in economic terms, why on earth would university scientists support Republic politicians? It would be, as the progressives say of the working class, voting against their own interests.
[footnote 1] It's interesting to time-travel here back to Roger Ailes' interview with Thomas Sowell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_2_J_X6Bqw&t=239s "There are no solutions to anybody's problems. There are trade-offs. You know, safety is a classic example. Every year so many hundreds of thousands of people are vaccinated against measles, smallpox, those kinds of things.
Now this saves several hundred lives. It's estimated it also causes brain damage to about 30 kids a year."
No surprise at all.
Universities have become nothing but places of indoctrination in leftist, woke ideology and are no longer places of learning, questioning and the search for truth!
Vague, data-free article. No mention of the "conservative" views themselves. Pro-enslavement? Pro-child labor? Maybe the lack of support for conservatives is because they are people with vile belief systems out of step with American values??
How were conversatives and liberals defined in this survey? I tried to find that (seems relevant), but didn't see anything about it. There's a difference between "Republican conservative" and "Trump illiberalism." I did notice it said it "relied on self-reported data." I'm no expert in surveys, but how effective is research based on that kind of data? (Honest question.)
I do wonder if people will vote by their feet over this.
Faculty hiring committees have openly blackballed candidates guilty of wrongthink for decades.
Maybe this can be explained by how selfish, arrogant, corrupt, racist, hypocritical, condescending and morally bankrupt the Republicans in power are.
Pot meet kettle.
No surprise at all.
Some of this results from basic economic motivations. We can look at the much earlier Pew study https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-politics-and-religion/#scientists-and-politics showing similar results.
In supporting the 3 legs of the Gipper's Stool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_coalition#The_Three_Leg_Stool, Republican administrations have economically and philosophically alienated scientists (who comprise a big chunk of faculty in many universities).
Leg 1: the Christian right - many are hostile to research that contradicts biblical literalism. Geology, evolution, archeology? Can't poke around in those areas too much without losing some support from the literalist crowd. Hostility to vaccines falls in this bucket, too: https://lizbucar.substack.com/p/the-hidden-religion-behind-americas ¹
Leg 2: fiscal conservatives - many want to defund university, foundation and government research at the federal and state level. Some believe that research has benefits but believe these come mostly from corporate R&D. This group also strongly overlaps with the people who funded the merchants of doubt (not the book Merchants of Doubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt - the merchants of doubt that the book is talking about)
Leg 3: anti-communists - remembers the Birchers and fluoride? (Note that the Birchers are resurgent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society#2000%E2%80%93present). Yes, fluoride is not without side effects. But see footnote 1.
It's certainly true that not all the constituents of the 3 legs hold these kinds of views. It's also true that favoring scientific research, evidence-based public health policy, etc. was going to alienate some people in each of these legs.
All of this was accelerated by the death of expertise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise - again, not the book, the phenomenon the book was talking about. The author, Tom Nichols, was a conservative in good standing until things got weird. Perhaps he still _is_ a conservative in good standing and Republicans are not)
So, in economic terms, why on earth would university scientists support Republic politicians? It would be, as the progressives say of the working class, voting against their own interests.
[footnote 1] It's interesting to time-travel here back to Roger Ailes' interview with Thomas Sowell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_2_J_X6Bqw&t=239s "There are no solutions to anybody's problems. There are trade-offs. You know, safety is a classic example. Every year so many hundreds of thousands of people are vaccinated against measles, smallpox, those kinds of things.
Now this saves several hundred lives. It's estimated it also causes brain damage to about 30 kids a year."
Another ' Nothingness ' Study ...with No Raw Data ...Only Percentages .