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The Dangers of Echo Chambers on Campus
New York Times ^ | 12-19-16 | Nicholas Kristof

Posted on 12/11/2016 11:47:49 AM PST by DeweyCA

(Snip)

We liberals are adept at pointing out the hypocrisies of Trump, but we should also address our own hypocrisy in terrain we govern, such as most universities: Too often, we embrace diversity of all kinds except for ideological. Repeated studies have found that about 10 percent of professors in the social sciences or the humanities are Republicans.

We champion tolerance, except for conservatives and evangelical Christians. We want to be inclusive of people who don’t look like us — so long as they think like us.

(Snip)

Whatever our politics, inhabiting a bubble makes us more shrill. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard professor, conducted a fascinating study of how groupthink shapes federal judges when they are randomly assigned to three-judge panels.

When liberal judges happened to be temporarily put on a panel with other liberals, they usually swung leftward. Conversely, conservative judges usually moved rightward when randomly grouped with other conservatives.

It’s the judicial equivalent of a mob mentality. And if this happens to judges, imagine what happens to you and me.

Sunstein, a liberal and a Democrat who worked in the Obama administration, concluded that the best judicial decisions arose from divided panels, where judges had to confront counterarguments.

Yet universities are often the equivalent of three-judge liberal panels, and the traditional Democratic dominance has greatly increased since the mid-1990s — apparently because of a combination of discrimination and self-selection. Half of academics in some fields said in a survey that they would discriminate in hiring decisions against an evangelical.

The weakest argument against intellectual diversity is that conservatives or evangelicals have nothing to add to the conversation. “The idea that conservative ideas are dumb is so preposterous that you have to live in an echo chamber to think of it,” Sunstein told me.

(Snip)

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: academicbias; education; groupthink
Nicholas Kristof is a liberal who writes for the New York Times. Yet, on a few issues, he gets it. He understands that liberals have been illiberal and intolerant on college campuses, and that this intolerance is hurting everyone.
1 posted on 12/11/2016 11:47:49 AM PST by DeweyCA
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To: DeweyCA

Echo Chamber

Bump bump bump bump


2 posted on 12/11/2016 11:59:01 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o (If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you DO read it, you're misinformed. - Twain)
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To: DeweyCA

Most proggies know reality, I think, but they just like to cheat and lie to win.


3 posted on 12/11/2016 11:59:44 AM PST by polymuser (There's a big basket of deportables.)
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To: DeweyCA

Skulls full of mush. I’m speaking of course of the faculty.


4 posted on 12/11/2016 12:03:10 PM PST by Huskrrrr
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To: DeweyCA
"in terrain we govern, such as most universities"

So, they're finally admitting it?
5 posted on 12/11/2016 12:07:34 PM PST by Steve_Seattle
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To: polymuser
Most proggies know reality, I think, but they just like to cheat and lie to win.

I disagree. I don't think most progressives understand reality at all. They are vested in a system that is fraught with basics that include a black heart and mind that are unable to understand or obey Truth. And, having been so vested, they encourage everyone else to revel in untruth and share their own black hearts. Anyone who disagrees with them are branded and ridiculed as the ones in error. Unfortunately, many conservatives also participate in their black heart because their own solid base of Truth and solid character has been compromised.

The model is set out in the first chapter of the Book of Romans.
6 posted on 12/11/2016 12:09:38 PM PST by righttackle44 (Leave the bodies-take scalps.)
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To: Huskrrrr

Group think is the result of putting useful idiots in the same room. As long as there is a charismatic speaker who can influence young mush heads, there will always be group think.

The reason Conservatives are not co-opted by group think is because we don’t look to people as leaders, only peers with a common belief. The TEA Party is a perfect example. It wasn’t a group of people, but thousands of individuals.


7 posted on 12/11/2016 12:14:11 PM PST by EQAndyBuzz (Too. Much. Winning.)
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To: DeweyCA
If you read The Road to Serfdom (Reader’s Digest Condensed Version here), you will see that FA Hayek used the term “liberal” to denote people who today would be called “conservatives” in America. That is because Hayek, an Austrian, learned English in America before the meaning of “liberal” was, in America, essentially inverted (according to Safire's New Political Dictionary) in the 1920s. And the meaning of “liberal” was not changed in Britain, where Hayek wrote Serfdom during WWII.

8 posted on 12/11/2016 12:26:24 PM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: EQAndyBuzz

Liberalism requires very little thought. “I care therefore I am”. Very few of my colleagues in academe actually fact check Bills passed in Congress, designed to level the playing field for minorities, or ask “are these programs working”? Some minorities are waking up to the fact that once their votes are bought they are not receiving anything promised other than a few crumbs from Washington.


9 posted on 12/11/2016 12:36:45 PM PST by Huskrrrr
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To: DeweyCA

“We liberals are adept at pointing out the hypocrisies of Trump, ...”

No. You leftist destructionists are adept at lying through your teeth on every issue all the time without exception.

Even the name you’ve stolen for yourselves is a lie. You are not ‘liberals’. You’re idiots.


10 posted on 12/11/2016 12:45:28 PM PST by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
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