Elephant and Man at Harvard

By THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD4 days ago 81 As students and professors continue to take stock of the results of Tuesday’s election, the ideological uniformity of much of Harvard’s population will no doubt dominate campus conversation. Honing in on Harvard’s undergraduates, The Crimson’s pre-election survey affirmed—to an extent—the College’s reputation as a liberal bastion. While we should use caution in using these results to make blanket assumptions about all academic and social contexts in which students discuss politics, the survey points to an overall lack of ideological diversity that should concern faculty, administrators, and students alike, especially at this moment in our history.

The most glaring ideological diversity deficit among undergraduates is the relatively small number of students who identify as conservative. In the election survey, fewer than 13 percent of respondents described themselves as “somewhat” or “very” conservative, compared to over 70 percent describing themselves as “somewhat” or “very” liberal.

In contrast, when a Gallup poll early this year asked Americans to describe themselves as “very liberal,” “liberal,” “conservative,” “very conservative,” or “moderate,” a plurality—37 percent—picked one of the two conservative options, while 35 percent chose “moderate.” In The Crimson’s survey, only 16 percent of respondents picked “moderate.” Most striking, in the Gallup survey, only 24 percent picked one of the liberal choices.

Similarly, while nearly 48 percent of Americans voted for Donald J. Trump in his victory on Tuesday, just 6 percent of undergraduate respondents to The Crimson’s survey preferred him. This number stands in stark contrast to the 35 percent of millennials nationwide who cast their ballots for the President-elect—a testament to his divisiveness, but also a reflection of the insularity of the Harvard bubble.

The causes of this ideological imbalance are likely as varied as the reasons people choose to attend Harvard in the first place, and it would be unrealistic to expect our campus to exactly mirror the political divisions of the country at any given moment. But when the disconnect has grown to such proportions, diversifying political expression in all settings ought to become an administrative priority. The pursuit of “Veritas” which undergirds our intellectual life demands not only that each member of our community be able to debate politics freely, but also that we attend to the multitude of political views that exist in our nation. Stifling this discussion on campus is a disservice to our peers in the campus political minority, and to our own educational growth.

In the same vein, administrators and faculty should take active steps to ensure that students of all political stripes feel comfortable voicing their ideas, especially in the classroom. Concretely, this effort will likely involve actively encouraging the airing of different views, and curtailing unnecessary or inappropriate expressions of political favor by professors. Guaranteeing that more conservative professors teach in subject areas that clearly lean liberal, like the humanities, is also crucial.

This is not to say that Harvard should simply shift its discourse rightwards; the need may differ from department to department. In economics, for instance, more political views from the radical left would likely enrich our intellectual experience in the same way as more conservative views would in the humanities.

Ultimately, this week’s surprises have underscored Harvard students’ need to understand those who disagree with us, however strongly we feel that their views would lead to catastrophe or injustice. Though Harvard will never perfectly reflect the American public’s political composition—nor should it seek to—Harvard students are not exempt from remaining in touch with reality.

This is a very surprisingly candid article from the Harvard school newspaper. Their suggestions for more intellectual and political diversity will never be implemented, but it is refreshing to see that at least a few of their students see the need for more intellectual diversity on their campus. BTW, almost all of the comments are from conservatives.

I worked for almost 35 years at two of the world's finest,and most famous,hospitals.Both were major teaching affiliates of Harvard Medical School.Every June at teaching hospitals nationwide a new bunch of "interns" (PGY1) arrives ready for work.My hospitals,being as well respected as they were,had always had their pick of the top graduates of medical schools worldwide.As it turns out a substantial percentage of the doctors in training at my hospitals were graduates of Harvard Medical School and a good percentage of *them* also graduated from Harvard College.

In assessing the new arrivals we could always tell the Harvard grads from the others because they were the ones who were able to talk about the uvula for 5 hours non-stop but when handed a pop-up umbrella they were clueless.

Polls about “Liberals” and “Conservatives” are completely useless.

A majority of American Hispanics have described themselves as “Conservatives” for at least 3 decades.

The political reality?

71% of Hispanics voted to reelect Obama in 2012.

66% of Hispanics voted AGAINST Ronald Reagan in his 1984 landslide reelection.

Does supporting Amnesty help Republicans?

Vice President George H. W. Bush vigorously supported the Reagan Amnesty in 1986.

70% of Hispanics voted AGAINST Bush in 1988.

And what’s it looking like after 1988? worse and worser? You call them Hispanics and so I presume you are from the East Coast.

Hispanics Conservative- YES!

Latinos- NO, not so much.

I’ve lived around both sets and differentiate between them.

Hispanics that are primarily East Coast often vote Republican and Conservative. Having lived under oppressive regimes in places like Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and the like, these Hispanics vote like their lives depend upon it. They know Socialism and can smell Communism from miles away. But with their third & fourth generation Hispanic kids, it’s less and less.

Latinos that inhabit the SouthWest and Left Coast are nearly all Democrats because they want everything for free. Plus there is La Raza telling them to take over. La Raza is now funded by millions of dollars from our banks and Fortune 500 companies. It is a form of blackmail by the fedgov to finance anti-American racism. In lieu of huge financial settlements for ‘jacked-up’ transgressions, they force corporation to donate to La Raza and other anti-American groups.

These latinos have demonstrated that they are much more prone to violence and the gang mentality than many of their Caribbean and S. American Hispanics. It’s not fair to lump these people people all together. There is a huge difference in their educability as well.

I am responsible for setting up and maintaining secure texting and internal communications systems for Docs. It used to be paging and phones. The world since HIPAA has changed.

If you think handing them an umbrella is tough, try getting them to download and register an app on their smart phones. It shakes me to the core from time to time.

Thanks, Skies.

I was born and lived in south Florida for almost 40 years.

The term Latino did not appear on my radar screen until about a year ago.

I'm still not sure I understand the exact difference since you get a dozen different interpretations when you Google both terms.

Politically, I use the term Hispanic because all the polls use it.

The Census Bureau now uses Latino but combines it into one category with Hispanic.

When the first wave of Cubans arrived in 1960, I was still in public school, so I got to know a lot of their children.

I think most people do not understand that the first wave of Cuban refugees was Cuba's entire professional and business owner class, and that almost all of them had European ancestry. They were massively Republican.

The second wave of Cuban immigrants that started in 1979 had almost entirely African and Caribbean ancestry. They are massively Democrat.

The Haitians and the Puerto Ricans are also massively Democrat.

In economics, for instance, more political views from the radical left would likely enrich our intellectual experience in the same way as more conservative views would in the humanities.

Uh, no. The only place you can even find a Marxian economist anymore is on a university faculty, because any business who tries that model goes broke. You might just as well hope for "diversity" by incorporating alchemists into the chemistry faculty. Not too many of them will succeed as working chemists anywhere else.

One real problem is that the Left has created its own ideological sinecures in the Studies departments that will not, by definition, admit of conservative membership. These are protected zones, well-funded and invulnerable. No diversity of opinion allowed.

The Long March Through The Institutions has resulted in a self-perpetuating and self-selecting population with very heavy biases, and frankly, they're perfectly happy and intend on keeping that way. That's the reason no one is talking about reform.

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