I used to argue with all my teachers ad nauseam about this: "If one reads a typical college or even high school history syllabus today, the great villains of the twentieth century appear to be almost exclusively Nazi."
My favorite argument was how it reinforced a Eurocentric worldview.
Okay, just thinking through this real quick. On one hand, I think you're playing into the old trope of pointing to the extremities as proof of a larger consensus. That is, you're taking the most extremes and are suggesting they are the norms.
For example, a third saying hate speech should be criminalized or that violence is acceptable to stop hate is an extreme — it's also far from the mean. (One thing I take exception to is the suggestion that shouting down invited speaker is inherently wrong: it's an expression of free speech itself and the free speech rights of the first speaker don't override those of anyone else.)
For your third paragraph — and I cannot emphasize this enough — every. single. word. applies to Hillsdale College as well. This unwillingness to grapple with difficult conversations is not something born out of Marxism, but is likely more to do with tribalism and power dynamics.
Fully agreed with fourth graph.
Agreed with fifth graph with the addendum that: well, they're not wrong. Markets and our system of government *have* failed to provide a safety net. That they're open to a system that isn't great and has a long history of failure and oppression isn't ideal, but at a quick glance I'd say it's not much different than what we have now.
I'm not sure the sixth graph follows out of "we don't like hate speech." I also suspect the first sentence is an extension of taking the extremes as norms.
Seventh graph: I mean, I think that's just trying to damn all of society, man. I also think it's a caricature of higher education.
The college I taught at definitely had a heavy ideological bias to the left. I had to be very diplomatic about how I presented material, which was something the other professors did not have to deal with. The political economy classes I took as a PhD were heavily one-sided, as you highlight. There was a lot of Marx and a dearth of Hyack. While we studied Smith, we also were also given class material to read that criticized his ideas. There were no readings that criticized Marx, Lenin or Engels or the tragic results of the experiments their ideas resulted in.
I've heard the same thing from so many people now we're just being gaslit by the "it's not happening" people (or maybe they want to ignore it). Eventually they'll get to the "it's happening but it's a good thing" phase (https://x.com/robkhenderson/status/1404374397868199938?lang=en)
I used to argue with all my teachers ad nauseam about this: "If one reads a typical college or even high school history syllabus today, the great villains of the twentieth century appear to be almost exclusively Nazi."
My favorite argument was how it reinforced a Eurocentric worldview.
Okay, just thinking through this real quick. On one hand, I think you're playing into the old trope of pointing to the extremities as proof of a larger consensus. That is, you're taking the most extremes and are suggesting they are the norms.
For example, a third saying hate speech should be criminalized or that violence is acceptable to stop hate is an extreme — it's also far from the mean. (One thing I take exception to is the suggestion that shouting down invited speaker is inherently wrong: it's an expression of free speech itself and the free speech rights of the first speaker don't override those of anyone else.)
Here's an exceptionally good essay from someone I hold in high regard on the issues confronting "free speech culture." I think you'd find what they have to say interesting: https://www.popehat.com/p/how-free-speech-culture-is-killing-free-speech-part-one
For your third paragraph — and I cannot emphasize this enough — every. single. word. applies to Hillsdale College as well. This unwillingness to grapple with difficult conversations is not something born out of Marxism, but is likely more to do with tribalism and power dynamics.
Fully agreed with fourth graph.
Agreed with fifth graph with the addendum that: well, they're not wrong. Markets and our system of government *have* failed to provide a safety net. That they're open to a system that isn't great and has a long history of failure and oppression isn't ideal, but at a quick glance I'd say it's not much different than what we have now.
I'm not sure the sixth graph follows out of "we don't like hate speech." I also suspect the first sentence is an extension of taking the extremes as norms.
Seventh graph: I mean, I think that's just trying to damn all of society, man. I also think it's a caricature of higher education.
Completely agreed on last graph.
This is excellent and represents what I saw as an adjunct at a state college.
The college I taught at definitely had a heavy ideological bias to the left. I had to be very diplomatic about how I presented material, which was something the other professors did not have to deal with. The political economy classes I took as a PhD were heavily one-sided, as you highlight. There was a lot of Marx and a dearth of Hyack. While we studied Smith, we also were also given class material to read that criticized his ideas. There were no readings that criticized Marx, Lenin or Engels or the tragic results of the experiments their ideas resulted in.
I've heard the same thing from so many people now we're just being gaslit by the "it's not happening" people (or maybe they want to ignore it). Eventually they'll get to the "it's happening but it's a good thing" phase (https://x.com/robkhenderson/status/1404374397868199938?lang=en)
It is likely going to result in more federal defunding of colleges and campus violence before that happens.