(01-20-2020 05:46 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  My feeling (feeling means I cannot prove it, but it is my opinion), that the influence of liberal profs is more by example and immersion.

If, say, 80% of the profs on campus never mention their political thoughts, and 19% just mention in ways that let people infer what they think, the other 1% have a disproportionate effect. I think the 1% is very liberal,simply because it would be career suicide for an ultra conservative without tenure to express himself. I think the 19% is nearly all liberal, for the same reasons - they have careers to protect, and beeing conservative usually is not a help.

So students see and hear mostly only liberal viewpoints. They will hear only how Trump is a Russian puppet, but they will not hear anything bad about Biden. And those views will be repeated by many f their classmates, and the snowball grows.

The idea here that it has to be some sort of malevolently motivated conspiracy by professors to subvert our youth en masse is a construct from the the left here. It sis not what I think or what anybody on the right has said.

And I wonder where the evidence is that 18-22 year olds are NOT malleable? I was, for sure, and most of us at that age were very idealistic. Has nobody here changed their minds on anything since they were 18? Hell, my freshman roommate was a monarchist. I wonder if he still is.

Most of academia has never worked outside of academia. That’s one of the biggest issues in my opinion. I always liked having industry professionals advise classes at Rice.