site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I don't know about "based" in the sense users here use the term, but there are some notoriously conservative/un-woke schools out there. UNC, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Mississippi State, Texas A&M, Stanford, St Johns, Claremont McKenna, all come to mind.

Stanford

Uh, how exactly is Stanford un-woke? They have the full slate of grievance studies departments, plus a DEI commissariate installed in all the real departments (read: the School of Engineering, basically) providing mandatory political reeducation and enforcing the party line. Perhaps they’re un-woke in comparison to their rivals across the Bay, but the same could be said of virtually every university in the Western world.

You're not going to find a school in the state of California that doesn't have the"the full slate of grievance studies" and a "DEI commissariate"

Stanford is on the list for the same reason Claremont is. They're notoriously conservative relative to thier bretheren, get ranked highly on free speech by FIRE and other such groups, and project an all around ruthless disposition towards disruption.

get ranked highly on free speech by FIRE

According to the FIRE 2025 ranking (page number 44), Stanford University is 218., while Claremont McKenna College is 6. best out of 251 universities evaluated. These two institutions could hardly be more different, with regard to how FIRE regards them.

That's news to me. I remember them being ranked much higher than that and catching a lot of hate from the media for cracking down on disruptive activists back in 2020 but i also haven't paying close attention the last couple years.

Shit happens i guess.

If you check out Stanford's rankings, it's an odd mix. High "openness" ranking combined with bottom of the barrel "disruptive conduct" after a bunch of attacks on meetings.

Looking at the incident reports, Stanford was prosecuting students through an anonymous "protected identity harm reporting system" for being photographed reading Mein Kampf. Of course, this seems pretty typical for colleges these days

UNC is not un-woke, lol.

University of North Carolina?

UNC is pretty woke, they were one of the colleges that got sue for DEI-flavored affirmative action along with Harvard.

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/students-for-fair-admissions-inc-v-university-of-north-carolina/

I don't think that Certiorari proves as much as you think.

SFFA argues that UNC is discriminating against SouthEast Asians by privileging minorities born within the state over minorities born outside the state (not many SE-Asians in NC). I feel thats a bit different in kind, and the court seems to have agreed by splitting the case, and ultimately ruling against Harvard but in favor of UNC.