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Bryan Caplan complaining on X that Mason U is introducing mandatory Just Society courses; https://twitter.com/bryan_caplan/status/1760048714847064146
It looks Conquest's Second Law is still strong as ever. And I guess Caplan's libertarianism will ask for some intervention against it that will never work.
Will any of the classes be in the economics department?
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I went to George Mason Econ, still live nearby, and had lots of interactions with various parts of the university over the years.
The common online reputation of George Mason is basically totally wrong. People see it as a libertarian bastion of economic and legal research. That is basically just a portion of the economics college and the graduate law department. Its a tiny minority of the university. A very online and very prominent minority that most people know about, but if you are actually on campus or working there its very different. The density of libertarian students was pretty awesome when I went there, but it is still only like 5-10% of them. The Campus Democrats and even Campus Republican organizations were still much larger.
Most of the university is your traditional state school. If anything, its a little more diverse than most state schools, because of where it is located. The Language department is still mostly as crazy as any other school. But instead of having to go anywhere to protest things, they just step next door and make trouble for conservative or libertarian econ speakers that they don't like.
The Econ department and Law departments mostly survive because they have semi-independent funding form the rest of the university. There have been multiple attempts by other departments and the university in general to impose certain hiring restrictions, or to cut off those parts of the university. Those attempts have all failed, but they were still made. The "UnKoch my campus" organization has been in an ongoing battle with GMU Econ for over a decade at this point.
So basically it is entirely unsurprising that GMU would introduce some kind of woke required course. Or it is as surprising as any random State School introducing this sort of thing.
Considering your pro open borders ideas, you see a microcosm of how that would work demographically! Dominated by non libertarians imposing their woke ideals.
Interesting.
I sympathize with actual conservatives or Ron Paul style libertarians there but you kind of are asking to be dominated by the more authoritarian left due to what you prioritize.
For that to be true, wouldn’t the arriving demographics have to be less libertarian and more woke? The latter doesn’t seem to be the case so far. The former, maybe, but I also wouldn’t describe our immigrants as particularly authoritarian.
Polling data clearly show that migrants are less libertarian and more left wing and that they are more supportive of the woke agenda than white demographic.
The current Democrat party and some republicans go along and greater share fail to oppose it, are very much authoritarian cultural far left/woke party. So even just voting for the current Democrats helps transform society in very radical ways.
We live also in an age of mass migration and illegal migrant. The bulk of the migrants are also poorer and greatly benefiting from subsidies from the goverment.
They are also incentivized to become even more so, since for the primarilly non white migrants this ideology plays into their tribalism against white americans. if you benefit from discrimination against another group and it treats your identity as a foreigner, migrant and descendands as special, then you are more likely to support it.
Same with restricting their speech to be critical and negative and opposing to identity groups the migrants come from.
Even successful groups within the USA like Indian Americans are shown through their responses in polls to very very culturally far to the left.
However the problem is even worse because mass migration aids the faction already in a country that has those politics and helps transform those who are closer to that, to become themselves more far left and authoritarian. Why? Because replacement is a key part of the agenda and its supporters are promoting it due to the logic of the replaced deserving it, being historical oppressors. Very directly connected with demonization, replacement in institutions and discrimination.
So the people supporting this thing either doing it overtly, or more subtly and especially in the past the more dominant form was of downplaying. While now we see more cellebration paralax and also being hateful directly. In any case, one idea crosses over the other. It is inherent within the idea of supporting what leads to the destruction of one group and replacement by other groups, that the replaced are less worthy/undeserving (of even their own inheritance) and the replacers more worthy of (gaining what was originally the inheritance of the replaced).
It is also the case that those supporting such mass migration are going to find themselves very directly racist/hateful allies which they are incentivized to downplay, because it will reflect poorly on them.
Cultural marxism is going to lead to more redistribution obviously with redistribution towards the poorer global south flooding in richer countries.
Additionally, it helps promote the idea of permanent left wing/uniparty transformation which makes the left more arrogant, authoritarian and more willing to trample over their outgroup's rights.
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I get that many people want to make race the way to distinguish between in-group and out-group. But that just isn't how it is for me.
My closest group of friends in college consisted of an Indian Guy 2nd Gen immigrant (libertarian), Spanish guy 2nd Gen immigrant (libertarian), Jewish guy with one grandparent that escaped the holocaust (libertarian), Danish Guy 2nd Gen immigrant (liberal/prog), and a Brazilian guy of European descent 1st Gen immigrant (libertarian). I might have been the token WASP of the group.
Its not clear to me how demographic controls would have "saved" me.
This really feels like it needs more elaboration.
I am not making a comment about whether you have friends of multiple races/ethnic background but that more movement of people without selection and of more diverse people in particular too results in woke people dominating. That good fences and borders make for good neighbors and helps protect existing groups from the influence of other groups. Which requires to be realistic about group behavior and to realize that others will see ethnic groups and other groups.
In practice your ideology can not survive under what it preaches that society should move closer towards. Also applies in regards to atomized ideological group which is in favor of atomized identity versus identitarian groups.
The diversity you describe in your friend group and the diversity that is happening are not exactly the same. Libertarian and conservative demographics are skewed in a certain direction and so the increasing diversity fuels authoritarian leftism. But the demographics of college it self is also an issue, it isn't just about ethnic/racial demographics.
You basically are continuing to be repeating the same fallacy of your ideology which is to ignore the systemic effects of your ideology/perspective in practice and focusing on whether you like your somewhat diverse friends, or a perceived benefit of choosing your friends.
Woke people are a recent phenomenon, I don't think you can make any sweeping generalizations about what leads them to dominate. For a long time there have been port cities that end up being a conglomeration of everyone in the trade network. If you want some existing examples of multi-ethnic cultures, look at them. Shanghai, Singapore, Alexandria, Rome, Mogadishu, Carthage, Athens, New York, Mumbai, etc. Many of these places were wildly rich and successful relative to other locations during the height of their trading.
I don't think there have been perfect libertarian societies out there, but I don't want to "no true scotsmen" fallacy myself. I do believe that going in a libertarianish direction is generally better. And I think port cities are generally in more of that libertarian direction, so I'm going to vaguely gesture to them and say I think they are better (especially compared to alternatives available at the time of their existence).
You just seem to have this idea that racial and ethnic tension has to occur, and because libertarianism mostly ignores race and ethnicity they are allowing this fight to simmer and brew until it explodes. But I'm rejecting your base assumption about race wars. There are certainly people that I think are willing to egg on such wars, but those people are generally a minority of the populace. Sometimes a minority of the populace can have an outsized effect on politics. But its not a given by any means that their pet issue will win out and take control. Historically, religion has been a more common divider among people than race.
Your claims are contradicted by polling data.
Wokeness is not a recent phenomenon but a continuation and part of the new left which it self is a continuation of older agendas of groups like the frankfurt school and migrants are woke aligned, because part of this agenda is to support migrant groups at expense of natives and to see the others negatively as oppressors. An important part of this is also about specifically antiwhite racism and institutional discrimination. Which is part of public policy.
By denying this aspect of reality, you are aiding it. You can't oppose institutional discrimination in favor of nonwhite groups as it applies in the USA, which also relates to a preference for said groups, and from those groups taking more positions, if you downplay the issue.
Ethnic tension is part and parcel of the current liberal establishment which is about pandering to certain ethnic groups, and much of history before that and policies followed which are racially discriminatoy and oikophobic in nature.
Look, pretending that there aren't negative consequences and trade offs arising from your philosophy is a case in blind faith and denial here.
Secondly, what you are yourself promoting is itself an example of ethnic and racial tension. I am not sure how clearer I can be but the globalist who very arrogantly and fanatically supports the destruction of nations, denies the racist extremism that this faction has been promoting in policy is promoting ethnic conflict and has a racist position at the expense of native nations due to their disrespect of their rights. They take a side, they aren't neutral not participants. And they take a destructive side that steps overs others.
Especially if like you do, you are defending the collectivist tendencies of migrants and denying the issue and even downplaying the problem of collectivist racist sentiment and policies of the liberal establishment, pretending it is a smaller recent issue. You are rather close with the behavior of that establishment.
Not only is what you are promoting a source of ethnic conflict that you help do against certain ethnic groups in favor of migrants. But your faction's position would been even weaker and the liberal establishment would have been even more hostile to you if your libertarianism was of a different nature.
precisely because of how useful what you are doing is, to the far left where culturally it seems you agree with them that
a) migrants haven't done nothing wrong b) immoral natives resisting cosmopolitanism have no valid point and the disrespect towards them is easilly linked with collectivist coersive measures that have been happening of both hatred and discrimination and you have an incentive not to care about and underplay.
The reality is a pure libertarianism is rare, and what we see in practice is two bigger tendencies.
A) Neocons/regime aligned whose libertarianism is undermined by compromising with that and fusing with this ideology. This kind of faction is ironically aid to the system and helps bring greater authoritarianism but also helps by not only justifying and underplaying, or even promoting as dogma, the necessity of ignorance, but also by being silent about issues like private public partnership, the and attacking nativists.
B) A faction that has retained some compromise with some conservative moral aspects which I do think works better in promoting and conserving a freer society when one considers the trade offs with realistic options.
This faction most importantly, is willing to speak truth to power on the war machine, and also is more skeptical of mass migration, even some ancaps.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/02/doug-casey/migrant-crisis-and-the-states-increasingly-defying-the-feds/
This website for example: https://www.lewrockwell.com/
Overall, I would say they do a better job of being pragmatic and prioritising the biggest threats to an orderly, free society, and even the greater sources of tyranical collectivism. While the neocon aligned libertarianism has compromised and allied with them and enables them
I still disagree with libertarianism but I am not anti libertarian in that I favor the opposite extreme. I just don't agree with the purity spiral that libertarians take on certain directions. Both the idea of doing that and how it works in practice on various issues. The reality is that the hardcore libertarianism it can't work that well, and it also has problems with factions that actually try to use power, either through impotence it will enable them, or it will side with them by what it prioritises and what it acts.
The authoritarian system has used the logic of libertarianism and regime alligned libertarianish types not to make society libertarian but as a loophole and excuse. Also because there is probably an insectuous relationship between NGOs, including ethnic activist NGOs, CIA, MIC, biggest corporations and the goverment.
So we see private/public partnerships being used to enforce an agenda in a manner that leaves very little room for dissent and transforms the world in a more totalitarian direction. One of anarchotyranny to be more precise where the logic of freedom and rights is promoted in excess for some, in a manner that is tyranical for others.
Where the regime aligned neocons or in part libertarians who have compromised with this, are transforming the world in this direction. Still, it wouldn't be surprising to see their footholds in any university to be removed by the authoritarian left wing faction that has been enabled.
There are still some differences on some issues.
You refuse to even entertain that the idea that open borders will result in less libertarian direction is correct. You have shown that your ideology is motivated by prejudice and blind faith which is a great reason for the world to discard it, so it is ruled by what represents reality and not the prejudices of people who are being fanatical about their dogma.
Singapore is NOT following your policies but the opposite by a long shot since they have demographic controls so their society continues to retain demographic balance. Their immigration policy is about taking specific kind of migrants.
Athens didn't follow your policies neither. Being a port city doesn't fit that. Rome had cosmopolitan elements in certain periods but also was a different thing in different periods and its cosmopolitanism was of a different nature.
You have extremely radical politics here. Open borders is actually not going to lead to multi ethnic societies retaining an ethnic balance.
This idea that societies with some cosmopolitan elements, or port cities have had some success and therefore far more radical policies, or trying to make the entire world that, which lead to no limits on migration, is a case of you promoting something without adequate justification and not actually engaging, as in taking seriously the negative of that. Nor did multiethnic follow oikophobic policies while allowing migrants to have stronger tribal identities and tolerate ethnic identitarian organizations for them, and even as an establishment in a widespread manner as it is now, respected ethnic communitarianism for migrant groups.
Historically, assimilation is problematic and often didn't happen. But to the extend it did, it was greatly helpful for the foreign group being similiar, in small numbers over majority and having a dominant ideology which is pro assimiliation which is for them to abadon and not cling to their collective traditions and identities and adopt the traditions and identities and interest of the native group. Multiethnic societies often involved plenty of force and imposition from one group against other groups. There were also often in the process of transforming in one or another cultural direction due to these tendnecies.
Our order today is one that promotes and respects and tolerates tribalism for foreign groups, and favors a replacement, while promoting atomization for the native groups. This agenda looks more like a coalition invading other countries and conquering them. Like for example even the most archetypical example of nationalist boogieman the historical nazis, what you saw in certain cases where homogeneous regions invaded by a coalition of nations invading it, and different nations commiting themselves attrocities. This differs from a consistent promoting of lack of ethnic identity for any group which it self is very radical and would come with authoritarianism and such agenda is not unrelated to some of the horrors and excesses of the Soviet Union.
The point is preserving one's group's and its rights over the hostile outsiders and also the threat of foreign hostile groups over the rights of native groups. But it is also a point about the idea that for a group to govern itself as it wants in peace, outsiders must respect that and keep their influence out. And vice versa. If there is say a department in a university that is of more a conservative/libertarian nature and demographics, that is related to precisely respecting that exclusion. Ironically, it is a part of pluralistic society too, to know to respect other peoples own thing.
You bringing this point up isn't really undermining this as religion can be a sort of ethnic identity or a part of it. But you refuse to even engage with the evidence of how agency problems and foreign oikophobia against a native people is an important component to tyranny.
Well, this tendency to not engage with the problem and such ideological rigidity is also a source of tyranny. For fanaticism for the cause of collective individualism and unwillingness to respect the problems with it, is going to lead to an attempt to impose this with force and to persecute dissenters.
Which isn't theoretical, a key element of our current authoritarianism is about imposing atomization on certain ethnic groups which isn't about opposing collectivism, but about them not opposing, or even identifying with the collectivism of other groups that the same system tolerates and promotes at their expense.
And of course good governance and not tyrannical governance should be wise and willing to reflect reality, not act based on following blindly an ideologically extreme dogma which is assumed to be correct by default.
A source of tyranny also has to do with going against the interests and rights of the majority of the people because you think your intellectually vanguard minority knows better. Hence, inviting foreigners is also related to getting people who are going to share such hostility and help impose such policies, including political correctness that sidelines and downplays problems. Which is highly consequential. The child trafficking crimes in the UK by Islamic gangs of mainly south asian descent was aided by a culture of cover up and downplaying, related to the politically correct racist sympathies of the oikophobic establishment.
The pro mass migration far leftists are being strategic. In the case of certain pro mass migration libertarians, they might get mass migration, but the end result will be a transformation of society in a less libertarian direction and more hostile to libertarian ideas. But the fact that regime aligned libertarians who are rather outspoken about agendas that are like the liberal establishment antinativist radical are actually people who have compromised with the regime, helps us understand them better than just an analysis that views these people as just quokas. But their usefulness to the regime comes with an expiration date.
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My sister is going through teaching school right now, and the required ideology-enforcement classes are beyond anything I would have ever expected. She’ll send me examples of test questions that are almost verbatim:
And you have to answer false, and explain that white people are oppressive colonizers.
There’s also a lot of making her write short essays on how oppressed she is as a woman, how bad white people are, etc. I’m pretty cynical, but I had no idea it was this bad.
For reference this is in what I would consider one of the most conservative states in the country. I think conservatives right now just have no idea how bad it actually is.
If they used the term 'reverse racism' then I think that is weird to begin with. There is a category 'racism' and then there are subcategories 'racism against X from Y' and 'racism against Y from X' which I assume is what they want to discuss. I would answer false because the statement doesn't make any sense and nonsense statements are false. If you try and argue the statement is true then you arguing with one arm tied behind your back because you are already accepting the main premise behind the 'false' argument. I don't see why 'racism against X from Y' should be privileged linguistically so that there is a normal 'racism' and a 'reverse racism'. I think it is just lazy on their part to use the term 'racism' when they really mean 'racism by the majority group in a country' or something similar. surprisingly, it can be difficult to know what they mean if they don't explicitly say it.
Yes but you know what they mean. Even if the dictionary definition of a word leads you in that direction, surely you can comprehend what the meaning of the words is, beyond formal definitions. Words aren't just words, there's context and tone behind them which I'm sure Stellula's sister is able to interpret and communicate back.
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Oh, its much worse than that. The things they are requiring your sister to do are an explicit technique pioneered (but not necessarily invented) by Mao's Communists in the 1950s. The Chinese term is literally translated as 'wash brain,' hence brainwashing. The goal is to have the individual adopt the "peoples' standpoint" and the methods involve group shaming (struggle sessions) and repeated exercises which follow the framework of unity-criticism-unity. In words, text, and discussion, you are required to continuously parrot "the peoples' standpoint" (here, reverse racism can't exist), and then explain how you have suffered or made others to suffer according to that perspective (here, I'm a woman so I'm oppressed, or I'm white so I've oppressed others). Thus, applying the classic dialectical framework to one's own mind.
The western discovery of these techniques is usually credited to Robert Lifton, who was a US navy psychologist on assignment in Hong Kong in the early 50s when the first prisoners of Mao's thought reform prisons were just making their way out of mainland China. Lifton wrote an excellent book on the studies he conducted, titled Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A study of "Brainwashing" in China. Its not perfect, he actually underestimated the lengths to which the CCP were willing to go to achieve their goals as the great leap forward happened almost immediately after he finished writing, but its excellent.
I plan to do some summaries of its content as posts.
Edit: here are the 8 main aspects of thought reform as summarized by wikipedia (i know, i know), take a look at 3-7.
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If Nibbler is anything to go by, I would say they do.
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It's a public university, which means there's one thing which has a chance of working -- elect DeSantis-equivalents to the governorship and legislature and pass a law banning this stuff, then appoint a Rufo-equivalent to make sure it happens. However, that won't happen because Virginia has gone blue.
Another approach is to bar public schools from requiring or giving pay premiums for advanced education degrees.
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Education issues were a big issue for a Republican winning the governor so that dynamic already exists there.
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I mean, we did. We literally did exactly that. But the schools have decided to just flagrantly ignore the governor and the AG, tie things up in friendly courts for 4 years, and run out the clock while they hold our children hostage.
I thought there was all that drama with the school boards and then people re-elected the progs anyway? Or perhaps I’m thinking of another state.
Depends on the county. Fairfax County overwhelmingly elected a slate of school board members that were even more explicit about aggressively showing children even more pornographic material in schools, and secretly transitioning them. Loudoun County, where the school board went hard covering up for a serial rapist, saw reason last I checked.
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And thank god for that. University is voluntary, you can go to whichever one you want, and the 'students' are adults.
The idea that the government should step into that voluntary contract between adults to tell teachers what they can and can't teach or require, especially as relating to partisan political topics, is insane and disgusting.
(before anyone asks, yes, this applies to a university wanting to teach whatever awfulthing you think of as a counter-example, I would like the school to be destroyed socially and economically by private citizens/companies and social sanctions in that situation)
I think that academic freedom does have some value, so I'm not sure I'm ready to throw my support behind government stepping in and regulating the research of academics, even at public universities.
However, there are totally reasonable ways governments can regulate public universities that do not infringe on academic freedom:
These are broad principles, not blueprints for concrete laws. I'm well aware that "no ideological indoctrination in required courses and orientation sessions at public universities" sessions is unlikely to be an effective law; it needs to spell out the details, and multiple passes may be required to plug loopholes.
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This would be fine if so many employers did not req. degrees. Employers love degrees because it's an effective filtering mechanism.
And one of the few filtering mechanisms unlikely to bait a lawsuit.
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Public universities are, well, public. Once my tax dollars get roped into this I would like the government to be a wise steward of our finances. So I would like the government to police its own institutions.
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Hahaha right except there's also admissions processes that very much filter for the exact types of people they want to attend. Let us ignore affirmative action putting its thumb on the scale.
And many colleges have removed the one requirement that at least tried to be objective.
And you can get your admission rescinded if they find your behavior as a youth undesirable
So yes, its always possible to take your student loans elsewhere, but let us not pretend that there is equal bargaining power on any level, where the market is relatively frictionless.
And that leaves aside that whatever remaining value there is in the universities mostly comes from the prestige attached to the credential or, perhaps, the social connections it allows you to make, so WHICH university you go to absolutely matters.
So really, you're hiding behind the fact that the decision to attend university is 'voluntary,' while ignoring that getting into a university is influenced by factors beyond individual students' control, that their funding is usually coming out of public coffers, and they don't need your consent to revoke your admissions, scholarships, or suspend you for behavior that is neither violent nor illegal.
So perhaps the issue isn't quite what you're suggesting it is.
I’ve yet to be convinced that college admissions are a problem for people who belong in college. Community colleges are open admit and north podunk tech- bumfuck nowhere campus, will admit anyone with a high school diploma and a correctly filled out application.
I think this is instead an argument about selective schools, but for a normal job track does it matter? I mean law schools do, but individually making the choice to go to Iowa A&M to become an accountant or a teacher or an engineer doesn’t matter a lot unless the alternative is, like, Stanford. And you can totally take your student loans from woke.EDU to go to podunk state. Whether it’ll do any good I don’t know, but it’s entirely doable.
It matters . They are competitive for a reason. But of course, it is possible to be successful graduating from a lesser ranked school.
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Maybe I don't want to ideologically concede all future lawyers (who also tend to become future lawmakers and judges). I think society as a whole suffers from this DEI bottleneck, even if some people for now can get decent jobs as nurses or plumbers from going to a community college.
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Unless your job requires some kind of accreditation, there's probably no serious reason to get a 4 year degree from ANYWHERE when you could just start working in your preferred field, get paid, earn accreditation and experience right off the bat.
None of this really excuses that requiring social justice courses for those attending a public university is very much aimed at ensuring that students who graduate hold the 'correct' set of beliefs, even if those beliefs do absolutely NOTHING to enhance their job prospects, education, or value to larger society.
It partially comes down to what, exactly, you think the role of the public universities actually is. And whether they're suited for that role. I think they very much function as 'gatekeepers' for elite society, to ensure the 'right sort of people' ascend to the soft aristocracy that runs things, and thus they want to filter very heavily who is even admitted.
Again, 'voluntary,' except you don't have any way to register actual dissent, and you're paying for it anyway.
Sort of. The number of jobs that de facto require degrees is pretty high. Basically anything not a “trade” is going to require college. Which is exactly why schools have gotten away with indoctrination for decades. If you want a PMC job, you need a 4 year degree. They can do anything they want because the alternatives are poverty wage jobs in the service industry or the trades.
Yeah, college is not that great, but the alternatives are even worse. 4 years and some debt is a small price to pay for a lifetime of extra earnings and low unemployment rate (plus additional $ from compounded returns by investing said earnings in stocks and real estate, lower insurance premiums, etc. )
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Largely because they're not allowed to filter by basic IQ and because degrees have become so ubiquitous that they CAN demand them.
See:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/
And for bonus points:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-19/thiel-s-unicorn-success-is-awkward-for-colleges
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It's a public university. The government is literally one of the parties. This is as incoherent as "Keep the Government out of my Medicare!"
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I agree with this, but also wish Republicans would just go ahead and wash their hands of the university system. These are Publicly Funded universities. Cut all state funding. Problem solved. Let them go and be as crazy as they want with student/donor money. But I certainly shouldn't be paying taxes to support the craziness.
I does not understand why cutting of public funding should fix the radical left problem in universities. In my country the wokest universities are the private funded ones where rich people go, the same with private media etc.
It depends on what exactly you think the "problem" is. I believe radical leftists are allowed to exist. I do not want to purge or kill them or force them into re-education camps. I simply do not want to pay for them. I ask that they tolerate me in the same way. The "problem" as I see it right now is that I am paying for them, so once I am not paying for them the problem is solved, even if they don't go away at all.
The problem is not just that you’re paying for them; it’s also that it’s impossible to get many jobs without a college diploma, and in a world where almost all of the universities are staffed nearly exclusively with radical leftists, it becomes impossible for conservatives to even think of entering many well-paid, influential, and/or important professions. It would take more than defunding the colleges to solve that problem. At a minimum, you’d also need to remove college degrees from state licensing requirements. If the conservatives cede all the law schools but the state governments maintain the requirement that you must graduate from a law school in order to take the bar exam, the conservatives will have suddenly ceded the entire legal profession, even more than they have already. Ideally, in a world where conservatives give up on the universities, they should also make it illegal to inquire about job candidates’ educational background, just as it is currently illegal to inquire about marital status or religious affiliation.
Yes, get rid of degree requirements. Some states like Virginia don't require them for passing the Bar. It's kind of insane to me that any state gates the Bar in such a way.
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You are paying taxes, though. And some of those taxes goes directly to support the craziness.
And they are using all these funds to churn out students who will ensure that the funding continues, either because those students go on to run the bureaucracies which distribute the funding, or at least they will vote for candidates who will continue the funding over your vehement objections.
It is a pretty well-entrenched system, in that regard. You don't want to pay, but they don't care, you will be paying.
So now what?
So now I am definitely going to go complain about this on TheMotte and argue with one of the resident liberals about it, and feel a bit better afterwards even if nothing has changed. And I'm gonna dedicate some of my free time and money to making sure TheMotte stays around as a place for me to complain and feel a little better about the things I have no control over.
Probably the best sort of outlook to have, to be honest.
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you already have, for decades. Build some other public institution, and they'll use their current position to make a play for that as well. The problem isn't the idea of public institutions; those are both inevitable and necessary. The problem is that it's not possible to share a society with people who don't share some minimum level of values with you.
I believe most people share a value for wealth and money. Or at least it is a fungible thing that can be converted into other values. That is why the stock market works and publicly traded companies exist. Until DEI crap came along most of them have been legally obligated to pursue money and profit as a singular value, because that is one thing everyone can agree on.
Certain values matter way more than others. I think there are only some minimum values of non-interference that I need to live around others, and everything beyond that is just icing on the cake.
...And yet, DEI crap came along. Is your assumption that market forces will make it go away again? Why didn't they prevent it in the first place?
More generally, I think the idea that money is a reliable least-common-denominator fallback value is simply not accurate given what we observe of human nature. I think there was a similar argument in the last belle epoque, that the contentions and resentments couldn't get too far out of hand because it would interfere too much with making money. It didn't work out well in the last century; I don't expect it to go much better in this one.
I think DEI stuff was a bit like peacock feathers in an era of easy money. It was a way to stand out in the market.
Once the easy money ended a lot of places quietly axed their more meaningful DEI initiatives. Or not so quietly did massive layoffs that just disproportionately affected those departments.
I have a cousin and some former co-workers that worked with DEI stuff. They all have expressed frustration that the companies they work for basically only give lip-service to the ideas, and that they actively avoid measuring themselves in any way that might suggest they've failed or could do better.
If DEI stuff was more meaningful and continued to exist in tighter markets, ya I think market forces would destroy it. There has been ongoing interest from investor groups on ant-dei funds. Which make a ton of sense as an investment strategy. If you were going to choose to either invest in a group of companies that pursue profit as a primary objects or pursue anything else as a primary objective, you'd probably expect the profit group to make more money. DEI is a handy categorization in that regard.
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Point 1, only 20% of their budget is state funding. That is still any state funding, true, but I feel like sometimes people act like they're entirely state funded and that's really seriously not the case.
Point 2, I think it's reasonable for the government to subsidize education without dictating what the education entails. You can trust the market to efficiently decide what type of education takes place between students and teachers, while also pumping money into the education sector because you think the economy benefits from more education happening overall.
Point 3, I don't want to pay for many aspects of our military, police, and prison systems, to name just a few. 'I shouldn't have to pay for things I dislike' has never been a cogent argument against government spending; it's a democracy, you can vote for what you want but everyone has to pay for everything that ends up in the budget. You don't get a line-item veto unless I do too, and if everyone gets one then we end up with no government at all, society collapses, and we get invaded by China or w/e.
To echo FC below, it does indeed feel like lots of people wanted this during the Obama years, when the War on Terror was in its twilight years and "our military budget is obscenely, unnecessarily huge and prevents us from having good healthcare" was a talking point on Tumblr. Lots of people would probably still want this now, even!
And in fairness, why shouldn't they? I figure the easy counterargument is that that's what our politicians are for; that we elect representatives and such precisely so that the demos can evolve its power to people who will handle the responsibility and hard work of haggling and negotiating. In practice, this doesn't satisfy the demos enough, for reasons.
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20% is easily the difference between "this is a successful and growing venture" and "we need to do mass layoffs or risk being shut down". I also pointed out in my comment that they can do what they want with student/donor money, so obviously I know there are other funding sources. And if I am wrong and the budget from the state is so small and not worth mentioning, then certainly they won't make a big fuss if they lose that funding. But I think we both know that a very large fuss would be made.
Do you want a functioning market, or do you want state funding? The more state funding the worse the market.
And I can want my tax dollars to not be spent for bad reasons. Two different professors at GMU have written books about the subject of rotten academia.
I specifically said "Cut all state funding" and "Republicans [should] wash their hands of the university system". I suppose my last line could be interpreted as wanting a line item veto, and I'm not opposed to that. But its not really the point I was making in this comment. As long as we don't get a line item veto I think its reasonable to say "I hate this thing" as a reason why that thing should receive 0 funding. In fact, if there was line item vetoing by individuals my comment would be dumb and pointless and you could just respond "if you don't like it then just line item veto it, and the rest of us can continue to fund it as we like".
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Counting federal student loans? Where's the other 80% of their budget coming from, specifically?
...And then if the teachers defect and focus on indoctrinating instead of actually teaching workable skills, then the argument will be that we need to increase funding to get the economic benefits that aren't actually materializing. I would argue that this has already happened.
"I shouldn't have to pay for partisan political activity" is distinct from "I shouldn't have to pay for things I don't like." I do welcome your commitment to police reform, though.
...You phrase this as though it isn't a clear preference for a growing portion of society, and one of the more likely destinations given our current trajectory.
The culture war is not going away. The grievances continue to accumulate. By this time next year, America will enjoy significantly less social cohesion than it has now, and sooner or soonest, the spark shower onto the mound of oily rags that is our society is going to catch.
On this note, if you didn't see, they just got handed a full $1.2B that was laundered through the label of a "loan".
EDIT: Forgot link.
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Given that I generally react "Anything that annoys Bryan Caplan must be a good thing", I decided in the interests of fairness to look this up.
Hmm. I agree that making it mandatory isn't a good look, but there are two things:
(1) Bryan says "creating an official state-sanctioned orthodoxy and requiring all students to spend multiple classes feigning agreement with it", but the course prospectus says:
Now granted, that may all go by the wayside when the modules actually start and the blue-haired SJW profs (does George Mason U have blue-hairs?) start teaching, but they're not coming out of the gate with "this IS the TRUTH, all must AGREE AND BOW THE KNEE"
(2) More cynically,
What Mason U is doing is preparing its students for life in the workplace. 'Kids, when you graduate and head out to make the big bucks in corporate jobs, you'll be expected to sing off this hymn sheet. We're gonna teach you the jargon so even if you think it's all baloney, you can sling the bullshit with the best of them'. Bryan should appreciate that the university is giving its graduates another tool in the box for success in the corporate world!
Mind you, I'd like to see his reaction to a mandatory course on Catholic social justice teaching 😁
Have you ever taken a diversity seminar? I'm surprised by your lack of cynicism.
70% will eye-rolling harassment boilerplate libspeak ("LaShondra and Xavier Alejandro Jose were talking about the latest Marvel Movie, but then Pete said that Black Widow's tits were too small. Is this sexual harassment?").25% will be progs smuggling in obnoxious consensus-building ("Science says that only white people can be racist.").
~5% will be the teacher saying something truly heinous and deranged ("My three year-old cried when Trump called E. Jean Carroll a liar.").
You're not predicting that academia will suddenly find conservatives to teach the "Justice" course, right? The text about allowing disagreements is just boilerplate.
In a college setting, most people will go along with whatever is presented. But most people won't have their minds changed either. Probably the average college student will agree with the majority of what's being taught, in a loose sense. A few students will speak out. In my experience, those students will tend to be men, especially non-whites who have one foot in another culture but are functionally American. Some of them will go a bit too far and say something that gets them in trouble. The rest will be passed through, because the university doesn't really want to deal with angry students complaining that Professor Socjus is failing them for saying tax cuts aren't racist.
There is no self-aware life-preparing edge. The people who will implement this course believe that academia and activism are compatible, not that they'll cynically teach students how to navigate lying in the workplace.
Any such course is almost certainly a waste of everybody's time. But for a certain kind of bureaucrat and moderate lib, diversity seminar kumbayah sing-alongs are catnip. They really just believe that DEI is good, and if we implement more DEI, we'll get more good.
I predict that there will be extremely low standards of rigour at these courses, and most students won’t bother actually attending to express disagreement.
It really depends on the druthers of the professors involved. In my college experience, engineering and more "serious" classes were lax about attendance, blow-off courses were mid-lax about attendance, humanities and college make-believe busy-work courses were much more strict. The less objective material that could be learned from a textbook at home, the more a professor might tend to enforce attendance.
Secretly, those who disagree with the material will be some of the likeliest to show up, because even if they individually keep their heads down, they will want to see someone else argue against the material. (My own bad habit of arguing against the material taught me that there was always a sizeable number of students who would approach me quietly later and thank me for saying something.)
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By the grace of the Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen, I have not. I am too old (and never went to college) so this stuff was not around in my youth. It may well come up in work, but I might just about be retirement age and not have to sit through this by then.
It being Caplan's place of employment, I wondered if there was a tiny chance that it wasn't all Persons Of Hair Colour. Can anyone tell me what George Mason U is like from that angle?
Ah, the cynicism is there from my side. As I said, the poor divils are going to go out into the workplace where this stuff is all around (at least for another few years) so they'll be exposed to it anyway, better that the more hard-headed of them get early exposure so they know how to bluff around the corporate requirements.
I had to take a BS cultural diversity class in college. The professor was a black female adjunct who started off day one by trying unsuccessfully to create racial and sex-based divisions between the students. In day three or four, she snapped at me in class for “questioning” her and thereby “undermining her authority.” I was frankly stunned. I pretty regularly asked questions in other classes if something sounded off to my ears and even directly argued with professors. In all those previous classes, the professors loved it (at least I was engaged, which couldn’t be said for many of my classmates). After I challenged her for including inaccurate information in her presentations, she stopped uploading them to the class site. These were insane errors too, like claiming that Max Weber, close friend and colleague of Martin Luther, invented the Protestant Work Ethic as a way to discriminate against Jews and Catholics, which in turn served as a model for later Jim Crow laws (I swear I’m not making any of that up). Her final straw was when she said something blatantly wrong in class, and one of the other students turned around to me and asked, “Is that right?” The fire in the prof’s eyes was quite a sight to behold. She naturally failed me, but fortunately, I’d been meeting with my advisor after every class to document the issues, so I was able to get the grade overturned on appeal.
That’s the kind of bullshit that these diversity classes make people put up with. If you have even the slightest inkling that the professors teaching those classes will treat students fairly or allow multiple points of view, you need to spend more time with The Nybbler. Maybe some his cynicism will rub off.
Someone should have asked him for his longevity secrets.
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Damn. I saw some questionable things done by ideological professors, but never anything like that. Certainly nothing that impacted my grade so forcefully, though there were a few times I say, got a B on a paper when a paper of similar quality in another class would have gotten an A, and the topic of my paper directly disagreed with the professor's ideological position. But never anywhere close to failing.
There were definitely some eyebrow-raising religious things too, I remember the most ideological professor I took a class from suggested once that the Trinity was an exclusively Catholic belief, while most Christian denominations venerated saints (this really depends on how one defines "most").
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George Mason U is more conservative than the modal university, but let's not overstate it.
GMU's law school is a well-regarded pipeline to legal jobs in DC. This has given the school a solid network of grateful, connected alumni, and made it a mild bastion for conservative ideas. The law school was renamed for Scalia in 2016, and Koch brothers money followed. For a certain kind of shallow person, that association was all the proof necessary of the school's conservstive bent, which reputation has actually probably done more to lean the school toward the conservative side than would have otherwise happened. (For example, Brett Kavanaugh was given a faculty position there after his confirmation to the Supreme Court.)
The Economics department supposedly has a libertarian bent. There was a minor scandal where it came out that the Kochs were allowed to pick candidates for the department in exchange for their donations.
GMU is the largest public school in Virginia. Despite Virginia's recent reputation as a blue state, it still elects Republicans to lead the state government, and this has kept its political hands at least somewhat tied. But political comprimises are never really respected in American universities -- Youngkin's restrictions have all been challenged in court, and will probably not be respected even if he wins. (It's the same as college administrators across the country admitting that they will work around the recent ban on affirmative action as best they can.)
The school automatically admits top-performing students from across Virginia regardless of anything else, which restricts a certain level of affirmative action admissions gamesmanship in the student body. But I really don't think that makes much of a difference. Selective schools like the Ivies are not especially more woke than broad-body state schools.
GMU is still a university in the modern day, still comprised of a professor class that networks and affiliates across universities, still broadly left, still operating a modern DEI and Title IX regime. That it has carved out some role for conservatives makes GMU one of the more intellectually free schools in the country, but I suspect this is a low bar.
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Imagine requiring multiple courses on Muslim theology, all taught by fundamentalist imams, and with most of the students devout Muslims, but then assuring the students that "it's okay to disagree".
I honestly don't see any difference except that, as you point out, Wokism is more popular than Islam among our current elites.
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This common language will surely include terms like toxic masculinity, white privilege, and heteronormativity, but certainly not black violence, female privilege or Jewish in-group bias. So it will be strictly of the form “<negative adjective> <disfavored group>”, where the disfavored groups are exactly those hated by the radical left (only Jews are iffy here, depending on how radical they intent to go). And then students are free to express their personal values but required to use only terms that imply that cisgender straight white males suck.
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The syllabus doesn't have to. That's what the Title IX bureaucracy is for when you get accused of "creating an unsafe environment" for questioning the orthodoxy in class.
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I agree with this perspective. Imo, the core problem is that there is no positive vision people can agree on that isn't the SJW/woke worldview, and part of the reason for this is that there is no good public forum where we can hash out our differences, only "secret" places like this. The GMU should offer courses like this, but with a much more explicitly open-minded focus than the average university course. Just ceding the entire concept of talking about how to make a just society to SJWs is merely a different flavour of rolling over and dying. Though admittedly a big problem is that you simply can't trust the current faculty (and the administration even less) at most universities to not just turn these classes into loyalty tests no matter how much explicit directions to the opposite you give them, or good ol' malicious compliance. Similar to the problems many states have with their teachers.
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Not just the teachers, the students too. Teachers you can ignore, you don't have to engage with them, but a 'debate' that turns out to be a struggle session is a different thing entirely. Even if you're not naive enough to get blitzed, you know engagement is possible so you have to choose between cowardice and suicide.
Yeah, my go to reaction is that this is just normal run of the mill entryism. The lecturer is likely to stand by while the purple haired brigade 'builds consensus' and the independent thinkers are silenced.
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