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A university president makes a case against cowardice

(www.newyorker.com)
450 points pseudolus | 2 comments | 03 Apr 25 12:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.475s | source
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sequoia ◴[03 Apr 25 13:52 UTC] No.43569673[source]▶
A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?
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bell-cot ◴[03 Apr 25 14:28 UTC] No.43570204[source]▶
There's a highly emotional Right-Left culture war going on in America. Many of our "flagship" universities conspicuously sided with the Left - at least on most of the "litmus test" issues. And where universities didn't do that, the Right found it advantageous to talk up the association & outrage anyway.

Any decent History Prof. could have explained to the U's that openly taking one side in long-term cultural wars was not a viable long-term strategy.

(Or, maybe that's why so many universities cut their History Dept's so brutally? Though "just shoot inconvenient messengers" is also not a viable long-term strategy.)

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Aeolun ◴[04 Apr 25 04:24 UTC] No.43578316[source]▶
> Many of our "flagship" universities conspicuously sided with the Left

I wonder if that’s related to universities often being places where ‘reasoning’ is taught.

And then by extension, that tells you a lot about the arguments on either side…

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1. concordDance ◴[04 Apr 25 07:17 UTC] No.43579218[source]▶
I probably have a skewed sample, but in my observations those with the best reasoning skills tended to have a mix of views that would be labelled "left" and "right". The better the reasoning skills the less likely they were to just agree with things like "trans women are women" or "capitalism is the best economic system" and the more likely they were to dissect the statement and terms.
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2. Aeolun ◴[05 Apr 25 02:20 UTC] No.43590027[source]▶
Sure, but you are picking things that are debatable. I’m thinking more of (somehow) controversial things like ‘climate change is bad’.