Viewpoint Diversity

Alex Walters
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: If you ask professors about their politics, they’ll say one thing. But if you use a complex algorithm to predict their politics based on their social-media interactions — as a recent study did — it’ll say another.

By scraping the accounts of more than 4,000 faculty members at over 500 institutions, a forthcoming paper based on the study says that the professoriate’s political persuasions are more diverse than previous survey-based research would suggest. The paper, which will be published in The Review of Higher Education, a peer-reviewed journal, also points to polarization across the political spectrum, arguing that professors’ true beliefs are more extreme and varied than widely thought.

Lauren A. Wright

The Atlantic

Right-wing commentators relish painting elite college students as ignorant, weak, and unprepared to meet the real world. Students have bolstered this perception by struggling to articulate positions on issues for which they profess deep concern.

But this grim picture leaves out an important distinction: Conservative students, rather than being coddled, face significant intellectual and social challenges in college. These challenges impart educational advantages by forcing conservatives to defend their points of view. Liberal students, surrounded by like-minded peers and mentors, have less opportunity to grow in this way.

Samuel J. Abrams
RealClear Education

Excerpt: Over the past few years, I have spent a considerable amount of time on college and university campuses of all sorts- from small liberal arts colleges to huge state schools – trying to understand the politics of Gen Z students.

I have met countless open-minded, curious, and pluralistic students, but I have also encountered “liberal” students who refuse to engage or listen to ideas that run counter to their own. These liberal students often hold the misguided and dangerous perspective that particular traits or identity characteristics immediately disqualify a person’s ideas, experiences, and views from being discussed and debated.

The Economist

Excerpt: Thoughtful insiders acknowledge that, for some years, elite universities, particularly those within the Ivy League, have grown dangerously detached from ordinary Americans, not to mention unmoored from their own academic and meritocratic values.

University boards appear especially weak. They have not grown much more professional or effective, even as the wealth and fame of their institutions has soared. Many are oversized. Prestigious private colleges commonly have at least 30 trustees; a few have 50 or more. It is not easy to coax a board of that size into focused strategic discussions. It also limits how far each trustee feels personally responsible for an institution’s success.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: In an echo of last year, state lawmakers in different parts of the country are pushing bills that would diminish tenure protections and target diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Indiana’s Republican-dominated state Senate wants to do both at once. Earlier this month it passed a bill that takes aim at both tenure and DEI in public colleges and universities, tying them together with language that shifts focus from racial or other notions of diversity toward what it calls “intellectual diversity.” Senate Bill 202, now being debated in the majority-Republican state House of Representatives, defines that term as “multiple, divergent, and varied scholarly perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues.”

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley's Blog

Excerpt: Dan Kalb, an Oakland City Council member, is an ardent environmentalist and liberal politician. He was considered ideal to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, on the environment . . . until students found out that Kalb is also a supporter of Israel.  Kalb was reportedly disinvited this month by Natural Resources Professor Kurt Spreyer after students objected and threatened a protest.