Good piece here on the political effects of a college education. Believe it or not, getting a higher ed degree makes people more economically *conservative*, not liberal. So much for the Myth of Campus Socialism.
It's not the professors, by the way. It's the peer groups. That generalizes to pretty much ever political change a student might experience in college. It's the peer groups.
I can't tell if Rufo is misinformed or simply using words differently that I do, but honestly who cares? I'm just going to post two bills below. I'll supply a few prompts, but you read them and make up your own mind.
New from me at @ArcDigi: There's a war being waged right now on left-wing speech. In state houses across the country, GOP legislators are voting on bills that would muzzle professors, censor students, and destroy academic freedom.
In Georgia, a state rep has ordered universities to report back to him with a list of every course in which faculty discuss concepts like "privilege" or "oppression". Profs say it's already having a chilling effect.
Collin College has fired Professor Lora Burnett. This entire story is outrageous. Burnett criticized her university's re-opening plan (a plan that cost one employee her life), and for that crime, she has been fired. Shame on @collincollege.
But that's not all. The more immediate impetus was a tweet she sent out slamming Mike Pence. Private speech, outside the classroom, etc. But Collin's president didn't care and hauled her in for a dressing down.
Turns out a state legislator had contacted the president about shutting Burnett up. But which? After a good deal of work from @adamsteinbaugh, plus $14k in wasted legal fees by Collin College, the truth came out.
New legislative session, new assault on academic freedom and campus free speech.
In Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Mississippi, GOP reps have introduced bills that punish public schools and universities for teaching anything from the 1619 Project.
These laws are vaguely written, but that's by design. For example, the Iowa bill would withhold funding from any school that utilizes "in whole or in part" the 1619 Project "or any similarly developed curriculum". Gee, I wonder what that means.
It's clear the issue isn't over the Project's factual accuracy, but rather its interpretation of the past. Hence, the MS and AR bills accuse it of promoting “a racially divisive and revisionist account" and the IA bill cites the state's interest in creating "patriotic citizens".
Been thinking this morning about whether there is a tension between critiques of the concept cultural appropriation (eg all cultures appropriate, adapt, evolve) and moderate nationalist @epkaufm-esque arguments against immigration (eg US culture is changing too fast/too much).
These positions don’t have to be in tension, but in practice I think they often are. Both turn (at least in part) on the idea of “feeling at home”, on the claim that one has a right to feel part of a community, or even the right to have one’s community persist over time.
I’m not saying these things are equally just, equally right, etc. And to put my cards in the table, while I have qualified sympathy for cul. app. concerns, I have zero for cultural nationalism. Still, I’m interested in whether, to a certain extent, these distinct ideas rhyme.
I’m going to break my rule of no longer retweeting this asshat because these needs to be exposed and called out. You don’t blame Jews for anti-Semitism.
Holy hell. Look how this Orban shill wastes precisely zero time climbing into the anti-Semitic mud with Lindsay, so great is his partisan hatred for the Left.