Thread by @tressiemcphd

This is the kind of fantasy people have about higher education and progressivism. It is a causal boondoggle, depends on one’s definition of “sure fire”, and has notable exceptions so notable that it begs the question of the rule altogether

https://twitter.com/jhweissmann/status/1434942666786152448

Do people less likely to become conservative reactionaries become that way because they go to college or are those people just more likely to go to college? There are a few surveys that try at causation but it’s a noisy mess (and I think they’re old).

I am fine with thinking higher education is generally good but I suspect that we hit the ceiling of how many white men college can turn into liberals long ago. No reason to think that this is a trend line.

Recent research does suggest that as “surefire” (again whatever that means at a given time) is multiracial labor unions.

But even if this were all true and college is a antidote for white reactionary conservatism with no natural limit, what does one propose we DO with that? Without, uh, changing the very nature of the institution?

It remains weird to me that we are worried anew about men in college in 2021, though. We have done this a few times already.

I attribute this fantasy to the hope that white men can be saved and that, by extension, the white man in question has been saved. And painlessly saved at that. I have some uncomfortable truths about that one.

We have no real idea of what makes a John Brown versus a John Birch versus a John Tyler versus Dirty John. But there is a neverending quest to save John.

But on the issue of attrition etc, there is a lot of evidence about supports that work with men —- Black men, in particular.