Writes Adam Hoffman, a senior at Princeton, in "My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right" (NYT).
March 1, 2023
"Some might think that this pervasive progressivism would encourage conservative students to change their views."
"But in fact it has the opposite effect. Graduates of schools like Loyola University Chicago, George Washington University and Mount Holyoke have described how the rampant leftism on their campuses pushed them to the right.... [F]ormative years at elite institutions that have gone woke are convincing right-leaning students and heterodox thinkers that society’s most august institutions — from media outlets to universities — are fundamentally broken and need to be set on a different path. If colleges don’t want to produce a new generation of conservative firebrands, they need to pump the brakes on campus progressivism. Campuses that are more welcoming to conservatives are in universities’ own interest."
Writes Adam Hoffman, a senior at Princeton, in "My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right" (NYT).
Writes Adam Hoffman, a senior at Princeton, in "My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right" (NYT).
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If only we had a multitude of "liberal" campuses! What a change that would be from the hard-left environment that predominates today.
Aw, campus progressives realize that they're now The Man.
Not unexpected.
Welp...
There's some evidence that political orientation has a biological component, as with personality introversion versus extroversion. There's also a strong human tendency to follow parents and grandparents in holding traditional clan views -- safety in numbers and sticking with what's proven to function over time.
Today's hard left stands to eliminate its future generations through free gender identities and downplaying the value of children (i.e., absolute abortion, negative climate impact). The right tends to have larger families and often follows religious guidance to not use birth control and/or 'be fruitful and multiply.' So, they stand to hold their own or take over regardless of progression ideological fashions.
The left must become fruitful and traditional, or today's left will evaporate following their narcissistic and hedonistic Roman orgy that began in the 1960s.
They'd go to the right in any case as they got older and got some awareness of perverse side effects as an equal problem. Anyway if they're not women.
"Pushed by the left"
"Pulled by the right"
"Freethinkers are being..."
My favorite thing about modern choice and preference framing within the MSM is that conservativism is always about conservative 'reaction'. It's always framed as being something people do or think or feel because liberals are failing to be convincing enough, or aren't being deceptive enough, or are saying the quiet part too loud. It's always the 'Republicans Pounce!' angle, never that they are bat-shit crazy, always have been, and that the entire edifice of the liberal agenda would fall to pieces catastrophically if it weren't for powerful outside forces working 24/7 overtime all the time to place a hand on the scales of respectability against it.
This was exactly my experience at UW-Madison in the 70's. I arrived a liberal if not a left-winger (different meaning at that time, basically anti-war), and left a convinced conservative. What set me on that path was a budding interest in the consequences of policy, and the dawning realization that leftist policies had bad results, particularly for the people they were supposedly helping. I suppose that makes me a bit of a utilitarian, but I think most conservatives are somewhat utilitarian.
Don't worry, Adam. They have a plan for that. Do you really think you're going to convince them to slow down "Progress" and "Justice" because some people might balk?
You know what they call free thinkers in China?
Organ donors.
how the rampant leftism on their campuses pushed them to the right..
How could it NOT? It's like reading a comment from LLR Chuck.. How can you NOT see How Stupid it is?
No Democrat will understand this. They think the hard left is winning. Reality is what remains when fantasy fails. The reality is going to be harsh.
We will always have contrarians.
I've seen this with my three daughters as well as with my nieces. They go in as typical white suburban female liberals and leave detesting the WOKE and academia. I hope Desantis' work on the higher ed schools in FL resets the path.
"Some might think that this pervasive progressivism would encourage conservative students to change their views."
"Gosh, why aren't conservatives abandoning their beliefs after we spend years bullying them about those beliefs?"
"You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks"
The problem with Far-Left students is that they are very inflexible in their thinking. No one wants to be around that unless you live in a bubble.
This has been true for decades. Certainly my days at a small liberal arts school followed by the University of Michigan honed my conservative thinking. It also makes conservatives (1) better able to understand their ideological opponents, (2) clearer in their thinking, and (3) thicker-skinned. Groupthink has the opposite effects on progressives.
I think this is why there are many, many potential conservative SCOTUS justices with genuine intellectual chops and almost none on the other.
hawkeyedjb said...
If only we had a multitude of "liberal" campuses! What a change that would be from the hard-left environment that predominates today.
"Liberal." I get it, of course. And, of course, we had that unforgettable moment in Trumpism where someone asked Trump about Putin's hatred of "western liberalism," and Trump responded by talking about progressive Democrats in California. One of my all-time Top Ten favorite Trump episodes. And no one has ever better reported that story, than Jon Chait. There is that Trump thing with the story, where Trump furrows his brow and lowers his voice and talks about California Democrats like he is the smartest guy in the room even as everyone around him is breathlessly thinking it is the most incomprehensibly stupid thing they have ever heard.
Just yesterday was the posting of this friendly, informative interview of former Speaker Paul Ryan by Charlie Sykes from last week at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Must-listen. Truly blog-worthy, for Althouse.
In the Paul Ryan interview, he and Charlie laughingly do "Classic Liberalism 101" for about five minutes. (Ryan also talks about his buddy Mitch Daniel's tenure at Purdue, re: higher education reform.)
So directing myself to the question raised by Althouse's blog post; do we imagine that free-thinking classic liberal and libertarian-minded Princeton undergrads, who reject their college administration's leftward tilt, are going to gravitate to a future Republican Party led by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Charlie Kirk? Or would Princeton kids be more attracted to a future Republican Party led by, say, Peter Meijer (Columbia, NYU, US Army) or Justin Amash (Michigan BA,JD), or Liz Cheney (Chicago Law)?
You think?
There is no free-thinking on the left anymore. You get in line, you parrot talking points, you buy wholesale lies pushed by the corrupt FBI and MSNBC. You obey the pro-noun police..
If you do not obey - you will be called a ****-oh-Phobe and a hater. by the haters!
You will soak in the non-stop propaganda fed to you by your TV set.
Sculpted reality and "news" from social media -scrubbed per FBI instructions by dutiful billionaires who own it all.
(the same type of folks who visit the secret sex empire that Jeffrey Epstein built)
Liberal is dead.
Progressive thought-crime brown-shirt is the replacement.
As I remember it, I was pretty liberal during my college years and didn't need any prompting to be so. As I progressed through the years, my views became more conservative. Anyone who has ever been exposed to irrational authority is a bit of rebel.... Anyone who has ever had to exercise authority in order to make a buck is a bit of a conservative. Young people are more apt to be exposed to irrational authority. Older people are more apt to assert authority in order to make a living. Young people are also more likely to view any form of authority over them as irrational and maybe tyrannical. Older people are more likely to consider their enforcement of societal norms as a positive good for society as a whole. And so it goes....I read David McCullough's bio of John Adams. Adams thought that his generation were not up to the standards set by his Puritan forebears. John Adams generation consisted of slackers like Paul Revere and John Hancock.
You don't need to either conform or rebel. There's always silence, exile, and cunning.
This happened to my son during law school at Loyola-Los Angeles. He's now a conservative. When rational people experience the intellectual dishonesty, irrational opinions and failures of liberalism, many switch.
Right now in Nebraska Senator M. Cavanaugh (educated in Catholic schools) is filibustering every single bill in the NE Unicameral because she doesn't like the abortion and trans bill being offered.
For the Left, all dissent must be crushed or censored.
"If colleges don’t want to produce a new generation of conservative firebrands, they need to pump the brakes on campus progressivism."
If college administrative leaders had the vision or brains or ability or the inclination or grit to slow the Thelma and Louise over the cliff policies, they would have pumped the brakes long ago.
They have NONE of those things. Leftists don't do "nuance". It's straight to Mao-ville Struggle Sessions and Stalinist Show Trials....but only every single time.
It will have to be forced from the outside (see DeSantis and New College of Florida) and lawsuit after lawsuit if it is to happen at all.
"Pushing free thinkers to the right"
Thus we can assume the sheep and lemmings remain on the left. Unfortunately for our society this includes the Administrators and Professors.
Here comes the pendulum fuckers.
All of these tribalist progressive fascists and racists need to be shipped one way to China where they can enjoy the fruits of their fascist bullshit.
Chuck said...Just yesterday was the posting of this friendly, informative interview of former Speaker Paul Ryan by Charlie Sykes from last week at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Must-listen.
Chuck is now a fan of Paul Ryan and Charlie Sykes. These two are not free thinkers. Paul Ryan is a kept man who married into a wealthy Democrat family. Charlie Sykes is a sophist struggling for relevancy after betraying his Scott Walker supporting audience. Both men unjustifiably arrogant.
At this point I believe Chuck is just a troll trying to make "Life Long Republicans" look stupid.
He is just so obviously dishonest and stupid it has to be a joke. Paul Ryan and Charlie Sykes are both hated by everyone in the country. They are both just billionaire shills. Paul Ryan couldn't win an election anywhere in the country.
If you are humiliating yourself for free Chuck you are just stupid.
I hope you are getting paid.
"convincing right-leaning students and heterodox thinkers that society’s most august institutions . . . are fundamentally broken and need to be set on a different path."
How many? What proportion? What different path? And who among those brave new converts actually will stand up to the Man?
"If colleges don’t want to produce a new generation of conservative firebrands, they need to pump the brakes"
This is stupid. Colleges are perfectly fine with a few "conservative firebrands" illustrating righty insanity and irrelevance, the better to control their prog sheep.
"Campuses that are more welcoming to conservatives are in universities’ own interest."
This is also stupid. Universities know perfectly well what their interests are. Of course, in some red states, though not at Princeton, it makes sense for them to fake openness, if only to fend off legislative ire, but other than that, they want money, and they want prog orthodoxy. The it's-in-your-own-interest argument to do x always fails.
I see LLR Chuck is doing his daily duty to deflect from the actions of his beloved democraticals and is once again engaged in trying to drive a wedge between Althouse and her readers and smearing republicans.
It's easy to see why he was banned and, though never invited back, simply invited himself back in order to disrupt during the coming campaign.
"Pervasive progressivism would encourage"
HUH?
Pervasive it is - that is all to obvious. But what progressivism is most decidedly about is FORCE, raw force. Not persuasion through reasoned argument and debate. That's so passe. It's "DO, SAY, THINK what we say or we will destroy you."
And who exactly are the fascists here?
lane ranger said...
This was exactly my experience at UW-Madison in the 70's. I arrived a liberal if not a left-winger (different meaning at that time, basically anti-war), and left a convinced conservative. What set me on that path was a budding interest in the consequences of policy, and the dawning realization that leftist policies had bad results, particularly for the people they were supposedly helping. I suppose that makes me a bit of a utilitarian, but I think most conservatives are somewhat utilitarian.
I think that is part of the core of being conservative - in the most general sense, not just politically - is conserving and passing down the best practices of the previous generations so that the next generation doesn't have to build everything from scratch. There's wisdom in Chesterton Fence.
Oh look! A real-time example of our new progressive brown-shirt speech crime overlords:
HIGHER EDUCATION FASCISM: Protesters set fire to Matt Walsh flyers ahead of Stanford speech, Eventbrite cancels ticket sales.
“‘It’s easier to burn posters than show up and engage,’ YAF spokesperson said.”
Chuck said...
... So directing myself to the question raised by Althouse's blog post; do we imagine that free-thinking classic liberal and libertarian-minded Princeton undergrads, who reject their college administration's leftward tilt, are going to gravitate to a future Republican Party led by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Charlie Kirk? Or would Princeton kids be more attracted to a future Republican Party led by, say, Peter Meijer (Columbia, NYU, US Army) or Justin Amash (Michigan BA,JD), or Liz Cheney (Chicago Law)?
Chuck, IRL is your name T Coddington Van Voorhees VII?
Buckley used to say that the spate of liberalism wasn't a result of its intellectual appeal. It was a result of sitting at the feet of liberal professors for years.
If the observations of this post are correct, today's progressive profs are so over the top that even students notice.
Of course. I was a factory default Liberal until I started reading Mother Jones and The New Yorker. Barbara Boxer gave me the final push.
It is fitting the Chuck Channeling Schumer cites Paul Ryan. Ryan's tenure as speaker under Trump was perhaps the most destructive political force in recent memory.
He was a self-righteous seditionist whose aversion to Trump let him to piss away the Republican's advantage gained in the 2016 election. "To hell with the country. To hell with the constituency. To hell with the party. Resist Trump. He offends me."
If Chuck is really a Republican, he is cut from the same cloth as Ryan. Democrats will dismantle our country with their help.
"Peter Meijer (Columbia, NYU, US Army) or Justin Amash (Michigan BA,JD), or Liz Cheney (Chicago Law)?"
You mean people aren't voting for this pupu platter of open borders, deindustrialization, and wars? You do realize that this is the Democrat platform? No wonder you live Biden and Buttigieg and Milley so fucking much. Can't imagine why the GOP in Michigan isn't functioning with guys like you running things.
You really are evil and stupid Cuck.
The writer will, of course, be crucified.
Oh, c’mon people. Just laugh at Chuck. Cookie, too, one to think of it. Don’t bother trying to refute people like them. Just focus on winning over the independent voters who are open to reason. Focus on 270 electoral votes.
"If colleges don’t want to produce a new generation of conservative firebrands, they need to pump the brakes on campus progressivism."
1. So, steady as she goes, eh?
2. Shhh!! Be quiet! Don't tell!
3. Heh. The Progs are tedious, but let 'em roll.
4. Why are we writing this? Why are we publishing this? Will anything change?
Whatever happened to teaching?
You know; writing, history, science, philosophy, art.
What a novel fucking concept...
Do you think (as a teacher) that your silly notions have never been thought of before?
Of course the they have. And they were rejected by smarter people than you because they were untenable.
"If colleges don’t want to produce a new generation of conservative firebrands, they need to pump the brakes on campus progressivism. Campuses that are more welcoming to conservatives are in universities’ own interest."
Most likely this will play out one of two ways:
- More dissembling and duplicity from the radical left, staying the course but putting on a happy face mask to make it look like they're more accepting of different views; or
- Doubling down on the hard-line approach, using cancel culture, lawfare and when all else fails, shouting down the dissenters.
Based on what I've seen so far, the second approach is what I expect. They are True Believers and they really don't care what the wrong people think about them.
Wrong reason to resist going crazy left. It is wrong on the merits, not because it pushes some to the right. How could being pushed toward free speech, family, church, limited government be bad?
I know I should never respond to the resident obsessive moron... But Chuck, do you ever stop thinking about and writing about Trump? Shut the fuck up. This is not about him. You are unhinged. Even worse than that, you are boring.
Berkeley, class of '73 here. The tsunami force of having to conform to nonconformity squirted me out of ever identifying with any group. To this day I've never belonged to anything, not even a political party.
Regarding the article's title, if someone is truly a freethinker, can that person be "pushed" in any direction other than by their own reckoning?
The flaw in the author's logic is to think that "rampant leftism" is not a fundamental element of "progressivism." It is meant to be oppressive. What he is seeing on campus is progressivism in its natural state. He might as well ask a lion to become a vegetarian. I have a suspicion that the author, who is a conservative, knows this, and if he doesn't he will learn soon enough.
I would love to believe this, but I don't. Hard experience of leftist policies is what pushes people to the right as they age, and more importantly, have children, but that experience doesn't really include the coddled existence present in American universities and colleges. White Americans age 16-30 are the most conformist people on the planet, Sure, there are a handful of dissenters, but they aren't numerous- not in my day, and certainly not now.
And Old and Slow nails it- Chuck is boring in his Trump obsessions. If he really is a Republican, then he is most pathetic one this side of David French, and if he is a concern troll, he isn't a very good one.
lane ranger,
Exactly my experience, too. I was well to the left of my parents when I went off to UC/Berkeley, and well to their right when I came out again. And this wasn't for the most part b/c of the influence of other students. I knew one out-and-proud and bloody obnoxious (but in a charming way) libertarian (a fellow recipient of the scholarship I got myself), but literally everyone else I met was far-Left, both as a MechE undergrad and as a musicology grad student.
The shock of seeing what the Left looks like up close will do that to you. I went to a meeting of Students for a Democratic Society soon after I got there; it turned out to be three other people, one an Asian-American whose gripe was that Cal didn't account for different "learning styles" like (of course) his own. Considering that Asian-Americans were presently wiping the floor with everyone else, this did not hold water. What evs.
It was the same all through. I had the best teachers in the world -- really the best. George Pimentel for chemistry, Otto J. M. Smith for electrical engineering. The fellow who taught heat transfer (spitefully scheduled for 8 a.m.) might have been another such. And in musicology? Ye gods. Tony Newcomb, Dan Heartz, Richard Taruskin, Philip Brett, Joseph Kerman, John Butt. (All gone now, of course. I mean, Butt's still alive and kicking, but he's doing it in Helensburgh, Scotland.)
If colleges don’t want to produce a new generation of conservative firebrands, they need to pump the brakes on campus progressivism.
Much like telling a visitor to not open 'that' door. Telling students they cannot be exposed to a spectrum of ideologies, only forces them to break down the door to see whats there.
But comparing and contrasting, exposes the lack of rational basis, attempting to anchor the leftist agenda.
Campuses that are more welcoming to conservatives are in universities’ own interest.
That's where the donors are.
Suburban liberal bubbles do turn out some far fetched theorists, like Obama.
Robert Cook said...
"Regarding the article's title, if someone is truly a freethinker, can that person be "pushed" in any direction other than by their own reckoning?"
When you're a free thinker you run your opinions through the filter of reason and logic with the full understanding of human nature.
It can be a humbling and frustrating way to go through life so a sense of humor helps.
Here's a theory in play.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/02/report-child-molester-accused-murderer-james-hannah-tubbs-discussed-becoming-female-in-jail-with-dad/
Achilles said...
At this point I believe Chuck is just a troll trying to make "Life Long Republicans" look stupid.
This is the only way he is believable.
There is No Way On Earth; that ANYONE could be as stupid as Chuck shows himself to be,
Therefore, it HAS TO be an act. Right Chuck?
You're just pretending to believe the sh*t that comes out of your mouth; right?
Anarchism is [nominally] unstructured. Libertarianism is [nominally] independent. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is [unqualified] monotonic. Conservativism is moderating. A religion (i.e. behavioral protocol). What's in your philosophy? Principles matter.
Robert Cook said...
Regarding the article's title, if someone is truly a freethinker, can that person be "pushed" in any direction other than by their own reckoning?
This is a very good question. In the purest form, a free thinker will not be biased in any way, will listen to all forms of argument, will do his or her own research, and then devise a conclusion consistent with all of that, leaving open the possibility that the conclusion may need to be revised in the future due to new evidence. In reality, the fact that one position's argument is basically "do what you are told or else" is typically sufficient to determine a lack of rigor. Also, it is difficult to evaluate an argument when the proponents refuse to provide an argument. A true free thinker may come back around to investigate that position at a later date and see if there is something to it, but when the proponents are being aggressively illogical and anti-free-thinking, that pretty much an automatic rejection. There is only so much time in a day.
I find it hard to imagine college conformity being so bad, then I read the AA commentariat reaction to a Chuck post and think, it must be kinda like that.
When I attended a small liberal arts college in Maine back in the late 70's, the progs were there and they had the same nutty ideas. But it seemed highly unlikely that anyone off-campus would take them seriously, or attempt to impose their nostrums on the non-captive population. So we mostly ignored them.
And now here we are.
Democrats will dismantle our country with their help.
I would just quibble with the use if "will dismantle" where "are indeed now dismantling" would be accurate IMO and yes our own little Liz Cheney lifelong party member will help them do it as he does here every day.
Chuck is entertainment, readering, like the only "working girl" in a mining town. Don't read our reaction to him as any kind of consternation, or umbrage, or outrage.
Colleges teach "free thinkers" to keep their mouths shut and not question authority. The Pandemic gave the authorities even more unquestionable power over non-leftists.
At some point, lots of kids stop thinking all together in order to avoid the penalties of Wrong Think.
Makes a lot of sense, i was considerably more liberal till moving to Manhattan and being only around leftists
Readering: "I find it hard to imagine college conformity being so bad, then I read the AA commentariat reaction to a Chuck post and think, it must be kinda like that."
Your knee-jerk reflexive desire to white knight for your co-democratical is duly noted...as is your studied silence in the face of LLR Chuck's explicitly stated desire to drive a wedge between Althouse and her readers as well as use Althouse blog to smear and lie about conservatives.
Since you took the time to speak up on your teammate's behalf, we'll just assume you are in full agreement with LLR Chuck's stated mission here.
Shorter readering: nothing is happening with conservative students on campus but by golly LLR Chuck sure is treated badly!
If history is any indicator, the leftists won't take a step back to see why their thuggery is churning out conservatives. Nope. They'll double down.
Go for it.
Actually, Readering, you are right. What Chuck experiences here is precisely what every conservative student on a university campus experiences. Every day. The only difference is that Chuck need not show up here and say what he has to say, while a conservative university student is doomed when she (inevitably) has something to say in a classroom.
I learned very early on that I had no "right" to speak. So I kept speech on political topics to a tiny circle of maybe five people, most of whom still didn't agree with me, but who I knew wouldn't rat me out.
Michelle Dulak Thomson: "Actually, Readering, you are right. What Chuck experiences here is precisely what every conservative student on a campus experiences."
"precisely"?
I am unaware of any conservative student anywhere in the nation showing up to his or her university or college and announcing he or she was there specifically to smear and lie about political opponents, drive a wedge between the University President and the other students and then also lecture the University President on what classes should be taught or not taught and what topics should be discussed or not discussed as well as what other students should be allowed or not allowed to attend.
Feel free to present any evidence to the contrary.
I feel like I went to university in age of firebrand conservatives: Dartmouth Review; Federalist Society at Chicago/Yale/Harvard.
The commenters over there are piling on the writer (and no conservative he). Here’s a soupçon of the flavor: ”If by "heterodox" ideas you mean "homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and racism," people should be shamed into oblivion for espousing such views.” Welcome to the academy. Heretics (and we’ll tell you who they are), keep out.
Readering--
I think you're a good commenter. Imagine if some asshole was on here and said day after day that the Democratic Party needs to be nominate Joe Manchin for president and that Joe Manchin is the "real" liberal.
Yet Joe Manchin is far more acceptable to Democrats than warmongering shitpiles like Cheney and Romney are to "their" base. Joe Manchin will likely be nominated again by his party if he wants that. Wikipedia says "according to FiveThirtyEight, Manchin has voted with Biden's position 88.9% of the time as of September 2022."
And please let's not pretend that even if a loser like Adam Kitzinger won the nomination that you were going to vote for him. You wouldn't (nor shouldn't you).
The time frame he mentions, 2014 and forward, corresponds to what I've noticed at my alma mater, Princeton Theological Seminary (next door to the university), which has grown noticeably more left leaning in recent years, so much so that it's now a place where I'd be out of place. I don't know that this has created more conservatives there as much as it has simply made them vanish. Enrollment at the seminary today is half what it was when I was there thirty years ago.
"I find it hard to imagine college conformity being so bad, then I read the AA commentariat reaction to a Chuck post and think, it must be kinda like that."
It isn't tolerance if you do nothing when some asshole pulls downs his pants and takes a shit on the floor.
Chuck always fails to ask himself the correct question- "Am I the asshole?"
"Writes Adam Hoffman, a senior at Princeton, in "My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right" (NYT)."
Ron DeSantis said much the same thing of his Ivy League education in a recent interview. And I know my own conservative leanings were strengthened by the relentless leftism of the media.
"Regarding the article's title, if someone is truly a freethinker, can that person be "pushed" in any direction other than by their own reckoning?"
The young freethinker needs to be fed ideas to think about. And from the left, he is fed dogma and rigidity. Static Ping at 12:12 nails it.
Readering @ 12:21 PM,
Don't be ridiculous -- not even Chuck himself thinks he's commenting here in good faith.
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