This is just tautologically false. IDK what else to say about this particular quote.

I don't really understand the rest of your first paragraph. Why does MIT have a special duty to respect the speech of e.g., neo-luddites or young earth creationists where Wheaton has no reciprocal duty?

I believe free speech is imperative to higher education. I also think the current hysteria about liberals attack free speech on college campuses is 1) ridiculously overblown at 99% of institutions; and 2) hilariously misdirected given that the worst offenders are conservative christian institutions.

> On the other hand, one can argue that secular universities such as Berkeley and MIT have a much different expectation

Berkeley absolutely does. They are publicly funded. This muddies the waters some because Berkeley almost certainly allows some speech -- on the left and the right -- which, if not for constitutional necessity -- it might prefer to silence.

So the comparison is unfair both to Wheaton and to Berkeley. Unfair to Wheaton because it doesn't have a legal requirement to allow speech. And unfair to Berkeley because it can't quietly turn people away (if leftist-Milo wanted to give a speech at Wheaton we would never hear about it, but Milo can generate an entire news cycle out of Berkeley because they're obligated to not turn him away.)

This is why I put special emphasis on a private secular vs. private evangelical comparison. It's fair to both sides.

I'm not sure why MIT has any special obligation to allow free speech that isn't shared by Wheaton. Care to explain?

> But when you see dramatic shifts in the political leanings of professors, then followed by conservatives being attacked on campuses that are dominated by liberal thought you have to wonder. I'm not sure what qualifies as a preponderance of evidence in this case according to your words.

Look, secular universities just don't discriminate on the basis of political belief. Outside of a few very niche, very tiny, very not-influential departments, this just doesn't happen either explicitly or implicitly. When it comes to hiring new professors, teaching matters. Research matters. Personal political beliefs do not.

EXCEPT conservative christian colleges, which uniformly want a whole damn essay dedicated to convincing them candidates christian enough and conservative enough to work there.

Liberals are over-represented on college campuses and in the faculty. There are a lot of reasons for this. (I conjecture that one major factor is the 5-7 year pledge of poverty that precedes an academic career. But again, lots of reasons.)

But IMO there is a very important difference between not correcting for an existing bias in your hiring pipeline, and actively and explicitly introducing political bias into your hiring pipeline. I assert the latter rarely if ever happens at liberal-leaning universities, but is absolutely part of the explicit hiring policy at many conservative-leaning universities.

> It's not really about conservative vs liberal, so much as it's about how majorities operate and deal with minorities.

My personal experience -- and I think the evidence backs me on this -- is that liberal universities are far more welcoming to conservative viewpoints than the other way around.

I agree that being a minority is always hard.

Not really. Religion as in organized religion exists to promote a specific belief system. Science has a much different mission in it's search to describe the world accurately. A dissenting view there can potentially be the truthful path.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-key-to-s...

If MIT threw out every scientist who opposed global warming, they'd be little better than a religious college.

> This is why I put special emphasis on a private secular vs. private evangelical comparison. It's fair to both sides. I'm not sure why MIT has any special obligation to allow free speech that isn't shared by Wheaton. Care to explain?

MIT has an obligation if it wants to present itself as a college that promotes education in general. Wheaton is there to teach people about a Christ filled life. MIT makes it clear they value innovation and groundbreaking ideas and discoveries. There no way to do that effectively without considering as many points as possible.

> Look, secular universities just don't discriminate on the basis of political belief. Outside of a few very niche, very tiny, very not-influential departments, this just doesn't happen either explicitly or implicitly. When it comes to hiring new professors, teaching matters. Research matters. Personal political beliefs do not.

https://medium.com/@freddiedeboer/theres-no-pro-campus-censo...

https://medium.com/@freddiedeboer/conservatives-are-wrong-ab...

Freddie has written a lot on this subject in general. In fact he's been routinely attacked and DDOSed for critiquing the liberal culture both on campus and in the institution. He's posted some really controversial stuff about how bad the research is in the liberal arts. It's also worth noting that he's hardly a conservative and is quite soundly a liberal.

Money quote: "And while I think conservative students can mostly get by fine on the average campus, I really can’t imagine going through life as a conservative professor, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Is that a problem? That depends on your point of view. But if it’s happening, shouldn’t we talk about the fact that it’s happening?"

> "My personal experience -- and I think the evidence backs me on this -- is that liberal universities are far more welcoming to conservative viewpoints than the other way around."

I don't know how to measure the merits of explusion/suspension vs. social ostracization. I also have known a fair amount of conservative people at Berkeley due to my efforts to outreach to other point of views in my student days. I don't think "welcoming" is the word that they would use when it comes to liberals and conservative viewpoints.

Respectfully, exactly the opposite is the case. Ask any mathematician at a top university how many crackpot letters they have to throw out every year. Ask any biologist how much Real Work they would get done if they had a department half-full of young earth creationists.

Universities are bastions of free speech, but they are also inherently exclusionary. And places like MIT regularly let down that exclusionary guard to invite speech that explicitly interferes with the efficiency their institutional truth-finding mission. An admirable thing, IMO.

At universities, free speech serves a political purpose far more than it serves a scientific purpose.

Also, at places like Wheaton and Hillsdale, politics are part-and-parcel with religion. Demanding religious belief, while allow a broad spectrum in which to express that belief, is one thing. But the divide between politics and religion at these places is tenuous at best.

> I really can’t imagine going through life as a conservative professor... particularly in the humanities and social sciences

In the sciences no one cares. Except Wheaton et al, who are afraid of the liberal atheist branches of mathematics or something...?

Humanities and social sciences vary by field. IDK a lot about most of them them. But the one person I know from purdue -- where Freddie is from -- is in the humanities and very conservative (and doesn't hide it or anything).

Maybe Freddie should've taken a leaf out of your book and talked to more people while at Purdue -- the unimaginable was right in front of him ;-)

> I don't think "welcoming" is the word that they would use when it comes to liberals and conservative viewpoints.

Sure, "more" is relative and being a minority always sucks.

Still, MIT might make you feel alone. Hillsdale will just expel you.

You can publish your research that challenges the status quo so long as Free Speech is respected. Do you think it's a coincidence that Socrates challenged the physicists in Athens? (Granted that was one of the reasons they executed him) Or Aristotle? I can't think of better examples of early science and those came up under the first place we know of that did direct democracy.

> Also, at places like Wheaton and Hillsdale, politics are part-and-parcel with religion. Demanding religious belief, while allow a broad spectrum in which to express that belief, is one thing. But the divide between politics and religion at these places is tenuous at best.

Again. They're evangelical colleges. What do you really expect?

> Humanities and social sciences vary by field. IDK a lot about most of them them. But the one person I know from purdue -- where Freddie is from -- is in the humanities and very conservative (and doesn't hide it or anything). Maybe Freddie should've taken a leaf out of your book and talked to more people while at Purdue -- the unimaginable was right in front of him ;-)

Yes, one person is a preponderance of evidence. Not countless articles of students and professors being harassed and attacked for their conservative views in an environment that is supposed to be about higher truth. And some of those views that are becoming less and less conservative over time.

"For years and years I have denied the idea that campus is a space that’s antagonistic to conservative students. I thought Michael Berube’s book What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? was the last word on the subject. I still reject a lot of the David Horowitz narrative. But as a member of the higher education community I just have to be real with you: the vibe on campus really has changed. I spent years teaching at a university in a conservative state recently and I was kind of shocked at how openly fellow instructors would complain about the politics of their students, how personal they go when condemning their students who espoused conventional Republican politics. I encounter professors all the time who think that it’s fine for a student to say “I’m With Her” in class but not for a student to say “Make America Great Again” — that’s hate speech, see — despite the fact that both are simply the recent campaign slogans of the two major political parties. Yet those profs recoil at the idea that they’re not accepting of conservative students.

I hear people say that they won’t permit arguments against affirmative action in their classes — hate speech, again — despite the fact that depending on how the question is asked, a majority of Americans oppose race-based affirmative action in polling, including in some polls a majority of Hispanic Americans. The number of boilerplate conservative opinions that are taken to be too offensive to be voiced in the campus space just grows and grows, and yet progressive profs I know are so offended by the idea that they could be creating a hostile atmosphere, they won’t even discuss the subject in good faith."

"The idea that we need any intellectual diversity at all invites immediate incredulous statements like, “you’re saying we should debate eugenics?!?,” as though the only positions that exist are the obviously correct and the obviously horrible. The idea that you’re supposed to read the publications of the antagonistic viewpoint has been dismissed as a relic. People call for conservative books to be pulled from library shelves; they insist that the plays of conservative David Mamet have no place in the contemporary theater;"

> Sure, "more" is relative and being a minority always sucks. Still, MIT might make you feel alone. Hillsdale will just expel you.

I don't think forced resignation and expulsion are much different.

The rest of your anecdotes are just that. So one guy has some bad coworkers. BTW, my response is more than just any old anecdote -- It's a refutation of the single anecdote that you're offering. Same time, same place.

Do people get harassed and fired for political beliefs? Absolutely. And the fact that organizations like FIRE fight back when this happens is great.

But the "liberals attacking free speech on campus" thing is a bunch of politicized bullshit. At most non-religious universities, this isn't happening in any meaningful sense.

Let's put this in perspective. FIRE has less than 1000 cases over the past decade that I can find on their website. Literally millions -- probably tens of millions -- of controversial speech acts happen on American campuses every year.

Universities are still bastions of free speech. If you're conservative, you might find a lot of people who disagree with you. But the odds are extraordinarily small that you'll be silenced in any meaningful way. Like literally a one in a million+ shot.

I'm not saying that it's OK when it happens. I'm just saying the whole "liberals shut down free speech on campus thing" is over-dramatized echo chamber bullshit, that you only notice because there's an entire cottage industry generating outrage every time that 1/1000000 event happens.

> I encounter professors all the time who think that it’s fine for a student to say “I’m With Her” in class but not for a student to say “Make America Great Again” — that’s hate speech, see — despite the fact that both are simply the recent campaign slogans of the two major political parties.

here's the thing: "Make America Great Again" is a dog-whistle slogan, pining for a time that was racist. it is, to a lot of people (myself included), an inherently racist slogan. so, the problem is that a statement which was "simply the recent campaign [slogan]" of a major political party was, in fact, racist. i know it seems crazy to some people, but one of our major political parties ran an overtly racist candidate, on a (barely) covertly racist platform.

EDIT: sometimes the platform was overtly racist too. though it tried it's best to make it palatable for people who wouldn't want to identify as racist.