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Re:Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley 'brainwashed' by higher educa... by programmarchy on Sunday September 16, 2018 @11:18AM (#17999316)
It’s about worldview and which things are taught. Curriculums are biased. Think back: How many right-of-center professors did you have? How many were open Marxists?
Re:Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley 'brainwashed' by higher educa... by lloyd-christmas on Sunday September 16, 2018 @02:16PM (#18000232)
> How many right-of-center professors did you have?

Nearly all of them, having majored in Economics.

Re:Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley 'brainwashed' by higher educa... by paulddraper on Sunday September 16, 2018 @07:58PM (#18002052)
World of difference from majoring in political science.
Re:Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley 'brainwashed' by higher educa... by programmarchy on Sunday September 16, 2018 @04:05PM (#18000812)
Ha, you're right. Economics is an exception. I minored in economics, and found it amusing that professors who expounded on the virtues of capitalism were doing so within an socialist institution.

However, looking back, I'd probably place most of my economics professors in the neoliberal camp. I'd propose that the left/right divide is primarily about nationalism vs globalism now -- my professors would have tended to support international capitalism rather than national capitalism.

Figures like Mises weren't mentioned in my classes, despite his famous prediction that the economic calculation problem would cause the fall of communism. Yet Keynes was discussed thoroughly.

Re:Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley 'brainwashed' by higher educa... by kennywinker on Sunday September 16, 2018 @11:49AM (#17999467)
No open marxists that I was aware of.

Left/right dichotomies are completely useless when you get to the scale of an individual, so I had profs who had opinions that would be called left and ones that would be called right. Both in the same person.

That said, sure academy leans “left” - but i’d argue that’s because seeking knowledge is inherently liberal. I.e. if the present is good and we should not change (one definition of conservatism), what’s the point of persuing new knowledge/ideas?

Re:Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley 'brainwashed' by higher educa... by repolfx on Monday September 17, 2018 @06:42AM (#18004685)
That relies on a rather specific definition of knowledge. Thomas Sowell has done a lot of good writing on these topics: the nature and varying definitions of knowledge, the role of academics and intellectuals, etc. It's ironic because he doesn't like them much despite being one himself.

Conservatives tend to place more emphasis on earned experience than liberals do. Experience and "book knowledge" are both different aspects of the concept of knowledge, but it's certainly untrue that universities teach everything that could be called knowledge. Indeed they're famous for not doing so, hence the fact that "it's academic" is an insult not a compliment.

Whether this means conservatives value experience more than book knowledge is unclear, it may be that they consider both important whereas liberals consider experience relatively unimportant and thus cluster in academia.