Is their a Leftist Agenda in Academia?

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https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academ ... mory-hole/

Not an unusual story in modern academia.

This is kind of off topic, but do people going to foreign countries have a fear of being kidnapped out of ransom, or what would be the motive?

Facts have a left wing bias.

And opening up to things requires liberalism. Not leftism - liberalism. Social libertarianism so seeing things from the pov of other races/genders/disabled people/other nations/people in different social classes.

What does the bolded above even mean?

It means that conservatives using emotions rather than logic when confronted with scientific data.

You don't have to look far for proof of this. Conservatives are claiming to use early vaccine recipients as guinea pigs before inoculating themselves after official clinical drug trials.

It's a reference to Stephen Colbert.

It means global warming is real. Evolution is real. And to update it for the Trump era - drinking bleach is a bad idea and taking vaccines/wearing a mask is a good one.

Imagine a student going to university and for the sake of 'balance' being taught intelligent design in a science classroom. Why stop there? Why not other creation myths too? For the sake of 'balance' being taught that global warming isn't real or isn't man made. Being taught it's a good idea to drink bleach/bad idea to wear a mask in the covid era. That wouldn't be education. But neither would purely indoctrinating them on it be a good idea. Show them the facts and data - that's the point of science education - let them make up their own minds. And if being shown the data makes them left wing, that's not your problem that's the right's problem.

Conservatives can object to this in 2 ways. Abortion & gender. I'd say that gender is different to sex & that's why we can have multiple genders & that's a social studies/psychology matter** rather than a matter for biology. Biologically, the vast majority of people, including non-binary people, are of two sexes: the xx and the xy. (Jordan Peterson right winger 'facts don't care about your feelings'). But again, not everyone, and it would be doing their education a disservice to pretend like intersex people don't exist. Abortion is more complicated: does breath make one alive or does a heartbeat make one alive? It most definitely is human. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have a discussion on what kind of value is placed on that very early part of life versus the rights of the mother. Calling it a 'baby' is a social construct.

In the interests of balance, I studied Edmund Burke, a conservative by his own era's standards, and Thomas Paine, a liberal by his own era's standards*. But I also studied Mary Wollstonecraft. She offers something new. The perspective of a woman of the era. Because she was a woman, and a woman who chose to write (proto-feminist) essays rather than a woman who chose to do nothing other than manage her servants and look pretty, she again was a left-winger of the era. But my education would have been made lesser if all I had known about would have been the men of the time. What are we meant to do? Leave her out? They would have done in the past but I'm glad that we didn't. Are we meant to try and find conservative literature written by 18th century women? They wouldn't have seen writing as their place.

* His ideas read fairly conservatively by modern standards because ideas progress. This is especially true in America where the notion of a monarchy is somewhat absurd nowadays and he was a national founder. But he was pro revolution while Burke warned of the dangers of revolution - and both had a point, revolution such as the French one is bloody.
** This one would have both the left and right crying 'foul' as, if you were to do this through politics/social science, you would have to at least include the likes of Jordan Peterson (conservative who believes in 'traditional masculinity'), the likes of Germaine Greer ('terf' who for decades has been arguing that gender in itself as a concept is dangerous for women) and the likes of Natalie Wynn (trans woman who advocates for trans rights). These three sources might not be academic enough for uni - but they'd have academic equivalents. This would make various people cry 'transphobic and sexist' and 'why are you pushing left wing politics of feminism and trans rights onto us', depending on their starting point. But to be truly educational, one must show all sides and not every debate only has two sides.

When it comes to abortion, the left, or liberals, seem to be a lot more passionate about it, if that's right?

Places like Iran and Iraq, I would fear my life there because they like to kidnap white people. Even journalists have been taken and held as hostage and tourists.

All I know is these countries are filled with terrorists.

But we are still privileged because we don't live in those countries and we can easily avoid it by simply not going there. So black people are not going to have much sympathy for our fear when we can simply stay out of that country.

I would just stay out of 3rd world countries. Nothing to do with xenophobia, I just don't want to get killed.

Oh okay, but when foreigners say they are afraid of being kidnapped when coming to the US, in fear of being kidnapped, what would be the motives for why Americans would want to kidnap them? Ransom?

Jfc. When you say this you paint the countries' populace as "terrorist". We don't talk about the normal people who live in Iraq/Iran, who make up the majority of terrorist victims.

Be cautious about how you word things.

Lololzz

That's because sometimes we find out they were WRONG. Like the published article that "vaccines cause autism". We tore that one up when we found it that wasn't true either.

People seem to act like we're just throwing out old ideas cos we can, and are arbitrarily replacing things with whatever we feel like - but science is always an evolving set of "rules". As we learn more, we have to occasionally update the information. Just like how we used to be certain that rust could cause tetanus, but since then scientific advances have shown that not to be true. Continuing to claim that tetanus is caused by rust is factually wrong. We didn't "change things". We LEARNED MORE. And the very idea that there can be more to know is the essence of being "progressive". It literally refers to the idea of progressing, moving forward.

It seems like people think "facts can't change". And they're kind of right. 2+2=4 doesn't change. But KNOWLEDGE CAN change. And as sciences advances, we know more. We run the experiments again, and find out they had flaws - again, like the "autisms cause vaccines" paper - or we learn new things that invalidate old thinking - like rust and tetanus - and we UPDATE our understanding of the world.

Conservatism by it's very nature tends to adhere to the way it's always been. That's what's always been taught, that's what should continue to be taught. By it's very nature, exploring new ideas and possibilities is "progressive" in the most literal sense. That doesn't mean we're just inventing new things to claim as "Da Troof". It means that old thinking is being questioned, and if new answers come up, perhaps they're worth exploring. Maybe we were wrong.

We used to KNOW that "nothing could live at the bottom of the ocean, it's too dark and cold to support life" - until we went there and found out it's TEEMING with life. We made a guess, and we were wrong. We didn't arbitrarily choose to "reinvent facts", we questioned our thinking and learned a new thing as a result.

It's kind of funny, when you look at it, all the people who say "think for yourself!" usually turn out to actually want you to think exactly what they think - and you're a "sheep" for not believing the same things they do.

It is as ironic as the intersection of the tropes that "Leftists are trying to force diversity" and "Leftists hate anyone who's different". How exactly does that work? They force people to be different, but hate people who're different?

Or, "Leftists are over emotional pushovers" when stood next to "Leftists are jackbooted fascist enforcers" also seems to contradict itself.

The only "Leftist Agenda" in academia is the idea that knowledge can grow and evolve. The reason they use vague terms like "Leftist Agenda" is so they don't have to reveal the ACTUAL thing they're mad about. It's often something like outrage that a college doesn't teach flat-earth theory in their astronomy class. Or being upset that a science class teaches evolution, but not the book of genesis from the bible. In any case, it's usually outrage that either something they DO believe ISN'T taught, or something they DON'T believe IS taught.

Realistically, if someone holds something to be true, and a school teaches something different from that belief, it's easy to "conclude" that the school is trying to "push an agenda". To some people, telling them not to call autistic people "ret*ds" is merely "a liberal agenda to stifle free speech". Something to consider.

If every walking example of dunning-kruger had to be indulged "fairly" as though their opinions were equally valid, we'd be teaching all manner of nonsense and bullsh!t, including stuff like "the earth is flat" or "vaccines cause autism", or "drinking bleach cures autism" or "autistic people are emotionless sociopaths" or anything else people simply "believe to be true", even if we know it isn't.

A rather incredible diatribe there, UC.

I'm a noted sceptic of modern science, but I still believe in the old understanding of the scientific method. While "peer review" in the modern sense is worthless, clearly there can be no true peer review if papers aren't allowed to be seen by anyone. The basic idea that science cannot function properly if it is subject to censorship is surely still true, otherwise findings cannot be scrutinized, improved upon or anything else not to mention holding back any other area of study that might benefit from that knowledge.

It's questionable to draw a parallel between the vaccine/autism debacle and this one. The vaccine thing was at least treated in a scientific fashion. It was released in public and it received much criticism, it was retracted etc and there were some consequences for those involved. This article is about a paper being memory-holed before publication because people didn't like the implications - it wasn't found to be wrong and retracted. It was entirely politically motivated.

That's nothing - you should see how much I write when I put a little effort into it. Frankly, I'd call it more of a "lecture" than a "diatribe".

Personally, I'm more of a skeptic myself. For example, I am skeptical of your understanding of how papers get published. The publisher has the discretion to turn down publishing a paper if the committee feels the paper does not meet their standards for review. There's more than one agency that publishes scientific articles, you know. Some of them will literally publish anything, so long as you pay them. So if that ONE publisher refused to publish that article, boo hoo so sad, maybe there's a REASON for that - but even then, go find some other publisher and have them publish it.

The autism vaccine correlation is a fine example. It SHOULD have been thrown out BEFORE it got published, for failing to meet review criteria - but it didn't, for whatever reason, so it at least got thrown out after-the-fact. BUt while it was released, it already did the damage, and you have people making the same argument that "it should be allowed to be looked into more!" even though even believing it in the first place has already caused damage, and is difficult to undo.

No.

The right are the ones bombing abortion clinics and calling people murderers at the same time.

The facts about abortion are that both life and dependence are subjective.

Life has a lot of meanings & could be described even before conception.

Dependence has a lot of meanings and could be described well after birth.

If that dependence thing seems extreme, Romans and other cultures of similar time periods, had traditions of leaving weak babies out on the hillside to die. AFTER birth. They were still dependent on the parents to survive.