Is their a Leftist Agenda in Academia?

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Hey everyone so I am center-left I like Hillary Clinton and hate Donald Trump. However I think that both sides have valid points and I consider myself a moderate.

Anyways so I come from a city which is extremely liberal and joined up with the Model United Nations for the youth. I met some interesting people there, many both right and left wing. I was Somalia and Chad, which was fun.

As part of an event we watched a panel of a professor, a lawyer and a lecturer. They were their to offer perspectives on globalization. However all of them were left leaning, praising diversity as being great and the way of the future.

It eventually came for us to ask questions and my one was picked first. I was in a room of 200 people and sounded sort of anxious as a result and asked this "In France you have an Arab Muslim population which is struggling to integrate. The unemployment is 20% for them. People like Marine Le Pen are gaining in support. Do the French people who back her have a legitimate grievance against them due to the increase in terror attacks and people lashing out?"

I didn't phrase it well. I probably should have said "Understandable concerns" instead of "Legitimate Grievances." But that does not excuse their response, they said in response they got upset and said "No these people do not have legitimate grievances and populists like Marine Le Pen should not be listened to." One of them simply didn't answer.

I felt a little like in this instance as though this panel was spreading their viewpoint onto many people without showing them the other side. This is bad as it prevents people from making an informed judgement, but what's more scary is that they did not bother to understand the other side.

Is their a level of left wing dominance in academia in many places and if so how do we fight it?

I'm aligned exactly how you are. I'm center left as well, I view things the same way. I think that both sides have valid perspectives that can be taken into account, and I also think that extremes on either side of the political spectrum is disappointing. I don't want a Feminazi...or a Neonazi, accusing me of rape, or trying to kill me, respectively. I wish that our society would adopt a more tame, transparent, realistic view of what the world is and can be. Rationalization, Logic, and knowledge should be attributes that people strive for (This is a personal opinion of mine however and I have no way of knowing how a society modeled on these traits would fare).

But back to your question. I personally do not think there is. Many people in Academia who are actually there for legitimate reasons want to learn and study in many various fields. The weirdos who go there to spout out opinions labeled as facts and are chock full of logical fallacy are PREHAPS just a verbal minority. I'm personally very excited for higher level education, if it is indeed possible for me to make it past HS (I have an F in EVERY class because I'm stupid ). I want to attend higher level education because I have a passion for learning and knowledge, and left vs right comparisons are not what dominate my mind. I am very inclined to believe that I'm not the only one.

Most people in Academia don't have a Leftist agenda--even those whose viewpoints are, at times, towards the Left.

In general, people's viewpoints moderate as they experience more of the world.

In actuality, those who are not in Liberal Arts fields rarely profess "Liberal" views at all.

A lot of academia is subsidized Marxism and shouldn't be given taxpayer money, it doesn't have to be everybody when they run things and are the only voice heard. The only way to combat this is for the government to stop providing loans for whatever form of Marxist studies and to not employ the teachers, I don't think there should be professors teaching subjects where the only jobs they qualify their students for is Starbucks or agitating like them at some university or community college.

I am similar to you. We had a discussion of race. A student whom was white mentioned going to a country where the fact that white people have a higher chance of being kidnapped or attacked. Some of the black students claimed that it was how they feel in America. It struck me as kind of stupid comparing third world safety vs American safety. I think the bias is more in the news and smaller channels. I have noticed a lot of pretty extreme feminists in places such as tumblr or in some academic circles.

I don't see the Marxism in the colleges that some see.

It certainly exists---but I don't find the majority of Academia espousing it.

Somewhat liberal views----does not equal Marxism.

Many professors, especially outside the Liberal Arts, are centrist, or even conservative.

The presidential election between Trump and Clinton came out, roughly speaking, 50-50. Trump won via the Electoral College, but Clinton got a majority of the popular vote. In other words, the nation as a whole was close to evenly divided.

By contrast, this chart shows the political contributions of the faculty at Cornell University, one of the largest top universities in the country:



Do they "look like America"?

I imagine professors get more conservative the harder the science and more connected the subject is to an actual job. Social work is actually a field that needs workers desperately but none of these "activists" actually want to work with the people they claim to care about, we joke about useless degrees but social work being the profession of actual social justice is so often not even considered so instead they get the "Starbucks" degree but the real sad thing is that a lot of social workers don't make a ton of a lot more money which is why its so hard to keep workers but it does bother me to see these so called SJWs talk and never put their money where their mouth is. Activism for them is a retweet, maybe a big rally party with funny hats is they're really hardcore, they should be embarrassed.

If I was better socially and could do the job, I'd might even consider the social work degree since I seen my mom work in the field tirelessly my entire life and I do feel that it is important work that truly can help people. I know it can help people because people have helped me, there are special people out there that truly do care and they're not the ones causing a shitstorm on the internet or college campuses. In regards to my mom's work, I would say that most of her co-workers trend way more "conservative" in some regards than I would expect but I think that is probably just what happens when you work out in the field and actually interact with the people your trying to help instead of some fantasy idealized version of what they're not.

There are conservatives in New York.

^ I've met both of them and they are moving south.

I know someone, a lifelong New Yorker, who is, "hook, line and sinker," into the anti-liberal agenda. He HATES liberals.

He's a professor of English, too. LOL

Yes, and thankfully we have some incredibly articulate voices trying to handle the issue - Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt, and Gad Saad among the best known.