[throwaway7312]

>> Trump and others don’t recognize is that the American university system is a distributed system of factories that manufacture knowledge, innovation and the future.

There is another side to this. And that is that the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate.

It is a bad thing for innovation when there are fewer smart people immigrating into the U.S. However, when you have a system of institutions that adopt adversarial political positions toward a large chunk of the electorate, you should expect that at some point you will end up in a situation where the electorate elects leaders who work, to some degree, against what the winning side of the voting public regard as powerful institutions firmly in the hands of political opponents.

There is not, unfortunately, an easy solution to the adversarial relationship between academia and half of America. The shift toward a mono-cultural academia (from a political standpoint) has occurred over decades; the left is now firmly entrenched in American universities and unlikely to relinquish its position any time soon.

We can't ban politics from universities either; you will never get politics out of any organization in which humans are involved. We are distinctly political animals.

So perhaps the focus should be on returning academia to a more politically balanced setup... that we might no longer end up in scenarios like today, where half the voting public views academia as a shining part of the leadership of progressive society, and the other half views it as a once-great former pride of our country, sadly fallen and increasingly adversarial. So long as the universities remain a bastion of the American left and an enemy of the American right, they will continue to feast during the years in which the left holds power, and continue to starve during the years when it does not.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Disclaimer: I'm not American. But my view is that the American right has placed itself outside the Overton window of anyone with a higher education.

For example, the President is a climate change denier. How do you expect those views to be represented in universities when they fly in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence?

In most countries, this problem doesn't exist because parties with ideas equivalent to the GOP don't exist or are marginal.

[moduspol]

> For example, the President is a climate change denier. How do you expect those views to be represented in universities when they fly in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence?

That scientific evidence is created, studied and reviewed by people who self-select to study it and are very much part of the overwhelming liberal bias in academia.

That's not to say the evidence isn't valid--but this is kind of a "chicken and egg" situation. If you already distrust academia, you are less likely to unconditionally accept that groupthink and bias could have no possible impact on the conclusions. You can't personally measure changes in climate without implicitly trusting the measurements and adjustments of these institutions, so it's tougher to accept the need for dramatic changes in policy.

Put differently: If science in academia had more conservative thinkers, the party's position might change, or at least soften over time. Or it's even possible the science could be made better by having more diverse viewpoints in the fields.

[throwaway7312]

Climate change isn't a very good example. Individuals who subscribe to anthropogenic global warming and individuals who are skeptical of it have equal levels of scientific comprehension. [1]

It's more accurate to note that either side of the political divide in the United States has its share of unscientific beliefs. On the right, you have things like creationism and anti-vaxxers. On the left, you have things like gender theory and anti-GMO. Dismissing either side as rubes because of deeply held (if unscientific) ideologies doesn't help bridge the divide any.

>> In most countries, this problem doesn't exist because parties with ideas equivalent to the GOP don't exist or are marginal.

As an American who has not lived in or visited America for quite some time, I agree there is typically more uniformity in most intranational political ideologies worldwide. Though I would not agree "most countries" don't have parties similar to America's GOP.

I think it'd be more accurate to say most Western European and Western European-descent countries do not have parties like America's GOP. Meanwhile, most non-Western European or non-Western European-descent countries do not have parties like America's Democrat Party.

For example, every major political party in Asia and Africa, with very few exceptions, pursues an ethnonationalist agenda. This is more akin to the modern American GOP than the modern American Democrat Party. On the other hand, in Western Europe, ethnonationalist parties tend to be not only out of favor, but illegal.

America is a rather strange country politically in that regard. Half of it is more like Western Europe. The other half is more like the rest of the world. In that sense, I suppose it is a bit like if you created a country made up half of England and half of China. The result would be a type of tumult similar to that of the U.S. (if a bit more extreme).

[1] https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2016.1148067

[pm90]

The right and left are not equivalent. While anti-GMO may be a personal preference for many hipsters, its most certainly not the defining agenda of the left. Also the left seem to be much more willing to change their beliefs in the face of scientific evidence, whereas the Right is more theology, faith and other such nonsense. So don't say they're equivalent, because they simply aren't.

[pm90]

Most of those who think highly of Universities have been educated at Universities. And they don't believe in it because they have all had a positive experience: that is statistically impossible. But they are aware of what it is and what it isn't.

The divide isn't half and half as you put it. Rural areas wield a lot more political power nationally simply because of the way our system is structured. The half that is on the right is old and white. In the coming decades, they will cease to exist (apologies for sounding morbid, I'm just stating facts) and their political influence will reduce dramatically.

[anon151516888]

>"The half that is on the right is old and white. In the comings decades, they will cease to exist (apologies for sounding morbid, I'm just stating facts) and their political influence will reduce dramatically."

This is precisely why Trump got elected: to stop large scale demographic manipulation on the part of the left and intelligentsia. If he doesn't solve that for the right, there won't be a second term. For him or for Republicans.

And to quote another anti-Trump commenter here: "That. Would.Be.Bad."

[pm90]

> This is precisely why Trump got elected: to stop large scale demographic manipulation on the part of the left and intelligentsia. If he doesn't solve that for the right, there won't be a second term. For him or for Republicans.

Short of financial incentives for promoting more white-only couples (which is probably unconstitutional) to have more children, this doesn't seem like its possible. There is no "demographic manipulation" as you say. The fertility of white women has been constantly reducing and besides there are a lot more mixed race children and children of other races. This is a consequence of prosperity: as society becomes more prosperous, fertility falls. Without the influx of immigrants, the labor force would greatly shrink and economy would probably contract.

The demographic change cannot be stopped. Even if you deport all the "illegals", it won't suddenly cause more whites to be born.

[anon151516888]

Yeah but then why advocate for low skilled immigrants from low-IQ population pools? And why not immigrants from similar cultures? Why not select for only intelligent immigrants? There are plenty of struggling and war torn nations that are predominantly white. And plenty of educated and intelligent people of all races that I guarantee you most so called "white/GOP racists" won't mind importing, intermingling with or increasing the population of.

The demographic change can be stopped. You simply need to stop protecting, defending, subsidizing and encouraging the unproductive and uncontrolled breeding of low-quality individuals. They bring nothing but suffering to those that they bring into this life.

[abusoufiyan]

What is "large-scale demographic manipulation on the part of the left and intelligentsia"?

It sounds like you are trying to say people voted Republican to stop white people from becoming a minority in America? That cannot be achieved in 4 or even 8 years. And even if it could, why would the failure of that agenda be bad?

[anon151516888]

It may not have been a conscious thing. But I'm firmly of the opinion that this may have been the last election where Republicans were given the chance to reverse things.

Daca, illegal immigrants voting, chain migration, refugees voting, PC control of public debate, leftist biased media and reporting, another 4 rounds of liberals leaving college indoctrinated into leftism, etc. All these things have been steadily causing the deck to be stacked against the right. Without any of it being reversed or stopped, the next election would have been a solid win to Democrats.

Another item I forgot to add to the list: SJW and activist control over highschool and primary schools. I'd argue that as brainwashing the next generation into specific voting patterns.

[sangnoir]

> Daca, illegal immigrants voting, chain migration, refugees voting, PC control of public debate, leftist biased media and reporting, another 4 rounds of liberals leaving college indoctrinated into leftism

I wouldn't say "indoctrinated into leftism" as much as it's outright facing malicious rejection and animus from the right. Latin-American immigrants are a natural fit for the religious right: they are more religious and socially conservative than average, the only problem is that they are brown. The GOP had a narrow window to pivot, but unfortunately, that was around the time the tea-party wing was ascendant, leaving no room for moderates.

[pm90]

It has always been surprising for me how much overt racism is still there in the GOP (I mean, not surprising after Bannon and Trump's election). Latin-Americans are (generally speaking) conservative, Christian, Pro-life etc. But since they're brown and speak Spanish, they were alienated by the GOP?

[soundwave106]

The "unsolvable" problem politically here is the United States' university's international student population. This contradicts the current nativism streak in Trump style politics. Yet you cannot have the best universities in the world without a focus for attracting global talent.

Apart from that, I've always been of the opinion that the reports of Excessive Campus Liberalism in conservative populist media have been greatly exaggerated. I'm sure there are some grains of truth for certain school fields and certain colleges, but from what I saw when I went to college, strong politics one way or another wasn't terribly true for the vast majority. Certainly at the very least most in the engineering fields were too focused on studying to pay huge amounts of attention to political concerns. :)

The overall distrust of colleges among Republicans is very new, only in the last few years (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/11/dramatic-shif...). I have no idea how this new attitude will play out, especially considering that one half of the Republican coalition is the business wing of the party, which tends to overall be a college educated workforce. Education still plays a big role in United States social status and career, and a strongly educated workforce and strong research facilities (largely oriented around colleges at this time) is one of the attractive elements of this nation (to businesses, even!). That so many of one party feel that college is only about "adversarial political positions" is a bad sign to me.

[bjourne]

> There is another side to this. And that is that the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate.

Do you have any evidence for that? What is the agenda of the American university system? What is the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate?

If a lot of academics think Donald Trump is dumb as fuck, it does not necessarily mean that there is a problem in academia. It could also be so that Donald Trump is dumb as fuck.

[forapurpose]

> the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate.

The ideological conservative movement repeats this claim, but it doesn't make it so. Can you substantiate it? Can you define what it means?

Like any ideological movement, there can be no debate or discussion; anyone who fails to drink the kool-ade and promote the ideology must be silenced. It can't be that the facts simply are inconvenient to the ideology, that reasonable people can disagree, or that a member of the movement could learn something. The ideology is correct and those who don't accept it are apostates.

They'd done that with climate scientists, journalists, the entire State Department, universities, and more.