[high_derivative]

I am a grad student leaving university soon enough, and this does not surprise me at all.

Especially at elite universities, there is this interesting phenomenon of mostly upper middle class white women from on average the most privileged upbringings in the western hemisphere arriving at a university they (anyone) could only attend by incredible privilege and luck. Yet they arrive fully convinced they have been held back by the patriarchy their entire lives. Same for other groups and their pet causes.

They find no apparent contradiction at being the most privileged of their generation (speaking of Harvard, Oxbridge, Stanford here), yet the smaller and local the cause, the more vicious the activism. Someone they disagree with dare speak on campus? Violence, trauma, discrimination, hate.

Getting arrested for taking off a veil in Iran? Genocide? Consumerism destroying the planet? Yawn.

I often see people on hn saying this is all blown out of proportion and a small vocal minority but when you talk to undergrads these days, you will realize these beliefs are not just a handful of people but carry weight across the student population.

Not least because opposition is shamed into silence. University admins are usually easily cowed submission on these causes, mostly because it does not cost them anything to uninvite/fire someone.

[jccalhoun]

> I often see people on hn saying this is all blown out of proportion and a small vocal minority but when you talk to undergrads these days, you will realize these beliefs are not just a handful of people but carry weight across the student population.

This may have to do with the student population because I teach undergrads at a community college and I have recently taught at a liberal arts college and find this really is blown out of proportion. When I try to talk to them about media literacy most (not all of course but most) say they never read the news and don't follow current events.

>They find no apparent contradiction at being the most privileged of their generation (speaking of Harvard, Oxbridge, Stanford here), yet the smaller and local the cause, the more vicious the activism. Someone they disagree with dare speak on campus? Violence, trauma, discrimination, hate.

>Getting arrested for taking off a veil in Iran? Genocide? Consumerism destroying the planet? Yawn.

This is probably because they feel they can have an impact on local causes but can't do anything about international issues. What are they supposed to do about genocide in another country?

[high_derivative]

This is a fair point - the local cause is the one more accessible. Here is a counterpoint:

If you exalt a local event like the one in the original post (an arrest for a theft), or a speaker from the opposite political spectrum to terms like 'violence, hate speech, traumatizing' (words you will find in student newspapers and activism here), what is left for real events of actual drastic impact to society and the lives of others?

This kind of activism is a concept inflation that is tearing societies apart from both ends. An interesting article on this:

https://quillette.com/2019/02/14/the-boy-who-inflated-the-co...

[ryanobjc]

Quillette isn't a reputable source. Particularly in this area they specifically are well known to be advancing a "leftwing colleges are terrible" narrative.

[darkpuma]

It seems to be proportional to class in my experience. The more privileged a student is, the more outspoken they are when criticizing what they perceive to be injustices holding them back.

If we are being charitable, perhaps this is because the more privileged students have fewer repercussions from society to fear?

[DoofusOfDeath]

I find your narrative plausible, but I wish I had good quantitative data about the generalizations / trends you mention.

Otherwise it's hard to decide how much weight to give your generalizations.

[not_a_moth]

From my own experience, no, at the top universities the upper middle class demographic is far more concerned about lining up high paying jobs, networking, and/or working on their general social status than any sort of political activism at all. The activism comes from other groups, if even then.

Maybe at small liberal arts colleges or less elite institutions your viewpoint might be true, but I can't speak for that.

[high_derivative]

Just to clarify, I have spent the better part of the last decade at one of the institutions in my response. I have seen generations of students come and go. Your experience may differ but at least where I am, the qualitative change is this: earlier this decade, it's been really only small groups.

Now, with students born after 2000 and having grown up fully immersed in social media being on campus, what would have been relatively niche wokeness in 2010 is 'common sense' for many. Including extremely low tolerance for view point diversity.

[ZeroGravitas]

Do you have any sources to back up a reduced tolerance for viewpoint diversity, or is it just that their Overton window has shifted away from yours?

e.g. would they tolerate (even if they didn't fully agree with it) things on the extreme but opposite end of various political axis from you that you would consider beyond the pale, and vice versa?

From your perspective what seems like a narrowing of viewpoint diversity could seem like a blossoming to someone diametrically opposed to you, because each sees the subtler distinctions between factions in their own comfort zone.

[mythrwy]

Reading this I can't help but wonder where people graduating from Oberlin get jobs. Maybe as political campaign people or marketing or something?

Just picturing someone walking into a large cement plan for an interview. "Why yes, I do believe I can pull this company into the black within 3 quarters. As you see I have a degree from Oberlin college...".

Point being, graduating from there seems it could be not a positive signal but rather a huge red flag for any company engaged in productive pursuits.

Like the person has been pre-trained to be aggrieved and look for issues and possibly sue over the smallest of slights. At least that's what would cross my mind as an interviewer.

[kgodey]

Plenty of Oberlin alumni (including me) are appalled at how Oberlin is handling this situation.

[333c]

Current students as well.

[analog31]

Disclaimer: My kid got accepted at Oberlin, but instead chose a large state university.

Our perception through the process of researching many colleges, was that the SLACs (small liberal arts colleges) tended to be relatively weak in subjects that tend to lead directly to employment, and that students in those subjects expected to attend graduate school by default. My kid expects to attend grad school, so that's one data point, but I also saw it when I was in grad school. A disproportionate number of my classmates were from SLACs, including myself.

It might not be too much of a stretch to say that the SLACs are feeders for graduate schools. Once you have a graduate degree, your choice of undergraduate college is water under the bridge, though the loans might not be.

[sanderjd]

... entry level new graduates don't go into interviews making pitches about how they'll impact revenue numbers. Things like that come a decade or more later, after they have learned a whole bunch of stuff about their chosen field and forgotten most of what they thought they knew in school. That's pretty much the whole point of that decade of experience.

I'm always confused by this desire to judge entry level young people as if they are experienced mid career professionals.

[mmmrk]

> Especially at elite universities, there is this interesting phenomenon of mostly upper middle class white women from on average the most privileged upbringings in the western hemisphere arriving at a university they (anyone) could only attend by incredible privilege and luck. Yet they arrive fully convinced they have been held back by the patriarchy their entire lives. Same for other groups and their pet causes.

This does not have to be a contradiction.

1. If you come from a wealthy family, attending a prestigious university might be par for the course instead of an incredible privilege; you can still be "held back by the patriarchy" (no sarcasm intended). The two things can work in orthogonal ways.

2. They might realize they are privileged and are leveraging their position in an attempt to help others up, i.e. by raising/forcing awareness, a valid thing to do. Feminists aren't the only ones to do it.

I perceive these two points to be common themes in "The Guilty Feminist" podcast I like to listen to.

[DanBC]

People misunderstand the concept of privilege.

You compare people from similar socio-economic backgrounds. You don't compare dissimilar groups.

Those women are being held back when you compare to their brothers.

[wtdata]

Woman are now 33% more likely to go to faculty than men. So care to explain how woman are being held back (unless your are proposing there are clear intelectual and cognitive differences between genders)?

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/aug/28/university...

[high_derivative]

Evidence needed, strongly. There is an incredible push happening at all levels of e.g. STEM, tech companies, everywhere, to get women. They receive special support, scholarships, extra application tracks, extra programs, preferred hiring, and boys are falling more and more behind.

Are you really trying to say that the Harvard-Stanford-Oxbridge woman is held back compared to, say, the plumber's son (no offence, a highly useful profession, but you will find few of their children at these unis)?

[0xB31B1B]

Not who you are replying to, but in general I would say that the things you point (extra help women receive right now) are in general working, and that the fact that they are working is supports the fact that they should continue. This doesn’t mean that men should not also receive targeted help, as should anyone who is disadvantaged, whether through socioeconomic status, race, disability, or otherwise. Solving problems that classes of people have on a class level and making those classes of people more successful is a good thing, and we should be doing more of it. There is a huge issue now where young men, especially those of low SES are not encouraged to or given the right pathways to find success and I see the wheels slowly start turning on social movement to facilitate positive change on that front as well, especially starting in early childhood education.

[baggy_trough]

Certainly this is nonsense. A significant majority of undergraduate and graduate degrees go to women.

[halter73]

Because the proportion of college degrees is the only measure of privilege /s. Convenient not to consider representation in government or executive boardrooms.

[mpweiher]

Women tend to be over-represented in government and party leadership positions compared to their numbers at the base, for example as party members.

[AnimalMuppet]

And that's why the women outnumber the men on college campuses?