How woke do you have to be … to be president of Harvard?

NoEquityResearch

financeabc

but I am pretty sure ya gotta be pretty smart.

So you're saying not woke?

Tbh, I do not even like the term woke

Isaiah_53_5 💎🙌💎🙌💎

Ozymandia

You don't have to be "woke" at all, you just have to be educated and not an outright KKK member or Neo Nazi.  These days, fulfilling those two requirements (e.g. not an idiot or a white supremacist) means you are woke.

There is a reason that people with more education tend to be more liberal, and contrary to what some right wing media personality would have you believe (/buy), it's not because of some vast conspiracy to stifle conservative thought.  Exposure to new ideas, or to people from different religious or ethnic or cultural backgrounds, generally leads to being more liberal.

There is nothing wrong with growing up in a small town or isolated area where everyone looks and thinks exactly like you, and where you know everyone by name, and being conservative as a result.  But the obvious implication of this thread, and every other one like it, is that being exposed to a variety of different people and ideas is somehow a perversion of the norm and not an obvious and welcome result of an increasingly globalized society.

Expand

lol - the more one learns and discovers the world, the more liberal one becomes?

PS - I didn’t throw the MS 

If you equate learning to education, it should be obvious to you that there is correlation between liberal thinking and education.  The vast majority of people at elite schools have liberal views.   

Isaiah_53_5 💎🙌💎🙌💎

lol - the more one learns and discovers the world, the more liberal one becomes?

Basically, yeah.  Educational attainment and voting patterns are highly correlated in this direction (posted a link below), and while I don't know of any data that supports it for "discovering the world," the general hateful rhetoric towards immigrants that prevails more strongly on the right side of the aisle certainly implies it.

PS - I didn’t throw the MS 

Even if you did, it doesn't bother me.  Unlike the vast majority of posters on this site, I have the dual ability to understand nuance and cite sources for my arguments instead of repeating whatever the latest talking head shouted into my screen, so anonymous trolls throwing fictional monkey shit at me isn't bothersome in the slightest.  

trying_my_best

Source that more education/ exposure leads to more liberal views? I'm by no means very knowledgeable abt this field of research but what I can say is that exogenous factors would dominate the result - Gen Z is on track to be the most educated generation and at the same time, Gen Z tends to be more liberal. So there would be a spurious correlation there which would skew the 'average' and positively correlate education and liberalism

It is a not some secret that people at elite schools tend to have liberal views.  90% of non orthodox Jews have liberal views and they make up up to 25% of the Ivys

trying_my_best

Source that more education/ exposure leads to more liberal views? I'm by no means very knowledgeable abt this field of research but what I can say is that exogenous factors would dominate the result - Gen Z is on track to be the most educated generation and at the same time, Gen Z tends to be more liberal. So there would be a spurious correlation there which would skew the 'average' and positively correlate education and liberalism

I mean, the correlation between educational attainment and voting patterns is so well known and beyond reasonable doubt, at this point, it is basically a truism.  I am aware there is a bit of daylight between "votes Democrat" and "leads to more liberal views," but for the purpose of argument I think it's a convincing enough data set.

monkey0114

The reason most academics are left wing aren't because they are smarter, but because academia self selects for losers with no drive to succeed in the real world, who are naturally more left wing/idealistic. Now look at the politics of the most successful hedge fund managers and get back to us.

200k for 2 classes, free time to do research and write books, summers off, great benefits.  Alternatively, you could work in investment banking working 80 hours per week and be on call 24/7 and risking your health while doing it.  It is a trade off. 

monkey0114

The reason most academics are left wing aren't because they are smarter, but because academia self selects for losers with no drive to succeed in the real world, who are naturally more left wing/idealistic. Now look at the politics of the most successful hedge fund managers and get back to us.

I mean, aside from the obviously laughable nature of this argument, most of the data doesn't support this assertion.  Which isn't surprising - you clearly identify as a conservative, and prioritizing your own feelings over data or fact is integral to conservative thought.  Otherwise, most people who vote Republican wouldn't be able to stomach the fact that their party has long since morphed into a theofascist party of white supremacy.  This data isn't particularly recent (1990-2009), but shows a long process of Democrats gaining support among wealthier Americans, and while I'll look for the continuation of it, every other speck of information we've gleaned since the rise of Mr Trump and his Russian backers indicates that the GOP is increasingly aimed at poor, rural white (male) voters, while Democrats pick up the disaffected wealthy suburbanites who can no longer square their desire for lower taxes with the fact that their daughters and wives have lost autonomy over their own bodies.

I love the twists conservatives have to get themselves into in order to justify their insane beliefs.  "Yes, the most educated people in society are actually the dumb ones!"

lake_michigan

"Exposure to new ideas"

I think you mean exposure to liberal ideas during the most impressionable years of their lives.

I mean exposure to all ideas. 

Again, I just love how badly conservatives have to twist themselves into knots to justify their beliefs.  Yes, for decades American academia has engaged in a vast conspiracy to poison the minds of American youths by turning them from god-fearing Republicans into DemonRats, and coordinating all of that among tens of thousands of people spread across hundreds of institutions without ever letting a word slip.  It's a good thing our keyboard warriors here on WSO are so perceptive or they might have gotten away with it, too!

I mean, ffs, apply just the tiniest ounce of logic.  Maybe your political beliefs just aren't that appealing to most young people?  I mean, as we've seen over the last 15 years and is on display at this very moment, modern American conservativism doesn't really stand for anything anymore, except "lower government" which it doesn't actually want.  The GOP is only interested in obstructing anyone from achieving anything that might change the status quo in any way, and looming issues or pressing problems be damned.  The fight over the Speakership is this trend in accelerated motion - none of these lunatics have any interest in the job of governance, none of them have a political philosophy beyond "burn it down and keep getting paid in the process."  Maybe young people today, inheriting a vastly uncertain world filled with a lot of new and scary risks which we don't know how to solve, are more eager for a belief system that allows them to advocate for meaningful change?  Maybe your average 20 year old thinks "hey, I'm going to have to live in a world where meaningful climate change is a reality, and I won't even have gotten the small benefits Boomers did when they decided that not taking action was preferable to giving up the slightest bit of comfort in their lives?"  It just isn't possible to say that conservatism, as an actual political movement in this country, has had any kind of governing philosophy since the Bush Administration, beyond "hey, lets install a theocratic Christian regime which mandates that the majority of the country bow to the will of the evangelical right."  I vote liberal because I'm not interested in having some pedophile in the Southern Baptist Convention or some huckstering megachurch preacher dictate policy to me on the basis of their interpretation of a vile, disgusting piece of centuries old fiction, and I suspect most people feel the same.  

financeabc

It is not that shocking to me.  Jews have been targeted for a very long time and are often a convenient scapegoat.  The reasons for anti Semitism varies a lot.  Part of it is probably due to Jewish success and wealth.  Part of it is due to the attitudes of Orthodox Jews towards anyone who is not like them.  Part of it is due to treatment of Palestinians.  With that said, Israel has every right to defend itself when a country declares war on it.  It is absurd to be protesting against Israel when they were attacked.  This makes no sense whatsoever.  

I mean, Israel, and more specifically the far right religious government that Likud has formed, is reaping what it has sown.  They've treated the West Bank and its residents like second class citizens, and the settlement movement is frankly abhorrent.  And Gaza is little more than a huge open air prison.  Why in the world shouldn't Palestinians be resorting to measures like these?  What other possible recourse do they have?  They can either sit quietly and die as their homes are razed and their land is stolen, or they can fight back, and of course the way they fight back is going to be through "terror tactics."

Israel has a right to defend itself, I agree, and it's hard not to sympathize with Israelis, since they've spent their entire existence fighting to not be wiped off the map, but until they (and their American backers) accept some responsibility for creating this situation in the first place, there will never be peace.  And of course Netanyahu is going to escalate, because that's the only thing that jack booted thugs like him understand, and he can also claim that god is on his side.  Israel cannot win as long as they insist on being a colonialist, theocratic ethnostate, because right wingers will never allow for a solution to be reached that the Palestinains can accept.  Really the solution should be something along the lines of what ended the Troubles in Ireland, whereby a new constitution gets written which promises security for both Palestinians and Jews, and allows them to deadlock the government from doing anything, and give it a generation to let new leaders who aren't corrupt fascist pieces of shit in hock to a bunch of ultrareligious hypocrite zealots (on both sides).