Insulated view on campus

[Dill]

(06-20-2017, 09:56 AM)michaelsean Wrote: I came across this while searching for something, and I found it interesting.  Just curious what others thought.  Too many ads throughout to easily copy so I'm just leaving the link.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-college-educated-americans-are-out-of-touch/?utm_term=.a934aca112bf

My thoughts

1. The conflict between higher education and American conservatism began in the latter 19th century, when many American colleges ditched the Latin curriculum and became research universities. This validated Darwin and produced thousands of graduates with degrees in political science, sociology, journalism, and secular history and biblical criticism, as well as science. For the last 140 years, conservative parents have been complaining their children came back from college with too secular views. Communism even.

2. Over the last three decades, in the latest round of this conflict, the Right in the US has flipped a civil rights argument to argue that universities lack intellectual diversity: they exclude conservatives. They are out of touch with "real Americans." David Horowitz is perhaps the most famous purveyor of this view.

3. Camosy advances the Horowitz argument a step further, connecting it to the Trump election. Academics are "out of touch" because they apparently did not understand what really motivated what he calls "the working class."  Borrowing from liberal academic George Lakoff, he argues that while academics might know some "hard facts" of the scientific type, they don't understand what makes the ordinary non-academic tick. These ordinary folks rely on "intuitions and stories" to understand politics. And without explaining why, Camosy insists these cannot be racist or sexist. But he appears to assume they are reliable guides when voting for a president and academics are wrong if they condescend to Trumpster "stories."

Academics are thus framed as the problem. It is they, not the "working class", who do not seek to understand other views. Without specifying what a non-dogmatic view of race, gender and gun control would look like, he suggests colleges stop peddling dogmatic views on these subjects. It is now time for professors to start incorporating more diverse views into academia.  And it's also time for the professors to start "the hard work of forging the kind of understanding that moves beyond mere dismissal to actual argument."

To quote Benton, "I don't know if it's that easy."

During the election, I had discussions with old high school buddies who were supporting Trump. They had no understanding of the one China policy, and wanted to know why Obama gave Iran 150 billion dollars from our treasury. If I said they were out of touch, I believe Camosy would call me "condescending." Can he be so sure I don't understand my old buddies?

I can point to threads on this list in which I have certainly engaged Trumpsters with "the kind of argument that moves beyond dismissal" and been dismissed or ignored. In fact, it has been my experience that when I question Trumpsters' claims, they repeat them once or twice, usually ignoring any criticisms, and then tell me that I cannot be argued with.

Lastly, I think lots of "academics" are trying to understand Trump voters in rather neutral terms, interviewing them, collecting polling data. etc. I am not aware of any Trump voters doing the reverse. They have explanations of why people didn't vote for Trump, but these seem "data-free" to put it charitably, and not at all concerned with neutrality, objectivity, etc.  Rather, they seem embedded in incredible conspiracies--like all 17 intel agencies made up the Russian intervention in the election to get Trump and Democrats are after Trump not because his incompetence is a danger to the nation but because of "butthurt" over the election and he is not the candidate some shadowy group called "globalists" wanted.

So them's my thoughts. The piece was smoothly written--but was it clarifying analysis or propaganda? I lean more towards the latter.