Haven for left-wing, right-wing

The thread discussing UCBerkley being a haven for left-wingers got me thinking. What other schools have this kind of cultural association as being politically left or right?

 

Any SEC school with the exception of Florida or Vanderbilt could be described as right-leaning, Southern Methodist Universtiy is right leaning, Liberty University is certainly right leaning.

The University of Oregon could compete with UC-Berkeley for the most left-wing campus in the country. Most elite liberal arts schools are all left leaning, though not to the extent of Berkeley or the Univ of Oregon.

 

I'm not sure what thread that was. (I don't read every thread.)

But I don't think that UC Berkeley is all that left-wing these days. That's something of a stereotype, based on the early 1970's riots and on Telegraph Avenue's continuing 60's-time-warp aura. (Most of the greying hippies and rebellious teenagers that hang around Telegraph aren't UC students.)

Today's UC Berkeley hosts a different crowd. Many students are Asians, who tend to be a no-nonsense bunch. Berkeley's faculty (many of them baby-boomers) might actually be more left-wing than their students, these days.

If any single word sums up UC Berkeley in 2010 (a very diverse place with lots of niches for different kinds of students), it would probably be 'careerist'.

 

Watch this movie: Idoctrinate U

Or at least watch the trailer and listen to the last guy speaking at the end. Its one of my favorite quotes of all time.

??????????But I don't think that UC Berkeley is all that left-wing these day???????????????? I guess that depends on your view of where center is politically.

Berkeley freshmen are more liberal and less religious than their national counterparts - but survey finds their views are closer than labels suggest

"That a Berkeley freshman tends to be more liberal than the average freshman is again not surprising. What is interesting is that somehow Berkeley's leftward view has remained fairly constant, even as the ethnic makeup of the university's freshman class has changed markedly since 1972. The percentage of Asian and underrepresented minority freshmen has gone from 16.3% and 5.3% in 1972, respectively, to 45.1% and 13% in 2004. (See Figure 2.) Asian students of both genders were more likely to choose "middle of the road" to describe their political views, while underrepresented minority students are the least likely to: 43.8% of Asian freshmen declared themselves neutral, compared with 36.4% of non-Asian minority students. (See Figure 3.) "

 

I always found it funny when I was in Gainesville how people on the left always referred to Florida and 'right-wing', and people on the right called Florida 'left-wing.'

A geography professor decided to settle the answer once and for all, and did a study on student and faculty voter registration records. He found Florida to be in line with the rest of the country, exactly split down the middle. Before this, he was adamant that Florida was right-wing.

 

Definitely still VERY left!

 

The University of Colorado Boulder had a rep for being politically left back in the 1980's when I attended. I'm not sure if they still have that rep.

 

As someone that lives in the Bay Area, I'd say this place would be hell for a right conservative person. Just a guess.

I'm a libertarian (some people would this classify as "right" but I think it's a classification that doesn't really fit in this binary classification) so I don't have any problem with my left leaning friends and classmates here, as we tend to agree in social issues and foreign policy issues.

(it also helps that the most radical "left" american would probably be classified as "right wing" in my country...)

But going back to the topic: is there any American College with a more "libertarian" point of view?

 

Funny that you ask. I came a while ago across a Pdf about different Universities in the US (and internationally) and the potential of doing Austrian School of Economics oriented PhD studies there.
Austrian School of Economics PhD Overview
It's kinda interesting how they judge the different faculty members in regards to their "friendliness" to Austrian thought. Also maybe interesting regarding that matter:
University of Missouri now offers a PhD-level seminar in Austrian economics.

 

Since the US is split roughly equally between right and left doesn't that imply that one's political views are shaped on more than the school one attended.

Incidentally I used the UCB library to research nuclear weapon related technology (The UC system has operated the Los Alamos National Laboratory for many decades).

 

There is (to my knowledge) no US college that is operated by libertarians specifically. There is an online group that claims to be organizing one, but I don't know how credible this effort is.

Conservativism in US academia is commonly associated with religious schools and with state/federal military academies. The students at many such schools would likely be supportive of libertarian economic principles, but would probably be less supportive of libertarian social ideas. For example, the Libertarian Party platform suggests that government should not restrict gay marriage, abortion, or recreational drugs; such views would probably find more acceptance at "left-wing" schools like Berkeley or Reed than at "right-wing" schools like Liberty University or West Point.

Hillsdale College (in Michigan) is a small, secular liberal arts college that is well known for its conservative intellectual tradition; it has a strong libertarian presence. But Hillsdale is not a purely libertarian institution; like other "conservative" schools, it is probably more accepting of libertarian economic views than of libertarian social views.

 

For libertarian universities, there's George Wythe University -- it isn't accredited. It seems like a legitimate school, though.

Here's part of the About page:

Within this scope is a focus on protecting liberty, inspiring moral ethics, strengthening free-enterprise, limiting government, healing society, and creating strong families and communities in order to make the world a better place.

 

I'm a native San Franciscan who graduated from San Francisco State. I don't believe that Berkeley is any more 'left' than SFSU. (The reverse is probably true.) Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed my years at SF State and remain very fond of the place. In fact, I'm tempted to return to my old haunts since they've offered me free tuition.

My relationships with my professors was rarely if ever shaped by politics. Significantly, some of the ones that I liked the most were most different from me politically. But they didn't push their politics on me and I didn't shove my own views in their faces.

At both SFSU and Berkeley, only a small minority of students are activists. The majority of students are focused on their studies, on preparing for jobs or graduate school, and on advancing their careers. They may or may not call themselves 'liberals' if somebody polls them, but politics really isn't a huge part of their lives like it was for so many students during 'the movement' in the early 70's.

If people in this thread really want to stereotype these schools and the students who attend them, that's ok. Go ahead. I'm outta this thread.

 

I went to SFSU too and the school appeared to be no more liberal than the surrounding area (which is liberal). SFSU has become a commuter school with a disengaged student body. There's some campus life but not much. I don't think anyone says they're going to go to SFSU to join the leftist revolution, unless they're from out of the area and don't know any better.

There are still professors from the 1960's era at SFSU. One I had devoted his entire intro to philosophy class to Marx. The other, an eastern religions instructor, would ramble on about the good old days when he would drop acid with John Cage and protest on campus.

I think UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, on the other hand, do attract people on the left from all over the country and the world. At least in my experiences at these schools.

By the way, it isn't stereotyping to say that Berkeley is a mostly liberal school. It is stereotyping to say "Everyone who goes to Berkeley is a liberal!" No one has said that.

 

I agree. Where we disagree, is that I don't think that very many people go to UC Berkeley to "join the leftist revolution" either. The general tone at Berkeley is scholarly and/or pre-professional. I believe that disappoints some people (most of whom aren't Berkeley students), who dream that everyone at Berkeley is defiantly at the revolutionary barracades, only to discover that most of them are busy studying for their upcoming calculus exam. Berkeley's powerful academic reputation derives from its rather competitive student culture and from a research-intensive publish-or-perish ethos at the faculty level.

There were more when I was there.

That's hard for me to believe. Who were they? My major was philosophy-and-religion and I knew all the philosoophy department old-timers. The guy most apt to teach eastern religions was Ron Epstein (PhD Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley) and he was practically a Buddhist monk. He's currently Chancellor of Dharma Realm Buddhist University, a very traditional Chinese monastery/university in Mendocino county. I doubt very strongly whether he would have been going on about taking acid, which would violate one of the five Buddhist precepts. As I recall, the most Marxist guy in the philosophy department in those days was maybe Jim Syfers. Personally I liked him a lot, and the classes I took from him involved us in close readings of Plato and discussions of Greek concepts like 'arete'. I can't imagine him devoting an entire introductory philosophy class to Marx (unless it was an introduction to Marx, which he may well have taught from time to time). Doing so would be unprofessional.

My recollection of SFSU's philosophy department is that it was extraordinarily large and unusually good, particularly for a school that doesn't offer doctorates. I liked it a lot, and still do.

http://www.sfsu.edu/~bulletin/courses/phil.htm

The current SFSU philosophy faculty is impressive. Landing Bas van Fraassen from Princeton was a coup for the department that definitely raised its profile in the Philosophy of Science. (It really helps SFSU that it's located in San Francisco, where prominent retired professors like to live and where they happily take part-time gigs.) France's Isabelle Peschard is another promising SFSU philosopher of science. She boasts two PhDs, one in physics from the U. Aix-Marseilles, the other in Epistemology from the Sorbonne/Ecole Polytechnique. Justin Tiwald looks like an up-and-comer in Confucian ethics with a new PhD from the U. of Chicago. And there's more of them.

I don't know why conserviatives need to fear these people or avoid them. I think that the opportunity to study with them is very cool.

I think that you could make that argument for certain programs. The 'History of Conciousness' program at UCSC is obviously a left-activist finishing-school program. (One of its graduates was Black Panther Huey Newton. Dr. Newton was subsequently killed in an Oakland drug-deal gone bad.) But it's dangeous to stereotype UCSC, since while its humanities and social sciences departments can be (but aren't always) smotheringly left-politicized, its natural science departments are typically very good indeed. Astronomy at UCSC is absolutely world-class. Conservatives needn't avoid Santa Cruz, they just need to pick their programs.

I sense that Berkeley's departments often aren't all that political, if only because they are so technical. Buddhist Studies at Berkeley takes a rather conservative (in a disciplinary sense) textual approach to the subject that's been criticised as 'orientalist' by those who favor a more anthropological approach. And I don't know how archaeological excavations at second millenium BCE Anatolian sites are really so political that conservatives need to run away from them. When it comes to para-consistent logics and to comparative genomics, we've grown very remote from overt politics. (I suppose that anti-evolutionists might have problems with comparative genomics, but that's true anyplace, not just at Berkeley.)

 

This was the late 90's, I don't remember their names, I would need to break out my transcripts. The guy who taught the class on Marx was an old, stout guy who looked like he'd be there forever. The acid dropper was a short balding Jewish man. He wasn't Buddhist, to my knowledge.

 

In terms of the teaching professionals on campus, there's little argument that the majority are leftist. Therefore, it would be a fairly logical assumption that course materials are taught (and likely written) from a left-wing perspective.

To add to the "conservative" list:

Yorktown University
Regent University
Palm Beach Atlantic University (by reputation)

 

Today I've just watched one example of what I was talking about here - the stereotype of UC berkeley as a haven of radical left in popular media (in global scale, not just the american media).

I've been following the British TV series MI-5 (know as "Spooks" in the UK) through Netflix since the beginning of the year.

Well, I've just watched the first episode of the 4th Season. The protagonist have to fight a american eco-terrorist group.

When they show the leader of the group doing a very luddite speech in an american university, guess which university was that?

 

Sorry. I have family that attended SMU and I live just a few miles from the campus. SMU is hardly a "right leaning" university. In fact, they are so liberal that they are making every effort to block the George W. Bush library from being built at their school. Furthermore, theologically speaking they are so far left that no Christian ministries or churches (save for liberal ones) accept theological degrees from SMU anymore.