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posted by CoolHand on Monday August 29 2016, @01:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-takes-all-kinds dept.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html?_r=0

WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren't conservatives. Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We're fine with people who don't look like us, as long as they think like us.

O.K., that's a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical. "Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black," he told me. "But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close."

I've been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.

"Much of the 'conservative' worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false," said Carmi. "The truth has a liberal slant," wrote Michelle. "Why stop there?" asked Steven. "How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?"

To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don't have anything significant to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.

The stakes involve not just fairness to conservatives or evangelical Christians, not just whether progressives will be true to their own values, not just the benefits that come from diversity (and diversity of thought is arguably among the most important kinds), but also the quality of education itself. When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some kinds of thinkers aren't at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards — and we all lose.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @03:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @03:26PM (#396199)

    Apologies for my delayed response.

    Since I'm not happy with the fundamentals of moral relativism, I'm most interested in morals of the objective sort. These morals would by necessity exist without support from humans' existence, as you've already noted.

    However, you went on to define objective morals as things that "emerge from who and what we are as a species". If human morality is based on who and what we are as a species, then I don't see how such morals can simultaneously be objective (i.e. uninfluenced by personal/cultural prejudice; existing outside of the human mind; empircally observable). My simplistic comparison for an objective law is the law of gravity: it existed before humans, it functions regardless of history's humans' opinion of it, and will likely continue to exist after humans, remaining consistent throughout all that time.

    I assume I may have overlooked some implication in objecting to your description of your moral examples as "objective"; if you would, please cover the basics of that for me with, say, an example of morality based on something that exists outside of humanity.

  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 01 2016, @04:58PM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday September 01 2016, @04:58PM (#396253) Journal

    You mostly got it actually :) By "objective" this means "we don't sit around like a constipated-looking Greek statue trying to invent our moral machinery; it's built-in."

    Now, yes, the output of that machinery is going to be somewhat subjective, but even there, you can see universals that go all the way back to the great apes. A sentient being's shape and physical makeup are going to have a lot of input into the results of running its morality machine.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...