EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 5766
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KwarK
United States44382 Posts
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Billyboy
2525 Posts
On June 07 2026 07:53 dyhb wrote: It's a fair point, and one of the aspects I hope the Democrats use to win in 2028. If the country is crashing down, and through this country the world, then almost any compromise to pick up more in the middle is Priority #1. If this is politics as usual, and you want a bigger victory through unabashed support for numbers 1 through 20 of progressive policy goals (a win and a mandate), then continue acting as I observe. I want Trump gone and (likely) Vance defeated, and I want Democrats to moderate in order to make that a resounding victory. Sorry if you think it's just so unfair to pivot for an election win. You're dealing with the electorate that exists, not the one you think you deserve. What do you specifically mean by moderate though? Like what was Harris doing that was so wild? She was basically going to be more Biden, who was famously moderate, often making deals with the Republicans to the chagrin of the American Leftist. What, other than right wing media yelling about it, made Harris radical? | ||
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EnDeR_
Spain2949 Posts
For me, I don't know about my fellow profs as we don't normally go into each other's lectures, I don't interact socially with the students and I keep politics out of my solid state physics lectures. It's boring old equations and lattice drawings. This is the norm in every department I've ever taught at - some profs are more political than others but we tend to be extremely careful about what we say and do in lectures because they are recorded and students can use them to make a claim against us. Which is part of why I think the university is broken, university life has changed a lot in the last 10 years. The system is setup with students as the customers, so we keep lowering our standards to make them happy so we get a good review (university rankings) and attract more students. The students are extremely well aware of this and learn how to exert pressure early on to remove as many academic challenges as possible. Every year we add in more mitigation, and don't get me started on the use of chat bots to do their work, cognitive surrender is real and very widely spread. We are letting our students down and not getting them ready for the requirements of the workplace. Regarding political activity on campus, that's mostly student-led. We do not get involved as a general rule. I'm sure some profs do get involved, don't get me wrong, but it's not something you'd promote as a department, at least in STEM. I have zero experience teaching in a humanities department or political degrees so can't comment on that. | ||
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KwarK
United States44382 Posts
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KwarK
United States44382 Posts
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dyhb
United States788 Posts
On June 07 2026 13:16 Billyboy wrote: I'd really ask you if you know what compromise means, and if you can observe the tension that I'm pointing out in the post. You'll notice that you're bringing Kamala to the discussion, not I. And perhaps you meant to reply to a post about Kamala and radicalism.What do you specifically mean by moderate though? Like what was Harris doing that was so wild? She was basically going to be more Biden, who was famously moderate, often making deals with the Republicans to the chagrin of the American Leftist. What, other than right wing media yelling about it, made Harris radical? | ||
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Introvert
United States5044 Posts
On June 07 2026 15:07 KwarK wrote: It doesn’t matter if it’s student led, the left wing students must be silenced if we want any hope of achieving free speech. Didn't say that | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium5232 Posts
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Godwrath
Spain10167 Posts
On June 07 2026 15:23 dyhb wrote: I am not trying to sound snarky here, have you thought that If you truly want Trump and Vance gone, maybe it's about time you start compromising.?I'd really ask you if you know what compromise means, and if you can observe the tension that I'm pointing out in the post. You'll notice that you're bringing Kamala to the discussion, not I. And perhaps you meant to reply to a post about Kamala and radicalism. | ||
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oBlade
United States6593 Posts
He knows you didn't say it, he only has bait left. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27464 Posts
Least in my experience(s) it is something more akin to the kind of criticisms Ender is making, students are customers or clients as much as students, and the education process is thus less holistic than it perhaps could be. Perhaps the ethical sides of non-humanity degrees could be more greatly embedded, it feels they’re a bare-bones box-ticking exercise so something has been covered, but the main ‘goal’ as it were is satisfied customers who can get better jobs. Granted, I’m not in the States. Perhaps campuses are hotbeds of Marxism over there for all I know. Having done a humanities degree and a STEM one currently, politics certainly featured in the former and were almost entirely lacking in the latter (perhaps too much so). I could certainly make an educated guess as to the politics of my lecturers and tutors in the former, but they rather studiously avoided being too overt. What politics there are tend to be student lead versus clubs and societies, but they’re quite varied. They’re also less vibrant than they were in my youth, partly because our Student Union facilities have been somewhat commercialised and sanitised over the years, rather than being primary facilities for student-lead politics. Partly to accommodate international students, who are big earners for our local unis (and may be paying 3-4x in fees what a native student does) Minibat’s mother is a humanities academic and her perspective is somewhat similar, from that different vantage point. | ||
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EnDeR_
Spain2949 Posts
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Vivax
22420 Posts
On June 07 2026 09:06 Introvert wrote: Well as to *why* there is such a skewed number there's a debate about that. We all know the easy I-don't-want-to-think-about-it-or-acknowledge-it-is-a-problem is the easy answer. Not right, but easy. I disagree with a great number of the assertions you made. And we've had a discussion like this before. Because of the general tilt of higher education, mass media, and cultural institutions it is far, far easier for someone on the left to go their entire educational career without having a serious interaction with someone with a different world view. Maybe I'm mistaken because of what I see in California, but that is exactly what I saw and experienced . A rural kid that goes to college sees all sorts of new people and ideas (I am not a rural kid just to be clear, it's a point I'm making). The urban left-wing kid overwhelming sees people on the same side of the spectrum as he is. The best you can hope for at most universities these days is a professor solidly on the left offering some amount of moderate (not that kind of moderate) pushback. The faculty generally lean one way and most left of center premises are only weakly challenged from a right-leaning perspective. What you say is the *ideal* is not what actually exists. If you saw a field that was like 80%+ conservative you wouldn't give them the same benefit of the doubt you are asking for here. If the students want to go to college some sort of good civics education should be forced upon them. We treat students and their parents now as clients. The entire way society is coming to view universities is detrimental, espeically because people like you presume that because they *say* they want to provided a good well rounded education that they actually do it. There are right of center academics, but much fewer. The best that can be done sometimes is to encourage and support the ones on the left that aren't insane. Everything's insane at this point. Considering the current AI and data protection regulations, everyone's just a guinea pig on the internet, and you can't just avoid using it without a severe handicap to your daily life. It gave origin to really strange local anomalies too. Before developing new things or making up stuff these anomalies should have the supervision of ethical commissions. But as it turns out, some nations are putting up an effort to hollow that approach out to squeeze out the maximum out of their technologies. Going to be an interesting topic come forward. | ||
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Simberto
Germany12031 Posts
On June 07 2026 21:26 EnDeR_ wrote: This tracks with my experience. Profs for the most part stay out of politics. Students normally don't want anything to do with profs, we don't mix socially and in fact we are encouraged against getting involved with students, for very obvious reasons. Most places I've worked at have mentorship schemes, but uni guidance makes it explicit that this relationship is for academic matters strictly, if a student starts talking about personal stuff we are instructed to signpost them to the appropriate person, e.g. mental health support or whatever. We are very explicitly forbidden from giving personal advice, which would include political stuff by default in a science degree. Absolutely my (student) experience in a university too. I don't think any of my professors ever talked about anything political in class, and i didn't really mingle with them outside of that either. But i guess a problem in the US is that the right makes everything political. How are you supposed to teach biology if the idea of evolution is political? How is anyone supposed to teach physics if global warming (which is mostly basic thermodynamics) is political? | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States46516 Posts
On June 07 2026 21:32 Simberto wrote: Absolutely my (student) experience in a university too. I don't think any of my professors ever talked about anything political in class, and i didn't really mingle with them outside of that either. But i guess a problem in the US is that the right makes everything political. How are you supposed to teach biology if the idea of evolution is political? How is anyone supposed to teach physics if global warming (which is mostly basic thermodynamics) is political? Exactly. Conservatives frequently assert that facts are left-wing just because those facts disagree with conservatives' feelings, so when those facts are taught, conservatives point to them as evidence of liberal indoctrination. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States46516 Posts
On June 07 2026 21:26 EnDeR_ wrote: This tracks with my experience. Profs for the most part stay out of politics. Students normally don't want anything to do with profs, we don't mix socially and in fact we are encouraged against getting involved with students, for very obvious reasons. Most places I've worked at have mentorship schemes, but uni guidance makes it explicit that this relationship is for academic matters strictly, if a student starts talking about personal stuff we are instructed to signpost them to the appropriate person, e.g. mental health support or whatever. We are very explicitly forbidden from giving personal advice, which would include political stuff by default in a science degree. That's my experience too. These Republican accusations that liberal teachers and liberal professors are regularly indoctrinating students with political agendas are largely unfounded. It's one thing to academically challenge a relevant in-class question or topic or teaching strategy invoked by an educator, but conservatives are clearly trying to undermine the importance of education altogether. | ||
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Billyboy
2525 Posts
On June 07 2026 15:23 dyhb wrote: I'd really ask you if you know what compromise means, and if you can observe the tension that I'm pointing out in the post. You'll notice that you're bringing Kamala to the discussion, not I. And perhaps you meant to reply to a post about Kamala and radicalism. I do, it’s what Biden did with congress to try to deal with illegal immigration. Before Donny made them all go hardline and reject it so that he could get back in power. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States46516 Posts
On June 07 2026 19:13 WombaT wrote: What are the ideas that young people (or indeed older folks like ‘mature’ students such as yours truly) not being exposed to in tertiary education? Least in my experience(s) it is something more akin to the kind of criticisms Ender is making, students are customers or clients as much as students, and the education process is thus less holistic than it perhaps could be. Perhaps the ethical sides of non-humanity degrees could be more greatly embedded, it feels they’re a bare-bones box-ticking exercise so something has been covered, but the main ‘goal’ as it were is satisfied customers who can get better jobs. Granted, I’m not in the States. Perhaps campuses are hotbeds of Marxism over there for all I know. Having done a humanities degree and a STEM one currently, politics certainly featured in the former and were almost entirely lacking in the latter (perhaps too much so). I could certainly make an educated guess as to the politics of my lecturers and tutors in the former, but they rather studiously avoided being too overt. What politics there are tend to be student lead versus clubs and societies, but they’re quite varied. They’re also less vibrant than they were in my youth, partly because our Student Union facilities have been somewhat commercialised and sanitised over the years, rather than being primary facilities for student-lead politics. Partly to accommodate international students, who are big earners for our local unis (and may be paying 3-4x in fees what a native student does) Minibat’s mother is a humanities academic and her perspective is somewhat similar, from that different vantage point. I took an introductory World Mythology course in college, and it was extremely insightful and interesting. Every unit, we explored the mythological stories and religious teachings of different groups, both past and present. We read relevant texts and learned about the most important deities, saviors, and allegories of various belief systems and cultures, including Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Greek/Roman, Norse, Mesopotamian, and multiple Native American tribes. It was a nice little tasting menu of various religiosities, and there were plenty of advanced courses that focused on one or two of these at a time, in much greater depth. We learned about their Creation myths (how the world / universe came into being), their Destruction myths (how/why the world was reset or how/why it will ultimately end), and more. It was really interesting to observe the parallels between various mythologies, like how many civilizations had their own version of a destructive "global" flood (since they were always built near bodies of water, great destructive storms causing large local floods were the norm). We compared and contrasted stories from a whole bunch of religions and mythologies. Not once did my professor push a political or religious (or anti-religious) agenda. She asked appropriate guiding and analytical questions when needed, but that was it. It was a great example of an educator scaffolding students on how to think, and not just what to think. And yet, I imagine that plenty of conservatives would freak out to learn that Christianity was just one of many chapters, and it was discussed as impartially and objectively as every other religion / mythology. I could see Republicans having an issue with the fact that Christianity wasn't pushed as absolute truth, or that it was even (correctly) categorized as a world mythology in the first place, because many conservatives start with the axiom that Christianity is indisputably true. I've also taken plenty of other non-math courses at university (psychology was one of my college minors; education was my other college minor), and neither the curricula nor the professors ever pushed a partisan agenda, even at a very liberal university (Rutgers). Obviously, my math courses weren't Democratic propaganda either. | ||
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LightSpectra
United States3326 Posts
On June 07 2026 22:01 Billyboy wrote: I do, it’s what Biden did with congress to try to deal with illegal immigration. Before Donny made them all go hardline and reject it so that he could get back in power. I stress the need to keep bringing this back up because it discredits all of the apocalyptic rhetoric around immigration that conservatives use to justify voting for a child rapist. Imagine if one of our nuclear power plants went full Chernobyl tomorrow night and Democrats refused to vote for a bill to contain the fallout because they wanted to win the 2028 presidential election on the basis of "Republicans irradiated our country and didn't do anything about it", and literally said that aloud to the press. They would look absolutely insane. But Republicans did that with immigration and their voters don't think they look like morons for being so openly duped. | ||
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Vivax
22420 Posts
On June 07 2026 21:32 Simberto wrote: Absolutely my (student) experience in a university too. I don't think any of my professors ever talked about anything political in class, and i didn't really mingle with them outside of that either. But i guess a problem in the US is that the right makes everything political. How are you supposed to teach biology if the idea of evolution is political? How is anyone supposed to teach physics if global warming (which is mostly basic thermodynamics) is political? The process of lifeforms developing traits suitable to the environment isn't fully understood, but it can't be just Darwins logic behind it. Or how biochemistry translates into conscious experiences. Biology hits a wall at some point under the materialistic lens. | ||
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