Many academics I see online are leftist whereas many laypeople I see online are right wing.
There are plenty of right wing academics but they are a minority. It probably varies by field too. In the core sciences that minority is probably the smallest and is greater in the humanities. My professor was a right wing scientist and we often clashed on values. I felt sorry for him at times because it would be his point of view Vs the entire research group. He is fundamentally a good person that can hold illogical and contradictory opinions that felt like they were emotionally based.
There are fewer right-wingers in academia, and they tend to work at schools with right-wing orientations. Turns out reality has a liberal bias.
what do you mean when you say “reality has a liberal bias”? I have heard another person saying that too but I did not get that.
It means most things hardline conservatives are angry or paranoid about are misperceptions, not realities. For example, most people who are different from you aren’t out to get you.
The reason that there are less ‘right wing’ people in academia is that academia usually involves research and understanding of the world and its systems and most ‘right wing’ opinions do not hold up to investigation. So, therefore, reality itself appears to have a liberal bias as opposed to admitting you’re wrong about anything.
That’s the root of it, basically.
For the record, I agree with the statement, for what it’s worth.
The meaning of that phrase about “liberal bias” is reflected in things like the rich exploiting the poor and polluting the earth, “liberal” viewpoint but true in reality. Or the rich manipulating elections and using the military to further imperialism, leftist “opinions” but verifiable in reality.
In academia you are trained to not accept any claim without adequate evidence. Look at left wing claims vs. right wing ones and show me one that has better evidence on the right.
That’s the thing about right-wing populism. It relies on primitive instincts. It’s a baseline. It requires no effort.
Rich people are smarter, otherwise they wouln’t be rich. No don’t tax them, they worked so much harder than anyone else to get there! Taxing them will only punish the imaginative and the resourceful, while incentivising the lazy and the worthless. I blame the immigrants because they work harder and for less money, and it’s their fault that I also have to work harder for less! We need one more lane, that would relieve the traffic so much!
These takes always seem super OBVIOUS at first, and if you never bother revising them - you’ll just be stuck with them. The longer you live with them, the firmer you’ll latch onto them.
That’s why it’s so crucial for the rightwingers to dismantle the education system. They need you to be ignorant. Take things face-value.
Yeah I have seen it myself that many right wingers don’t like the education system and they would glorify “the past”.
Reality has a left wing bias. They exist though and they’re infuriating.
I’m sure there are some academics who are right wing and some uneducated people who are left wing. But for the most part it is generally true that academics are more likely to be left wing. To put it rudely, stupid people generally believe right wing talking points. Right wing worldview is full of contradictions an uneducated beliefs. People who are curious and bother to educate themselves about the issues are generally more likely to be left wing. Than again, I am left wing so of course I’m going to be biased towards believing left wing views are smart
I initially was right but now am reconsidering that stance.
Depends on what you call “academics”. If you mistake phrase shifter courses like “business administration”, “politics”, or “law” as academic, then yes.
Nah not that specifically. I meant like in social sciences and humanities (other fields are welcome but my main motive was these fields).
Social sciences and humanities are a classic leftist field. And MINT scientists are usually too smart to be right wingers.
what is MINT? I am in STEM but I adore the people in social sciences and humanities. Sadly, humanities is dying especially in my country. Barely anyone wants to read social sciences and humanities, as we are a developing country and also just want money
MINT Mathematics, Information science, Natural sciences, and Technology.
It depends on the country, but there’s a self-preservation aspect to academics leaning left. In the USA especially but not exclusively a major right-wing policy point has been defunding academia and publicly-funded research in general. Unless you’re in a field that can reliably pull private funding, such as some branches of the oft-mentioned economics, voting and sharing right-wing talking points carries a major risk of getting your funding cut and leaving you without a job.
The causality could also be that those who see the value of studying something to gain a good understanding are simply more willing to spend money on furthering our understanding, and of course if you think science is valuable, you’re happy to take such a job and feel like you’re doing meaningful work. Those people would vote for parties that align with their existing worldview before they ever considered working for governmental grant money, and probably keep that belief regardless of it
In my country, there is barely any left wing.
They are fewer than those who lean left but they are there. And typically they tend more toward moderation that extremism. Quintessentially, they’re moderate to liberal conservatives. Often times you’ll find them more in business and economics related fields.
The main reason being that exposure typically gets a person to come out of their highly conservative nature and education as well to better understand how the world operates. It’s not a 100% thing as there are occasional reactionaries in positions of scientific note but they’re few.
Unaware. Go into accounting to find a bunch.
I got a book on Principles of Accountings from two professors in BYU (kinda old book though) and it sounded way capitalist from its starting pages.
One of physics professors in my uni loved Elon Musk, and has photo with Trump.
(Latter one for a presidential award they won, to give the benefit of doubt)
Probably people who are curious and want to learn how the universe really is, who climb to the highest levels of Perry’s scheme of cognition, who use Sagan’s baloney detection kit, rather than supernatural and unfalsifiable excuses, to understand the cosmos. It’s part of the scientific method and great to learn new things, not mistakes but data for next experiment, and big claims require big proof, like defending a thesis should require. We are all waves of one ocean made of stardust, observing the universe, conscious elements billions of years old. DNA that survived all the extinctions so far, on the one habitable planet, and nothing to rescue us, but human cooperation.
If you want faith, it must allow room for doubt and mystery, rather than twisted to demand certainty and remain in Perry’s low levels overall. They could study the neurochemical ways high-control groups hook people and keep them with unhealthy shame/blame/guilt, threat of exile, conditional belonging, solution for invented problem, punish/reward cycles, and maybe choose to escape. Good luck!
Are you confusing liberal with leftist?
The actual left begins at anticapitalism. American academia is full of liberals, who are right-wingers that believe in capitalism even though the most liberal controlled states proves it doesn’t work. (Read: California’s massive homelessness problem.)
Where I live, we use the term “liberal” for “progressive minded”.
This is a very important point. “Liberal” has different meanings and the english language is not very helpfull in distinguishing that. Useful article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-10658070
In political theory liberalism is considered right-wing because it is a pro-capitalist ideology. “Liberal” is used to describe anyone somewhat progress in the US and among some others but the term is used differently by political theorists and most people outside of the US. Many academics are right-wing, most academic institutions are explicitly right wing because they are pro-capitalist even if they are more “progressive” socially. Though the students and faculty are typically much more left than the school administration.
They certainly have a lot of lawyers.
…Its just you.
There are NUMEROUS bribed academics who are right-winged. chris hedges and noam chomsky have been sucxessfully bribed for years to be anti-Communist and anti-Anarchistic as two examples.
Most academics are probablty slightly left-leaning though seeing as how most of them see that what Michael Parenti said was correct: “All conservative ideologies justify existing inequities as the natural order of things, inevitable outcomes of human nature. If the very rich are naturally so much more capable than the rest of us, why must they be provided with so many artificial privileges under the law, so many bailouts, subsidies and other special considerations - at our expense? Their “nat urally superior talents” include unprincipled and illegal subterfuge such as price-fixing, mass m%%der, stock manipulation, insider trading, fraud, tax evasion, the legal enforcement of unfair competition, ecological spoliation, harmful products and unsafe work conditions. One might expect naturally superior people not to act in such rapacious and venal ways. Differences in talent and capacity as might exist between individuals do not excuse the crimes and injustices that are endemic to the corporate business system.”
