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Welcome to Heterodox Academy

TheDemSocialist said:
Repeating what they believe like some kind of robot is not moving this debate anywhere. Again, you are upholding this ideals as something that should be promoted. I am asking you to defend those positions (such as their 'solutions', which you have repeatedly ignored).. Repeating their claims without presenting any evidence is not moving this anymore forward. I am questioning those claims they make.. Simply repeating their claims over and over again as 100% factual truth without presenting any evidence to back up questioning of claims is a logical fallacy (appeal to authority).
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If you don't believe the problem exists then that's fine with me. I'm uninterested in trying to change your mind.
 
[h=2]The academy is broken[/h] Sep 15, 2015 Academia
Joe Duarte is co-author of a new paper about political bias in the social sciences. It's paywalled, but there is a summary here. I recommend it.
Featuring well-known names such as Jonathan Haidt and Philip Tetlock the paper looks as though it might create something of a stir, especially as it essentially concludes that social psychology is so dominated by woolly liberals as to make its findings untrustworthy:
Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity – particularly diversity of viewpoints – for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: (1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority’s thinking. (4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political diversity in social psychology.
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The authors reckon that there is a golden opportunity at hand to correct this bias within the academy. I must say I'm entirely unconvinced. I think the rot, and the bigotry, are so ingrained as to make the system unreformable. I have often wondered if the future is not in independent scholars and independent funding streams, secure from the depredations of the liberal left. Certainly, it's hard to see why the public should be paying for the academy in its current state.


 
The anti free speech movement at UCLA [link]

A half-century ago, student activists at the University of California clashed with administrators during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, a series of events that would greatly expand free-speech rights of people at public colleges and universities.
Today, activists at UCLA are demanding that administrators punish some of their fellow students for expressive behavior that is clearly protected by the First Amendment. . . .
 
ecofarm said:
Every grad class I ever took promoted different and new points of view. Any view presented was examined closely and analyzed by both the class and professor. Of course, there's always room for improvement and while professors strive to engage differing viewpoints, an organization devoted to such is certainly welcome by all.

To pretend otherwise or construe this organization's existence as a evidence of "brainwashing" or "maybe the racists are correct" is pathetic and I hope the OP poster is attempting neither of those things.
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Then you did not go to my university or the two my brother went to.

Especially in economics, they gave lip service to 'all views/theories' and then proceeded to push their beliefs. They would discuss other theories in a monotone way. And then you would see them get more animated and enthusiastic when discussing their obvious preference.

I do not personally believe that the average American prof teaches with an unbiased and balanced approach. I cannot prove they do not, but I strongly believe it.
 
Jack Hays said:
A group of social scientists has come together to try to remedy the unfortunate lack of political diversity in academia. I think this is admirable and overdue. Your thoughts?

". . . There is a new group of professors, that I am pleased to be a part of: HeterodoxAcademy.org Mission. Our mission is to increase viewpoint diversity in the academy, with a special focus on the social sciences.
The problem. Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity—particularly diversity of viewpoints—for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in most of the social sciences (other than economics) as well as in the legal academy and the humanities: political diversity.
From the Welcome Statement:
Welcome to our site. We are social scientists and other scholars who want to improve our academic disciplines. We have all written about a particular problem: the loss or lack of “viewpoint diversity.” It’s what happens when everyone in a field thinks the same way on important issues that are not really settled matters of fact. We don’t want viewpoint diversity on whether the Earth is round versus flat. But do we want everyone to share the same presuppositions when it comes to the study of race, class, gender, inequality, evolution, or history? Can research that emerges from an ideologically uniform and orthodox academy be as good, useful, and reliable as research that emerges from a more heterodox academy?
Science is among humankind’s most successful institutions not because scientists are so rational and open minded but because scholarly institutions work to counteract the errors and flaws of what are, after all, normal cognitively challenged human beings. We academics are generally biased toward confirming our own theories and validating our favored beliefs. But as long as we can all count on the peer review process and a vigorous post-publication peer debate process, we can rest assured that most obvious errors and biases will get called out. Researchers who have different values, political identities, and intellectual presuppositions and who disagree with published findings will run other studies, obtain opposing results, and the field will gradually sort out the truth. . . . "



Heterodox Academy

Posted on September 15, 2015 | 103 comments
by Judith Curry
I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. – President Obama
Continue reading →
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I agree with the premise, but I am suspicious of the execution.

I would feel better about this Heterodox Academy if/when I am convinced that it is not a front to push through views that are not popular under a veil of all-inclusiveness.
It would not be the first time something relatively sinister was presented as something relatively wonderful.


Yes, I am cynical...and proud of it. Better cynical then naive, IMO.
 
Kids taking these basket weaving classes as majors are wasting their money. No one hires these people except Starbucks unless they have at least a Master's Degree, and even then---better to send your kids to engineering or business school than mumbo-jumbo-ville. At least that way you'll be assured that they won't be living in your basement until age 33.
 
Social Sciences in Purity Spiral to Radical Left
Uri Harris, Quillette

[FONT=&quot]A couple of years ago, six social scientists published a paper describing a disquieting occurrence in academic psychology: the loss of almost all its political diversity. As Jonathan Haidt, one of the authors of the paper, wrote in a commentary:[/FONT]
Before the 1990s, academic psychology only LEANED left. Liberals and Democrats outnumbered Conservatives and Republican by 4 to 1 or less. But as the “greatest generation” retired in the 1990s and was replaced by baby boomers, the ratio skyrocketed to something more like 12 to 1. In just 20 years. Few psychologists realize just how quickly or completely the field has become a political monoculture.
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[FONT=&quot]While the paper focuses on psychology, it briefly mentions that the rest of the social sciences are not far behind:[/FONT]
[R]ecent surveys find that 58–66 per cent of social science professors in the United States identify as liberals, while only 5–8 per cent identify as conservatives, and that self-identified Democrats outnumber Republicans by ratios of at least 8 to 1 (Gross & Simmons 2007; Klein & Stern 2009; Rothman & Lichter 2008).
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[FONT=&quot]As these studies are now approximately ten years old, it’s quite plausible that the gap has widened further over the past decade (as it has in psychology) meaning that these figures most likely underestimate the current left-to-right ratio across the social sciences.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]In response to this problem, Haidt and others formed the Heterodox Academy, which is dedicated to arguing for a more intellectually diverse academy and now has almost 900 members. . . . .[/FONT]
 
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