Tag: Conservative
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Is Nikki Haley the Next Hillary Clinton?
The contemporary GOP base is increasingly comprised of Americans who perceive themselves to be the “losers” in the knowledge economy and who seem to feel distant and mistrustful of mainstream institutions. The party, and especially its insurgent movements – from the Obama-era tea party through the present day – are increasingly backed by small businesses…
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Contextualizing Ideological Gaps in Mental Illness and Well-Being
In a recent essay for Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health, epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and co-authors identified a significant gap in depressive attitudes between liberal and conservative teens. This gap was present in all years observed in the study (2005-2018). However, it grew significantly starting in 2012, as depressive affect unilaterally spiked among liberals.…
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On Christian Nationalism and the ‘Religious Right’
In recent years, there has been growing scholarly and media focus on Christian nationalism. Google nGrams, a search engine that tracks word frequencies in books, show that the contemporary resurgence of interest in Christian nationalism seems to correspond with the 2016 election cycle. A search on Google Scholar produces roughly 7,000 results for scholarly works…
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On Clarence Thomas, White Liberals and Racial Politics
There were six Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade this week. The majority opinion was authored by Justice Samuel Alito. However, in the aftermath of the ruling, there has been an intense and particular focus on a different justice: Clarence Thomas. This may have been in part a product of Thomas’…
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The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
American liberals often charge that Christians seem unusually preoccupied (even obsessed) with sex and sexuality, and have a bunch of strange hang-ups about marriage and family structure. Conservatives, meanwhile, argue that the “traditional family” lies at the core of Western Civilization, and that weakening foundational norms around sex, marriage, and child-rearing would likely have destabilizing…
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How Our Social Networks Shape Our Politics
An ambitious new project, the American National Social Network Survey, looks at the social networks of thousands of Americans over time, exploring how who people associate with affects their worldview. The project is sponsored by AEI and the Knight Foundation, carried out in partnership with NORC (who administer the General Social Survey). The latest report from the project,…
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On Heterodox Academy and Effective Advocacy
I began working with Heterodox Academy in the fall of 2016, about a year after the group was formed. At that time, the organization (such as it was) was a handful of interesting people who met in Jon Haidt’s NYU office every week to talk about current events, ideas for blog posts and external publications,…
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Students are Ideologically Diverse. Here’s How to Surface that Diversity.
It has long been a talking point on the right that leftist professors are ‘indoctrinating’ college kids (an elaboration on why many quite reasonably hold this belief is available here). However, a number of recent studies suggest that this narrative is incorrect: students can reliably determine what their professors’ political beliefs are, and when they…
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Positionality and Homogeneity in Social Research: Towards a Holistic Exploration
Callosal disconnection syndrome, more colloquially known as ‘split brain syndrome’ occurs when the connections between the left and right hemispheres of the brain are disrupted or severed. The condition often makes it difficult for people to fully access and synthesize various flows of information or to properly coordinate their actions. This is, perhaps, a perfect…
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(Why) Liberal Faculty Don’t Discriminate Against Conservative Students in Grading
Many right-of-center students (especially those who are grade-obsessed) fear that their professors will punish them for their political and cultural views if they were to express them in class discussions or assignments – and choose to self-censor instead. It’s easy to understand why they are concerned: there is a significant lack of ideological diversity among…
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On Amy Wax, Tenure and Academic Freedom
In mid-July the Edmund Burke Foundation hosted its inaugural National Conservativism Conference – an event intended to “bring together public figures, journalists, scholars, and students who understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence, and to the revival of the…
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How Universities Help Shape Local and Regional Politics
In a previous essay, I demonstrated that there seems to be a longstanding relationship between the ideological skew of colleges and universities, and the political leanings of the communities they are embedded in. Over the last 30 years, university faculty have shifted dramatically leftward – and so have the communities hosting elite private universities, the…
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Trump’s Executive Order on Campus Speech is a Raw Deal for Conservatives
“The political world is playing a very different game, and it’s a game that almost always damages our work in universities.” Jonathan Haidt, Chronicle of Higher Education One year ago, almost to the day, President Trump declared that the campus free speech crisis was ‘overblown.’ Since then, the trends have actually moved in an even…
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Longitudinal Trends: Ideological Diversity In Universities v. Surrounding Communities
In a recent book, Land Grant Universities for the Future, Stephen Gavazzi and Gordon Gee analyze polling data from land grant universities and their host communities and find that institutions of higher learning tend to be “islands of blue” which mirror state capitals and major urban areas, inside “vast seas of red” – i.e. the…
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The Radical Black Liberation Theology of Kanye West
Kanye West has always had a streak of what one might call conservatism. He defiantly included “Jesus Walks” on his 2004 debut album, despite repeated urging from record execs to drop it, and predictions that it would never get play. Instead, the single helped make his career. The track begins with Kanye revealing, “We at…
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(How) The Lack of Conservatives in the Academy Harms Progressive Scholars (Most)
It is no longer a matter of dispute whether increasing diversity of perspectives enriches understanding of social issues. Conversations about diversity at institutions of higher learning typically turn on questions of race, gender and sexuality. More recently, class, geography and the intersections between categories of underrepresentation have been integrated into the discussion. However, viewpoint diversity…
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Social Research Will Benefit from Greater Ideological Diversity
Beginning in the late 18th century, post-secondary education was restructured across Europe—in part under the auspices of accelerating the transition to an envisioned rational and secular age.[1] In order to enroll the broadest swath of the public in this enterprise, institutions and curricula were rendered more accessible, inclusive, and professionally-oriented. Similarly, across the pond, in…
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An Emerging Democratic Majority? Don’t Count on It.
“What is at stake in the conflict over representations of the future is nothing other than the attitude of the declining classes to their decline—either demoralization, which leads to a rout….or mobilization, which leads to the collective search for a collective solution to the crisis.What can make the difference is, fundamentally, the possession of…
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Why Conservatives Must Reject Trump’s Homonationalism
In a RNC nomination acceptance speech widely maligned as dystopian, Donald Trump received rare mainstream media praise for asserting: “Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted LGBTQ community. No good. And we’re going to stop it. As your president, I will…
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On the Philosophical Underpinnings of Conservativism
What do conservatives stand for? One popular narrative is that conservatives cling to tradition and resist change. There is an element of truth to this description in that conservatives do value tradition–albeit not for its own sake. Rather, out of the conviction that systems and institutions which have proven themselves over the course of generations…
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What Happened to Black Republicans
It is often remarked that the Republican Party was founded by Lincoln, who oversaw the defeat of the Confederacy, the emancipation of slaves, and laid the foundation for the civil rights movement. But the Republican history of civil rights is much richer than this. Conversely, the history of the Democratic Party has been overwhelmingly pro-slavery…
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No, Ammon Bundy is NOT a terrorist.
On Saturday January 2nd, citizens of Burns, Oregon held a rally protesting the sentencing of Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond. The local demonstration was co-opted by a militia, led by Nevada-native Ammon Bundy, now calling itself “Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.” Following its participation in the planned protest, the militia seized and continues to illegally…
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Today’s Republican Party, neither Religious nor Conservative
Whistling “zippity doo da” as he stepped into the briefing room, House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would be vacating his position as Speaker, and also his seat in the Senate, at the end of October—after pushing through a bill to fund the government and ensuring there will be no government shutdown. The announcement…
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Don’t say Black Lives Matter, prove it.
Let’s be clear: for various reasons a large swath of Americans support institutionalized racism, both actively and passively. And in light of the pivotal role the police have played, and continue to play, in preserving the systems, institutions and dynamics which undergird racial inequality in the U.S.–powerful backlash against Black Lives Matter was to be…