Galt's Gulch

BYU is a place of liberals?

Posted by FlukeMan2 9 years, 10 months ago to Education
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In an age of trigger warnings and hypersensitive politics, true liberalism can be found in the most unlikely of places.
SOURCE URL: http://theweek.com/article/index/261832/where-are-the-real-liberals-on-campus#axzz33Jz3tMBM

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  • Posted by SolitudeIsBliss 9 years, 10 months ago
    Humans are too savage and stupid to handle real liberality!
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    • Posted by ewv 9 years, 10 months ago
      Humans aren't by nature, but many of today's academics are as they continue to infect the culture at large. But they aren't literally "stupid" even though I understand why you have such contempt for them as to call them that; many are bright people who know what they are doing, or are a victim of their own philosophy, or both. That is what makes it so difficult to contend with. As an analogy, try to imagine what it took for someone like Galileo to stand up to the prevailing ideological orthodoxy of his time and why it took centuries for the Enlightenment to start.
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  • Posted by Maphesdus 9 years, 10 months ago
    Oh god no. BYU is one of the most oppressive universities in the nation. Seriously, I don't know of any other college or university that openly expels students for converting to another religion. Open minded? Not in the least.

    http://www.iamanexmormon.com/byu/
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    • Posted by ewv 9 years, 10 months ago
      That completely misses the point and does not address what the author, who taught there for at least two years, wrote about his direct experience. Stop shooting from the hip without bothering to understand what is being said.
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        Posted by Maphesdus 9 years, 10 months ago
        The point the author was trying to make was that BYU is supposedly a tolerant and open minded university. It is nothing of the sort.
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        • Posted by ewv 9 years, 10 months ago
          That is not what he wrote. He said that despite its being in "some ways profoundly illiberal", when he taught there in the late 1990s he experienced complete freedom of thought in his classroom teaching in the manner of "liberalism in the classical sense". He contrasted his experience there to the "intellectually stifling (and illiberal) trend sweeping across campuses" today. His experience was not "oppressive". Your offhanded pronouncement is irrelevant to the article.
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            Posted by Maphesdus 9 years, 10 months ago
            There are plenty of universities which offer professors the freedom to teach whatever they want. BYU is not some isolated "pinnacle of freedom" in that regard, and the rest of the school's policies are downright draconian. UVU and U of U, two other universities in that area, are both far superior.
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            • Posted by ewv 9 years, 10 months ago
              The author did not write that it is an "isolated 'pinnacle of freedom'". You are once again misrepresenting while not addressing the content and point of his article. He wrote about what he actually experienced there for two years in contrast to what might be expected and in contrast to the "intellectually stifling (and illiberal) trend sweeping across campuses" today. His experience was not that BYU is "oppressive". Your offhanded pronouncement is irrelevant to the article.
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              • Posted by Maphesdus 9 years, 10 months ago
                His point was that BYU is supposedly more "tolerant" of divergent beliefs than other universities. It is not. There is no alleged "intellectually stifling illiberalism trend" sweeping the country. He makes that claim, but then totally fails to back it up with any evidence. Name one other university where professors are not given the freedom to teach whatever they want in their classes. Go ahead. Give me an example.
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                  Posted by ewv 9 years, 10 months ago
                  At the time he was teaching there he reports that it was freer than the stifling trend of political correctness that has in fact been sweeping the country and is well known. Many universities, including the Ivy League, won't even hire 'outsiders', and polls of faculty political beliefs and experiences of students confirm it. Even Bloomberg's Harvard commencement speech acknowledged it. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has been tracking it and winning lawsuits against it for decades. The author didn't have to repeat what is going on elsewhere because it is already well known, except by its leftist apologists, and he was writing about an exception. None of your typically evasive sophistry excuses your shoot from the hip comment ignoring what the article is about, you are only wrong down an additional path trying to evade the first one.
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                  • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 10 months ago
                    Give it up. Maph is a one-note instrument, a troll who, when he can't win an argument (which is most of the time) dissembles and chases down rabbit trails. Like his assertion that because a religious school expects its membership to follow said religion, it's somehow intolerant. Next he'll condemn physics courses for requiring students to study physics instead of remedial basket weaving.

                    While I don't believe in Mormonism myself, the Mormons who've come to my attention have been generally decent people (and in some instances, exceptionally good people...)
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                    • Posted by ewv 9 years, 10 months ago
                      Yes, we know what he is and I agree with you. It's worse than his inability to debate, he can't follow a discussion from one sentence to the next, and is intellectually dishonest on top of it. He constantly and repeatedly misrepresents Ayn Rand and almost anyone or anything else he makes his subjective pronouncements on, then when called on it evasively dodges off in a different direction down another rabbit hole, not acknowledging what has been written while demanding to be taken seriously in the name of "debate". He's an eclectic, attention seeking leftist 27 year old college sophomore and hyperactive gadfly obsessed with race, sexual aberration, and his own feelings of persecution. It's not hard to see how his non-response to the article on BYU and railing over personal standards at BYU that the students accept when they go there (which I would not have either) fits his pattern while he ignores the article. He floods this forum with his nonsense and then claims to be annoyed when someone rejects it, again claiming persecution over his posts being voted down, supposedly "regardless of content" (and which he routinely practices himself). Sometimes the newer people who assume he belongs here appreciate it when you point out the common fallacies he invokes.
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                    • Posted by Maphesdus 9 years, 10 months ago
                      BYU allows non-Mormons to attend. The university is not exclusively for Mormons. They just expel Mormon students who leave the church. They do nothing when students of other religions change their religious beliefs. There was an incident just a few months ago where a Catholic girl started attending BYU, converted to Mormonism after a few semesters, but then decided she didn't like Mormonism after all and switched back to Catholicism, and was expelled from BYU for doing so. And now people are trying to hold BYU up as somehow being open minded? Please, don't be ridiculous.
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                  • Posted by Maphesdus 9 years, 10 months ago
                    BYU is a university that literally tries to control the personal hygiene of both students and facility by requiring all men to be clean shaven, as well as limiting everyone's speech by forbidding curse words, and even dictating what sort of beverages they can drink (no tea or alcohol). On top of that, the school even invades people's personal lives by expelling any Mormon students who decide to leave the church, even though non-Mormons are allowed to attend the university. Oh, and by the way, the honor code includes a blanket prohibition on pre-marital sex as well as all homosexual activity, meaning students can literally be expelled just for being gay. The honor code openly requires it.

                    In the late '80s, the Mormon church even convinced the city council of Provo (the city where BYU is located) to allow BYU campus police to act as regular police officers off campus, which resulted in members of the general population being arrested for violating BYU's honor code, even if they didn't attend the university.

                    But hey, at least teachers at BYU can talk about philosophers masturbating without the administration doing anything. That's something, right?
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                    • Posted by FlukeMan2 9 years, 10 months ago
                      Disclaimer: I'm a Mormon, but not a BYU student.

                      The honor code does NOT require that students be expelled for "being gay" or in other words having same gender attraction. It DOES require that students not act of same gender attraction. There was once confusion over this issue but in recent years BYU's policy has been updated and clarified.
                      http://www.advocate.com/society/religion...

                      Every BYU student agrees to live by the honor code when they enroll at BYU. They don't have to enroll at BYU. I didn't like some of BYU's honor code so I'm not a student there (not the only reason), but I still think people who choose to go there likewise choose to agree to the honor code and should keep it.

                      Have you considered that the honor code may be attractive to people or that it may be part of the reason BYU is so successful. People might actually want a social environment that is supportive of their standards. It is a place where young people have fun without sex or alcohol.

                      It's kind of like Galt's Gulch. The oath isn't at all the same, but the idea is that there is a minority group whose values are not held or respected by the rest of the world so they create a place where their values are respected and practiced.
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                      Posted by Maphesdus 9 years, 10 months ago
                      Oh, and another thing: many of the apartment complexes around BYU, especially student housing, require their tenants to adhere to BYU's honor code as well, just so they can attain the coveted label of "BYU approved housing." The intrusion on people's personal lives is despicable and appalling, and no amount of freedom in the classroom can make up for that.
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