I'm not sure I would cal it "chilling" as much as "ignorant". Chilling seems a little alarmist to me. Also, where are the comparative data? I have no idea what college students thought 20 years ago, and without that control, these data are pretty well meaningless. Here's an alternate headline: "New study shows college kids have fragile minds and an ignorance of the Constitution." Not so chilling when you put it that way, is it? I don't remember exactly how I might have responded to a controversial speaker on campus, but I do know that when I was 18 I was a lot more aggressive in my antipathy toward people with whom I disagreed on topics I thought were meaningful. At 35, I know a lot more people, have a lot more life experience, and have learned more about the law. I hope the same is true for most people who have gone through school, gotten a job, tried to get along and ahead in the world. The biggest difference today is that everyone feels the need to share their opinion online, and that this has become a kind of proxy for who you are and not simply what you think. My advice to any young person would be to delete all social media profiles and use that time to read real books.
Agreed. It's a Brookings study paid for by the Koch brothers. If you click through to the Brookings page you see this: "I'd like to get a bunch of scare quotes and talking points out there before anybody has a chance to analyze the data." Here's an interesting factoid: Here's another: I reckon we'll see that these weren't study participants who were selected... these were study participants who volunteered to answer. Note that we have no idea how many questions were asked. We have no idea what data has been discarded. We know they were asked this, though: Option 1: create a positive learning environment for all students by prohibiting certain speech or expression of viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groups of people Option 2: create an open learning environment where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints, even if it means allowing speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups of people? When were they asked? So... between four days and two weeks after Charlottesville. Awright, Brookings - how many sociologically relevant conclusions can you draw about a self-reported web survey about hate speech while we were all collectively condeming the president for not condemning mutherfucking nazis? This is effectively a Facebook poll dressed up as an academic study, and the Washington Post should know better. Here's an alternate headline: "New study shows college kids have fragile minds and an ignorance of the Constitution."
I plan to publish a detailed analysis of the results in an academic paper, but given the long time delays associated with academic publishing, and the timeliness of the topic, I believe it is important to get some of the key results out into the public sphere immediately.
The survey results presented here have been weighted with respect to gender to adjust for the reported 57 percent/43 percent gender split among college students; by contrast, 70 percent (1,040 of the 1,500) of the survey respondents identified as female.
Of the 1,500 respondents, 697 identified a Democrats, 261 as Republicans, and 431 as Independents. Another 111 respondents stated “Don’t Know” when asked to state their political affiliation.
If you had to choose one of the options below, which do you think it is more important for colleges to do?
Here is some more detailed information regarding the survey: This web survey of 1,500 undergraduate students at U.S. four-year colleges and universities was conducted between August 17 and August 31, 2017.
The thing that WaPo knows is that this type of headline will spark rage shares on Facebook from the left and right, and that the sweet sound of all the clicks will drown out the screams of their conscience. Silence those lambs, Jeff. I have a fantasy that Mueller will indict Zuckerberg for collusion with the Russians, and that he will get the shit beat out of him in jail.
Damn. You called the shit out of this one. Conservatives all over are taking to their social media to qualify earlier statements where they hysterically decried universities.