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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Yes of course, I would try to get my kids into schools that are more focused on academic excellence and try to be closely engaged in the "personal development" aspect. My feeling of weariness is towards colleges and universities in general, which is a very broad brush. However, there are islands of excellence within this sea of mediocrity.

I am not sure that conservative leaning colleges do a better job, I see plenty of evidence that many liberal leaning universities also do exceptionally well. It's a spectrum and not a clear cut choice of one or the other. There are also guides on how conservatives can survive in a liberal university - going with the flow to tell professors what they want to hear in order to earn the grade. This is far more nuanced than the summary that colleges and universities have a negative effect.

Progressive activism in modern day US colleges and universities are far more about group-think than independent thought - just look at how they inverted the meaning of the phrase "safe space". When college and universities start limiting free speech to specific "zones", then you know progressive activism has gone too far down the path of fascism. I don't feel that this is the same as Tiananmen square or South Korea, which had legitimate grievances against an oppressive government. What are modern day progressives complaining about in the US? They want to be called the gender that they choose. Also, having first hand experience dealing with the leaders of Tiananmen square, I can tell you that those people fail to impress me - they are charismatic, but mostly operate within a framework that is similar to gangs, a circle jerk of personalities whose main talking points are about the glories of each other's deeds in the past. They are devoid of any real useful talent other than to charm the pants off of idealistic and impressionable youth who has not yet matured enough to have their own independent thought and are therefore all too easily swooned by exaggerated stories of conquest. [/quote]

I would argue this is largely generational. College was not a bastion of liberal activism when I went. I think the younger generation has been raised by activist parents and raised to think they are center of the universe this in dire need of safe spaces to hid from others with differing opinions.[/quote]

PP here. I would agree with you that the phenomenon is generational. I went to a mid tear state school in the 90s, and described myself as a liberal democrat when asked. I don't remember there being much in the way of progressive activism or liberal bias by my professors. I remember signing up for African American Womens Literature and how the subject was treated rather evenly - we read books, analyzed the author's experiences, and wrote essays to share our own thoughts. Some of the authors I thought made a very good argument, but some were weak, but I didn't have to check our privilege or hide my thoughts in fear of being called out as a racist/sexist/bigot/homophobe/xenophobe.

That said, I do blame the colleges and universities for failure to do their job of being adults in the education of students. They surrender reason, rationality, and even the rule of law in order to not be labeled as counter-revolutionary.
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