America's future elites are more liberal, more "tolerant," and more supportive of disruptive action in response to offensive speech than the country that they will ultimately preside over.
What further methods would tease out or explain the elite tolerance of offensive speaker views and their acceptance for disrupting said offensive speakers? One could say it reflects an ideology that says speaker and audience should be heard. I’d love to know if they also think disrupting the disrupters is permissible or tolerable...and independent of your review of the data, I’d love FIRE to breakdown speech climate according to discipline and course (English) experience to compare with faculty ideology to begin to determine in which disciplines students experience intolerance the most and least
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I have a few reactions to the points you raised. First, I think the pattern of elite student thinking on political tolerance could very well be a somewhat perverted version of the idea that offensive speech should be met with "more speech" (although the notion of what constitutes "more speech" here has drifted into illiberal places). The most charitable interpretation is that elite students are adopting the broadest possible definition of the First Amendment and claiming that disruption is merely "speech by other means." Second, and relatedly, I think the FIRE questions would be greatly improved by adding a target to the disruptive action questions. Political tolerance questions in the abstract are fairly useless given that "tolerance" (by definition) implies disagreement with what is being expressed. I would like to see FIRE ask about "shout-downs," "blocks," and "violence" in response to a specific speaker (e.g. "How acceptable is it to use violence to prevent a speaker arguing that 'transgender people have a mental disorder?"). My guess is that we would have a much different (and more nuanced view) of support for disruption with measures like this. Finally, the FIRE data does allow some disaggregation by major (although each major is sufficiently tiny that they need to be lumped into broader categories). I'm adding an addendum to this post showing support for disruption by major in case you are interested.
So young people are significantly more Democrat/Liberal than older generations, young people who go to universities are significantly more Democrat/Liberal than overall young people, and young people who go to elite universities are significantly more Democrat/Liberal than overall young people who go to college? Is there bad news for liberals here? I just wonder what a liberal is supposed to dislike and want to change about these statistics? Sure, ideological differences between elites and masses are troubling, but liberals wouldn't want more conservative elites just for that. Also, it's important to note that these are self-described labels, and their meaning changes. People who describe themselves as liberal, moderate, and conservative in 2023 are all more liberal than people who described themselves as liberal, moderate, and conservative in 1990. My guess is that moderate essentially means a liberal of ten years ago, while conservative is a mixture, including of the liberal of thirty years ago.
Personally, I do think that elites, including cultural elites, should be more ideologically heterogeneous, in order to moderate things and avoid races to the bottom kind of situation, whereby you get liberals in charge of institutions like museums attacking the very art they are supposed to promote.
The problem is that liberals can't and don't even want to change that, and the last part is completely natural. You wouldn't expect conservatives to give up on social capital if they had it in abundance. Conservatives have to make themselves more appealing to elite human capital people, only they can do that. The problem is that as demonstrated by the anti-vaxx idiocy of conservative media, conservatives are trapped in their own race to the bottom of trying to appeal to the dumbest of their base, and in the process they are just cutting human capital out of their alliance. Not sure how to change that, perhaps if Republicans lose Texas in the electoral college, they will be forced to moderate in order to appeal to centrist voters, which may have the side effect of making the party more appealing to elite human capital.
Great analysis!
Very flattered to hear this from one of Substack's best data analysts! Thanks!
What further methods would tease out or explain the elite tolerance of offensive speaker views and their acceptance for disrupting said offensive speakers? One could say it reflects an ideology that says speaker and audience should be heard. I’d love to know if they also think disrupting the disrupters is permissible or tolerable...and independent of your review of the data, I’d love FIRE to breakdown speech climate according to discipline and course (English) experience to compare with faculty ideology to begin to determine in which disciplines students experience intolerance the most and least
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I have a few reactions to the points you raised. First, I think the pattern of elite student thinking on political tolerance could very well be a somewhat perverted version of the idea that offensive speech should be met with "more speech" (although the notion of what constitutes "more speech" here has drifted into illiberal places). The most charitable interpretation is that elite students are adopting the broadest possible definition of the First Amendment and claiming that disruption is merely "speech by other means." Second, and relatedly, I think the FIRE questions would be greatly improved by adding a target to the disruptive action questions. Political tolerance questions in the abstract are fairly useless given that "tolerance" (by definition) implies disagreement with what is being expressed. I would like to see FIRE ask about "shout-downs," "blocks," and "violence" in response to a specific speaker (e.g. "How acceptable is it to use violence to prevent a speaker arguing that 'transgender people have a mental disorder?"). My guess is that we would have a much different (and more nuanced view) of support for disruption with measures like this. Finally, the FIRE data does allow some disaggregation by major (although each major is sufficiently tiny that they need to be lumped into broader categories). I'm adding an addendum to this post showing support for disruption by major in case you are interested.
Thanks again!
So young people are significantly more Democrat/Liberal than older generations, young people who go to universities are significantly more Democrat/Liberal than overall young people, and young people who go to elite universities are significantly more Democrat/Liberal than overall young people who go to college? Is there bad news for liberals here? I just wonder what a liberal is supposed to dislike and want to change about these statistics? Sure, ideological differences between elites and masses are troubling, but liberals wouldn't want more conservative elites just for that. Also, it's important to note that these are self-described labels, and their meaning changes. People who describe themselves as liberal, moderate, and conservative in 2023 are all more liberal than people who described themselves as liberal, moderate, and conservative in 1990. My guess is that moderate essentially means a liberal of ten years ago, while conservative is a mixture, including of the liberal of thirty years ago.
Personally, I do think that elites, including cultural elites, should be more ideologically heterogeneous, in order to moderate things and avoid races to the bottom kind of situation, whereby you get liberals in charge of institutions like museums attacking the very art they are supposed to promote.
The problem is that liberals can't and don't even want to change that, and the last part is completely natural. You wouldn't expect conservatives to give up on social capital if they had it in abundance. Conservatives have to make themselves more appealing to elite human capital people, only they can do that. The problem is that as demonstrated by the anti-vaxx idiocy of conservative media, conservatives are trapped in their own race to the bottom of trying to appeal to the dumbest of their base, and in the process they are just cutting human capital out of their alliance. Not sure how to change that, perhaps if Republicans lose Texas in the electoral college, they will be forced to moderate in order to appeal to centrist voters, which may have the side effect of making the party more appealing to elite human capital.