Read on Twitter
@Isaac_Schorr has a new piece up at @NRO, in which he takes issue with our ( @SpencerPiston, @EGolberstein, @Sarahgollust, @DanielEis7) recent @PNASNews article on ideological change in college: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/12/16/2015514117
1/n https://twitter.com/isaac_schorr/status/1343568182074867714
1/n https://twitter.com/isaac_schorr/status/1343568182074867714
Schorr calls “indoctrination” a strawman, implying that we set up an easy target to take down in our study. But he also acknowledges that it’s a claim that conservatives frequently trot out.
2/
2/
I guess one can call campus ‘indoctrination’ a straw man, but the claim routinely appears in conservative media:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/college-indoctrination-leftism-rampant/
3/
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/college-indoctrination-leftism-rampant/
3/
We take the indoctrination claim seriously because it is a fixture of conservative commentary on higher education.
I think it’s fair to say we’re in agreement with Schorr on at least one key point: conservatives should stop making indoctrination claims. It doesn’t happen!
4/
I think it’s fair to say we’re in agreement with Schorr on at least one key point: conservatives should stop making indoctrination claims. It doesn’t happen!
4/
Now on to the more specific qualms with our study. As I understand it, Schorr’s argument is that we look for changes in the wrong place (freshman year) and among the wrong students (the full class).
5/
5/
Schorr argues that leftward movement occurs later in college and primarily among “the politically interested and ‘movers and shakers’ in campus politics.”
6/
6/
I take this to mean that Schorr thinks we would also not find evidence of indoctrination if we looked at the full body of students over the course of their entire college careers. Rather, he thinks this happens among a v. small (but esp important?) subset of college students.
7/
7/
The argument that “peer pressure” and “incentives for radicalization” among “the politically interested” are the key driver of “a leftward shift in students’ politics” is interesting. Schorr doesn’t provide any evidence for it, but it is a testable claim.
8/
8/
Moreover, it’s entirely outside the scope of our study, which is primarily about roommate influence on ideology.
9/
9/
In other words, these are strong claims. Do you ( @isaac_schorr) have evidence to support them? Or is this just your feeling about how actual “indoctrination” works?
Schorr also takes issue with our measurement of ideology:
11/
11/
To this I’ll just say that ideological self-identification is quite important. Our self-reported measure gets at how students understand their own ideology. For a recent review, see: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163600
12/
12/
The vast majority of people don’t hold ideologically consistent policy views (see Converse 1964, and most work on the topic since then). That said, measuring whether some policy views change over the course of college would be interesting—but that is a different question.
13/
13/
Schorr goes on:
14/
14/
But remember that most of the sample (~77%) doesn’t move, which seems to cut against Schorr’s claim here. Also, if true, shouldn’t this also have conservatives and moderates moving to the right? Why don’t we see that?
15/
15/
In sum: Our study finds no evidence of broad-based leftward movement during freshman year. Rather we find stability, and show that what movement does occur tends to be toward the center--and movement is at least partially caused by roommates.
16/
16/
Left-wing “indoctrination” is a fixture of conservative commentary on higher ed. I think we can all agree it shouldn’t be.
17/17
17/17
