An update: Seventy open-minded liberals in an introductory economics course at Harvard taught by Greg Mankiw staged a massive walkout this week because the professor, they said, espouses a “view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today.” After leaving the class, the students reportedly went off to join the “Occupy Boston” protests.
Unfortunately, many students at our elite universities are so used to living in a bubble of near-unanimous liberal groupthink that they are genuinely shocked to hear a differing opinion. It is very easy to complete a degree in politics or economics at these universities without ever being taught by so much as a single conservative professor.
Imagine the self-consciously drummed-up sense of self importance, the sanctimonious moral superiority of these students as they strode out of the classroom — turning their backs on a rare dissenting voice in a bastion of liberal homogeneity, and doing it all in the name of some supposed desire for “critical discussion” of the issues. Bah!