Most Liberal College Protesters Extremely Wealthy and Privileged
And you thought the student protesters couldn't be more annoying?
4.7.2017
News
M.J. Randolph
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The Economist reviewed four years of data compiled by the "Foundation for Individual Rights in Education" about student attempts to disinvite speakers from coming to campus. They compared those numbers with the SAT scores and wealth of the students, "measured as the fraction of students with one-percenter parents." They found an interesting correlation:
Across the country, colleges with richer, high-achieving students are likelier to see protests calling for controversial speakers to be disinvited (see chart). Recent flare-ups at Middlebury College, which tried to prevent Charles Murray, a conservative writer, from speaking and left the professor interviewing him with a concussion, and at the University of California, Berkeley which had to cancel a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, an over-exposed provocateur, are but the tip of a larger pile.
For example:
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What they discovered is that "Even among selective universities, those with better-credentialed and wealthier students were likelier to mount protests. They were also likelier to mount successful attempts to block speakers." As The Economist points out, it could be that wealthier schools draw more well-known and potentially polarizing speakers. Regardless, the correlation still exists.
Wait, I thought liberals just hated those awful 1 percenters? Turns out, they are the 1%.
Most of today’s rich love
Barack Obama—so much so that
Washington D.C. area airports ran out of space to handle all of the private jets flying in the well-heeled for both of his inaugurals. Forget the “limousine liberals” of the 1960s and 1970s, sending their own kids to private schools while advocating forced busing for everyone else; behold today’s burgeoning class of “Gulfstream liberals,” who jet about the globe while fretting about global warming.
The next time you hear about a student protest, remind yourself that most of these kids come from wealthy, privileged backgrounds... which is perhaps why they don't know enough to appreciate the fact that they're even receiving an education.
Hey students, check your privilege.