With colleges and universities reopening in a few short weeks, I want to remind fellow faculty that educating students is one of the most important tasks they are charged with performing. For faculty to provide a responsible college education today, we professors must help our students learn how to find and then embrace the truth even when that runs against biases, priors, and prejudices. Sadly, this task is easier said than done.
Finding truth in higher education is a challenge. As former American Association of University Professors President Cary Nelson noted, “Some academic disciplines are not devoted to the search for the truth. They don’t share that basic principle. They are largely devoted to the imposition of unified political belief.” Beyond academic departments no longer being committed to the truth and corrupted by a leftist and anti-Western ideological ethos, true liberal professors must work to break a real issue affecting so many students and their thinking: the availability heuristic.
The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that actually creates some trouble, for while it helps people make quick assessments, these judgments rely on information that’s most readily available to them, which often means that a person does not consider all relevant data when forming views and making judgments. This is a real problem in a hyper-partisan world because, as a lecturer at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Bryce Hoffman notes, people have a “tendency to give more credence to information that we are already aware of – particularly if that information is dramatic or emotionally charged.” The result is that our perception of reality is often skewed. Our thinking and decisions are “based on the information most readily available to us, rather than a balanced overview of all relevant data.”
Regrettably, this mental shortcut is poisoning students’ ability to develop strong critical thinking skills.
Students rely on immediate examples when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision, such as how to think about the Israel-Hamas War. When students are surrounded by vocal, like-minded people—a phenomenon we regularly see on many, though not all, college campuses—availability heuristic becomes a problem that leads to groupthink and a decline of viewpoint diversity, debate, and disagreement.
This helps explain why vocal, well-organized groups—such as leftist activists and anti-Israel protesters—can be so powerful and dangerous both on campus and via social media. Many students are not well-versed in issues related to the Middle East and its complex history and politics. These students have not and cannot form well-informed opinions. However, as they are regularly asked to share their views, they fall into the availability heuristic trap and turn on Israel, seeing it as an oppressive state in the region while ignoring the illiberal attitudes, cultures, and actions of its neighbors.
Our collegiate campuses have become centers of anti-Semitic hate and animus toward Israel; there is no shortage of students demanding an Israeli ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War. If ill-informed students are surrounded by activist peers, professors, and administrators who only agree with such views and share biased narratives, these hate-filled views are going to be what students accept and promote—not just in college but in the professional life they lead after graduating.
The reality, however, is that these repugnant views are not what most Americans believe and are not in line with the history of the region. Data from the July Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll is useful in illustrating this powerful bias.
Specifically, when Americans were asked if Israel should move forward with operations in Rafah to finish the war with Hamas, doing its best to avoid civilian casualties even though there will be casualties, or should it back off now and allow Hamas to continue running Gaza, the views that are seemingly omnipresent on campus are different among the American polity.
Among 2,196 registered voters, 72 percent believed that Israel should move forward with an operation in Rafah and only 28 percent advocated for backing off and allowing Hamas to continue to run Gaza (see page 178 of the survey). The data revealed that even most Democrats (65 percent) agreed that Israel should move forward, with 81 percent of Republicans feeling the same way. Similarly, on the question of a ceasefire and the release of all hostages along with Hamas being removed from power, the data show that 70 percent of American voters believe that a ceasefire should happen only after the release of all hostages and Hamas being removed from power with solid majorities of both Democrats and Republicans feeling the same way. There is no question that what students see on campus is not reality and is out of step with the nation’s views. However, their judgment is understandably clouded due to the availability heuristic and the limited ideas surrounding them.
This is where the role of professors becomes so critical.
The antidote to the availability heuristic is a robust education that presents real viewpoint diversity, responsible teaching of history, and an offering of tools to find the truth. Of course, this may be too much to expect of professors who see their roles as one to be used to advance potent leftist influence and anti-Western sentiment.
Going forward, trustees, donors, and students must demand more balance among classes and professors, and certainly, the new civics schools opening—Ohio State’s Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society—can collectively draw a line in the sand to combat power of the availability heuristic by making sure that there are more ideas present on campus and in front of our students. We should support these heterodox centers and professors as much as possible.
Photo of protests in and around Columbia University in support of Palestine and against Israeli occupation by SWinxy — Wikimedia Commons
Reality is that without implicit and often explicit support from both faculty and student affairs administrators, there wouldn’t *be* a Team Hamas, let alone any of the antics we saw this spring.
When spineless administrators finally acted and arrested these hooligans, it was the faculty who demanded that both the criminal and university sanctions be dropped, and as a result they usually were. The majority of students today are so goal oriented that they’d proudly proclaim that the earth was flat so as to avoid offending the faculty grading them.
For starters, I think it is very clear that the era of faculty self governance is over, and quite possibly the era of faculty tenure as well.
The students are sheep — it is the faculty and student affairs administrators who are responsible for this orgy of antisemitism, and it is THEY who should be held accountable for it.
You are correct, but let’s make sure the public knows which ‘faculty’ are most likely the parasitic and toxic employees; the social ‘sciences,’ education schools, social work, and many in the humanities.* And don’t forget the ‘interdisciplinary studies’ folks; the university doesn’t even know where to place them. All of the political activist-employees of the left should be fired.
And if there are far-right folks in charge, please let me know when you have proof of their existence and I will call for their termination as well.
No-Play Dr. Bray
*Not all faculty in these departments are parasites, but the productive ones are silenced by their intellectually-ungifted peers. In addition, there are anti-American Marxists sprinkled in other colleges on campus and you can see the ‘woe-is-me’ narratives of the left in their research.