Is the purpose of university really for like in-person twitter fights? I went to school at a fairly liberal university, and the only topic that came up was policing but that's because I opted into taking criminal justice courses.
But how many major's have abortion or immigration as a major topic, not zero, but I don't think I would how to pay $60,000 per year for my kid to express their opinion about abortion. I didn't care if I felt comfortable talking about my opinions on abortion in university, I cared that I learned something.
There's this weird conflict that's like - some people complain that universities spend too much time on social sciences, and then FIRE spends all their time worrying about whether or not people can share their perspectives on abortion. And I really have trouble believing the biggest problem on campus is that Milo Yiannopoulos might not be invited to lecture at Harvard.
Either elite institutions are supposed to have standards or anyone should have a voice, and it feels like people want to have it both ways, but like shouldn't we be most worried about whether or not folks are engaged in learning that can make them productive for the workspace, and not whether they got to express their "unique" positions on common social issues?
I don’t think there is a good single vector solution. The idea of solving it with an app definitely seems flawed.
This idea that everyone should feel comfortable saying and being whatever they want to be is relatively new, maybe to the internet age? I don't know when you went to school; maybe there was this unique time in the late 90's where transgression was cool (I do vaguely remember this era you talk about of people your generation having memories of "at least one loud debate with that one steadfastly pro-life classmate or the kids with weird experimental politics. But none of it was taken all that seriously beyond spur of the moment conversations. And afterwards everyone would still play video games with each other."
But it seems like such a short moment in time, and maybe one that required not having an internet where everyone just says all this shit all the time.
iamnothere•1mo ago
> Platforms like Sway—already in use on at least 77 campuses and backed in part by U.S. intelligence community funding—and Dialogues typically work by prompting students to enter their views on contested topics such as abortion, immigration, and policing, then matching them with peers who hold opposing positions for structured online exchanges. What was once a casual conversation becomes part of a permanent record. Beliefs are transformed into data — recorded, scored, and retained. Discretion is limited, and opting out often comes with its own costs. Over time, institutions accumulate detailed records of what students say, how confidently they say it, and how others judge them for it.
How on earth did we get here? This reads like dystopian sci-fi.
The idea of matching up students with different views for discussion is not at all bad, but the tracking is nightmarish. Universities should not be tracking the political views of students, period.
Edit: looking at Sway’s privacy policy, it sounds more private than the article implies. Dialogues seems to be less private than Sway. Have not verified beyond this.