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It was exhilarating and, to be honest, overwhelming. I remember entering that interview room, facing a barrage of questions from all sides, and coming out ‘relatively’ unscathed. I fumbled more than I would have liked, was clueless about a question or two, but still tried to answer to the best of my ability.–––––Before I share my transcript, I think it makes much more sense to first give you a brief background about myself and this 3-year old journey.Work Experience: Prior to RBI, I worked as an Assistant Manager with The Smart Cube, a market research and data analytics firm based in Noida. I had joined it in 2016 through campus placement. Many of the clients that I worked with were global financial institutions - banks, PE firms, hedge funds, and pension funds. I am highlighting this since it played a pivotal role in my interview(s).RBI: 2019 was my third attempt at RBI and my first interview. On the previous two occasions (2017 and 2018), I had failed to clear Mains.Other Exams: Previously, I had also appeared for interviews for SBI (2017) and NABARD (2019) and scored pretty decent marks in both of them (30/30 in SBI and 22/25 in NABARD).Learnings: Although I did not end up at either SBI or NABARD, those interviews, in effect, provided me with sufficient exposure to devise a strategy and be adequately prepared for any unforeseen situations/questions. I realized that more often than not, the Board is not looking for the most knowledgeable candidate or the one with an ‘out of the world’ profile, but is rather looking for someone who will be a ‘good fit’ in the organization - be it RBI, NABARD or SBI.What comprises this ‘good fit’ is a question for another day, but if I were to bet, it is a combination of attitude, knowledge, and relevant prior work experience - in that order.Miscellaneous: I did not attend any mock interviews prior to my interview because frankly, I always felt that I was under-prepared and an adverse mock interview experience would severely dent my confidence. On top of that, I had not attended any mock interviews for either SBI or NABARD and still managed to secure decent marks - I did not want to change my strategy for RBI (or rather did not want to jinx it :P).This was a conscious decision that I made and I would advise aspirants, especially those who do not have any prior interview experience, to be wary of such an approach. To each his own.–––––The D-dayI reached RBI, New Delhi at 8 30AM. The office is at Sansad Marg, right beside the Parliament. ‘These are the real corridors of power’, I remember telling myself. The office itself is a magnificent building, inspired by colonial architecture. (See Shubham Goel’s answer for a glimpse of this elegant building).We were frisked thrice before being escorted to the waiting hall where the document verification took place. We were offered some light refreshments before the interviews began - even the tea-cups had the RBI logo :)I was 13th of the 14 candidates to be interviewed that day. 13 is usually considered to be an unlucky number, but being the second last candidate for the day meant that I was to be interviewed in the latter half of the day - something that had happened in both my SBI and NABARD interviews. While this may seem pretty trivial now, on that day and moment, this was a real positive indication from up above. (*Pascal’s Wager*)The interviews began at 10 AM sharp and one after the other, candidates went for their dates with destiny. At about 1 PM, the 12th candidate went in and I was asked to sit outside the interview room and wait for my turn. For those few minutes, I can assure you, time stops and every second feels like an hour. I could sense my heart racing at a breakneck speed. I tried to give myself a pep talk but it is always easier said than done! (Don’t even try that 70-minute monologue from Chak De India, IT DOESN’T WORK!)After an agonizing wait, the bell rang and the RBI coordinator signalled me to go inside. It was showtime.–––––The InterviewThere was a total of 6 members in the interview panel - Chairman (C) seated in the centre, 4 Male members (M1, M2, and M3 on my right; M4 on my left), and 1 Lady member (L on my left).*Wished everyone and was asked to sit*C - What is your year of birth, Rajit?Me - Sir, 1994.C - And when did you graduate?Me - Twenty Sixteen.C - Can you state the year again in full, please?*M3 grins*Me - Sir, it is two thousand sixteen. Apologies for the shorter version earlier.*To date, I don’t know what was wrong with the phrase ‘twenty sixteen’. It is, in my opinion, a fairly standard way of stating a year; at that point, this made me really nervous*C - Which stream did you graduate in?Me - Sir, I graduated in Civil Engineering from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh.C - And what are you doing currently?*This was the question I had spent nights preparing, rehearsing, and refining an answer for. Nail this, and you have a foot in the door*Me - Sir, I currently work as an Assistant Manager with The Smart Cube, which is a market research and data analytics firm headquartered in London. Our clients typically include Fortune 500 companies. I work with the firm’s strategy consulting vertical and my team specifically looks after clients from the financial services industry.We assist these financial institutions, which are typically global banks, hedge funds, and PE firms, in devising their go-to-market strategies. We also conduct market sizing and market entry studies and do competitor benchmarking and financial due diligence for them.*I paused for 5 odd seconds after this, expecting some follow-up questions. But the Board wanted to hear more and I continued*In one of the recent projects that my team did for a global top-10 bank, we helped the business banking department of this bank develop the KYC (Know Your Customer) process for its online loan portal. The portal is very similar to the one created by SIDBI called ‘PSB Loans in 59 minutes’. But this portal caters to businesses in Hong Kong and not India.*I was about to tell the step-by-step details of how we devised this KYC process but was cut short by the Chairman*C - Why is KYC important?Me - Sir, KYC helps in combating money laundering, terror financing, and financing for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).C - Who makes or recommends the policy standards for KYC?Me - Sir, Financial Action Task Force or FATF, which is an inter-governmental organization, headquartered in Paris.C - What are the processes involved in KYC?Me - Sir, in India, banks primarily focus on four processes - Customer Acceptance, Customer Identification, Risk Management, and Transaction Monitoring.*I wanted to describe each of these 4 processes in detail but was again cut short*C - What are the organizations involved in the entire KYC chain?Me - Sir, there are banks, primarily commercial banks, which report any suspicious transactions and cash transactions above a certain limit to Financial Intelligence Unit-India. It is the nodal agency under the Finance Ministry for detecting and monitoring suspicious transactions.*C was expecting more names*C - Any other organizations?Me - Sir, globally there is FATF, which makes international standards, and in the US, there is FinCEN, which has the same functions as FIU-Ind.C - No, I am asking about domestic bodies. Any other body or organization in India that has a key role?Me - Sorry sir. I can’t think of any other organization at this moment.C - Have you heard about the Economic Intelligence Council? Who heads it?*Would have not known this if not for Mrunal. True saviour*Me - Sir, Economic Intelligence Council is an apex organization under the Finance Ministry. It is headed by the Finance Minister.*C and M1 nodded*C - You talked about suspicious transactions and cash transactions that are monitored by the banks and reported. Any other types of transactions that banks monitor or should monitor?*Thought about for 5–8 seconds*Me - Sorry sir. I cannot think of any other type of transaction at this moment.*Researched extensively on this post my interview. I think he was referring to cross-border wire transfers that are also monitored and reported by banks*M1 - What is Liquidity Trap?Me - Sir, Liquidity Trap is a situation in an economy when the prevailing interest rates are so low that people prefer holding cash rather than investing it. It renders monetary policy ineffective as the central bank is unable to stimulate growth by following an easy money policy.*M1 seemed satisfied*M1 - You have mentioned that you like reading non-fiction. Why particularly non-fiction and why not fiction?Me - Sir, I tend to learn more about people, events, and history in general from reading non-fiction than from reading fiction. I find it much more fascinating to read about the problems people faced hundreds of years ago, the events that shaped history, and the impact it had on human lives at that time and even now. I find the perspectives and the insights to be invaluable. And the truth is always stranger than fiction.*C, M1, and M4 smiled. M3 made a peculiar face*M1 - Very well said, Rajit. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. What is the last book you read? I am assuming it to be a non-fiction book (with a smile).Me - Sir, the last book that I read was ‘Half Lion - How PV Narasimha Rao Changed India’ by Vinay Senapati (It was actually Vinay Sitapati :P).*Everybody, even M3, seemed to be interested somehow*M1 - What is it about?Me - Sir, the book sheds light on the contributions of PVN Rao and how these invaluable contributions have been largely forgotten. It traces his journey from his tenure as the Chief Minister of undivided Andhra, to the Union Home Minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government, to his untimely retirement from politics, and his return as the PM in 1991. Sir, it talks about the economic reforms that he ushered during his tenure despite leading a minority government. For these reforms, the author even goes on to compare him with Deng Xiaoping…*Was cut short here by M1*M1 - Have you read the autobiography of any economist lately?*Had read The Undercover Economist, but it wasn’t exactly an autobiography*Me - No, sir.*M1 was somewhat surprised*L - You talked about the reforms ushered by PVN Rao. Does India need certain economic reforms right now?Me - Ma’am, the economy is on the cusp of stagflation. To revive economic growth, the FM has listed out certain reforms recently as a part of an economic stimulus. RBI too, in its recent monetary policy meeting, rolled out several initiatives such as LTRO to…*Was cut short here*L - No, all that you are saying is fine. But what I am asking is - do we need economic reforms right now?*I really didn’t know what she was trying to ask. This was too broad a question to have a definite answer. I did not intend to criticize the government at any cost. But it did not make sense to me to list out reforms needed in a particular sector and leave out others*Me - Ma’am for the last year or so, only one of the four engines of our economy - government spending - is sustaining growth. The other three pillars, Private Consumption, Private Investment, and Exports have been performing below par. So, I think, any reform that helps in reviving these engines is welcome and needed.*I could sense that L was not fully satisfied with the answer. Perhaps, she was looking for something more specific. Thankfully, she did not probe me further on this*L - The Government and the RBI are doing all in their power to stimulate growth. Then why is the economy not reviving?*This was the type of question you could speak so much on in your head but when you are in the interview room, being bombarded by questions one after the other, nothing concrete seems to come to your mind*Me - Ma’am, in my opinion, as long as there is an absence of demand, the economy will be hard to revive, despite several measures by both the RBI and the government. You can put money in the hands of people but you cannot force them to spend it.*L nodded*M4 - Rajit, why is that certain countries that have an abundance of a particular natural resource usually tend to be under-developed?*The Dutch disease phenomenon - came across this term while reading Supriyo Panda’s blog. His blog and his YouTube channel are simply superb*Me - Sir, economists refer to this anomaly as the Dutch Disease or the Resource Curse. This is inherently due to the fact that a particular sector receives so much investment and priority, that it is often at the cost of other sectors. As a result, exports from other sectors are not globally competitive and they never tend to find their feet…*I wanted to say more but, I think, M4 sensed that I knew this - he was nodding throughout*M4 - You are working in the data science domain. Can you tell us the difference between Descriptive Statistics and Inferential Statistics?*Never in my life, I would have imagined that the Board would ask this question - just goes on to show how aware and knowledgeable they actually are*Me - Sir, Descriptive Statistics is basically the summarization of the actual data collected from either a sample or the entire population. Inferential Statistics, on the other hand, is used to make generalizations about the entire population from the data collected from a sample.*M4 seemed extremely satisfied*M2 - How would your professional experience be useful at RBI?*Why should we hire you?*Me - Sir, for the past 3.5 years of my professional career, I have worked with financial institutions of various kinds and sizes. I have worked with insurance companies such as XXXX, I worked with Reinsurance companies such as XXXX, and have worked with global banks such as XXXX. I even had the opportunity to work with PE firms and pension funds. Working with these institutions required me to gain an understanding of their business models and I think this understanding would be immensely valuable at RBI.Also, sir, the kinds of projects that I have exposure to - financial due diligence, financial benchmarking, market sizing, investment scouting and analysis, financial modeling - make me uniquely positioned for this job.”*C, M1, M2, and M3 nodded*M2 - Which department of RBI do you want to work for and why?Me - Sir, there are more than 30 departments at RBI and I went through the description and working of each of them in an attempt to understand which of the department stands to gain the most from my experience. Sir, I think the Strategic Research Unit, Corporate Strategy & Budget Department, and Financial Inclusion and Development Department stand to gain the most from my prior experience as I believe the work that I will do in these specific departments is very much similar to the work that I do currently.*Everybody seemed to be somewhat surprised from the choices*M2 – This is a very interesting list. Why Corporate Strategy & Budget Department?Me – Sir, I have done multiple projects for clients in which we assisted them in completely revamping their budget and annual spend using should-cost modelling, activity and zero-based budgeting. Sir, we have also helped them in launching strategic short, medium, and long-term initiatives aimed at cost-cutting and cost rationalization. I went through the description of this department on the website and also went through the Utkarsh 22 document that it had prepared - I believe the work that this department does is very similar.*M2 nodded and asked M3 to continue. M3 had been sort of indifferent throughout my interview. From the experiences of other candidates that I had gone through, I knew he was a tough nut to crack*M3 – You are a civil engineering graduate and are working in the data science domain. I find it odd that you did not mention two departments – Premises and DSIM in your preference list.Me - Sir, I read about these departments too and really liked the work that the Department of Statistics does. But since these two departments have their own recruitments and require certain prerequisites in terms of education and work experience, I did not think it would be worthy to mention them.M3 (with a smirk) – Yes, we do not hire generalists in these departments.(After a pause) What is the difference between price stability and currency stability?Me – Sir, price stability is when the prices of goods and services in an economy do not fluctuate rapidly in a given period of time. RBI has the mandate to keep inflation in the range of 2-6%. Sir, I am not sure what currency stability is.*I had a vague idea about exchange rate stability but did not want to guess. I was not sure if currency stability is another term for it*M3 – What is disintermediation?Me – Sir, banks act as an intermediator between borrowers and lenders. They accept funds from depositors and lend it to borrowers. This is financial intermediation. If we remove this intermediator from the system, that will be financial disintermediation and borrowers will be directly lending from lenders.M3 – Can you cite an example of financial disintermediation?*This was worth thinking and after 5 odd seconds, finally an answer came to my mind*Me – Sir, P2P lending.M3 – Thank you, that would be all.*To date, I do not know if this is a correct answer or not but at that time, M3 nodded in a manner that gave me confidence that this interview has gone relatively well. He neither asked any counter-questions nor did he ask me to elaborate or justify my answers, as I had expected.*The entire interview lasted 16-18 minutes. You’ll notice that most of the questions were either from DAF, general basic economics, my work-ex or my motivation to join RBI.After a wait of almost 8 months (thanks COVID-19!), the results were out and, by the blessings of Almighty, I made it. Also, the interview luck continued and I managed to score 45/50 in this one. 😊Blogs/Websites/Profiles mentioned –Mrunal » Competitive exams PreparationHome - Supriyo PandaShubham GoelMy RBI Notes:RBI

There is a Liberal bias in American Universities, and in some places, including many of the most prominent universities in the country, an extreme Left Wing bias. If you find this hard to believe, the first thing you need to accept is that college isn’t what it used to be 5 years ago.In a few cases, there is a fair explanation for why this could naturally happen. One is the nature of the conservative motivations for education from those on the left. For most conservatives, college is a time to gain skills necessary for employment. While most professors will admit that their conservative students perform just as well as their liberal counterparts and often better, many of the fields they enter into do not require more than a four year degree. Consider Business or Law Enforcement. With many liberals, the fields they are seeking are academic and require much more study. This, I have found, to be a perfectly logical and acceptable explanation for why more students of a liberal persuasion would pursue a life in academia and thereby shift the balance.My friend Ian McCullough, a liberal, also provides a few very good reasons in his answer for why such a liberal lean could naturally and with absolutely no malice or nefarious schemes to bias the system. There are others as well, but with credit to my friends on the left who acknowledge the liberal bias, this doesn’t go far enough to explain the real numbers being reported in the system, nor do they really acknowledge the gravity of the situation current college students are experiencing because of the extreme bias in the system.Samuel Abrams, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, did a study in 2014 measuring back over the last 25 years to measure the dispersion of left leaning professors to those of the right. What he found was staggering. In colleges, liberals have always been more embraced, at least since Abrams began his study. Beginning in the mid 90’s, however, conservatives and especially moderates have been replaced by more extreme liberal biases.Figure 1. Ideological Positions of Faculty in American Colleges and Universities: 1989 – 2014. Data courtesy of the Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, plotted by Sam Abrams.For certain parts of the country, this was far more pronounced. Abrams broke down the disparity geographically and saw that while liberals outnumbered their conservative counterparts throughout the nation in representation in institutions of higher learning, in places like the New England states, the disparity was as high as 28 to 1.28 to 1… Come on. There is simply no rational explanation for a 28 to 1 disparity that is innocent or lacking some major degree of intolerance to opposing points of view. Given that we are talking about the some of the world’s leading intellectual institutions, the level of intolerance that could have created a 28 to 1 disparity. Furthermore, given the outsized influence that these particular universities have over the educational system, it should bother people that they are so repressive towards differing points of view in their hiring practices.Another study Published in Econ Journal Watch, reviewed over 7,000 where they found that Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 12 to 1. Compare this to a 1968 study that put the Democrat-to-Republican contrast in history departments at 2.7 to 1. Furthermore, it broke it down by department, where economics was the most friendly to conservatives, at a ratio of only 4.5 liberal professors to every conservative. Another study resulted in only 7% to 11% of faculty members in social sciences and humanities are Republicans, according to surveys. At the extreme, the Econ Journal Watch found that History departments, where the leanings of your old High School teachers were long gone, had liberals outnumber conservatives by a 33 1/2-to-1 ratio. It was even shown within these departments that it was easier to find a Marxist than a Republican. Perhaps now it makes sense that mention of the Gulag Archipelago, Christian genocide in the Soviet Union, artificial famines in China under Mao, or why Communism killed over 100,000,000 people in the 20th century never seemed to make the syllabus, but man… those Americans with their economic imperialism and long history of oppression. Wow. Thank goodness for higher learning.This brings to mind the quote from one of the fathers of Conservative theory, something no one learns about in college, Edmund Burke.Honestly, how many people had no clue who originally said that, and honestly, how many people calling themselves educated have no clue who this man is? Chances are, you didn’t learn about him in college and if you know, you found it out on your own. That should be the first indicator that there is something wrong with this imbalance due to that bias.Some of the excuses being levied for this is that the college experience simply makes conservatives or moderates liberals, as if the institutional process civilizes them from their barbaric or neanderthal ways. Wow, is that arrogant. That certainly doesn’t explain the Burke thing, though. Others, that the filtering process for universities (their costly expense) filters out the poor and the uneducated, which is presumably where most conservatives hail from. Given how radically contradictory this is to the notion that conservatives are all rich and greedy, only interested in maintaining the status quo, I wonder how apologists can possibly rationalize the two competing views. A better (while still incorrect) explanation offered by the New York Times was that Conservatism has simply changed and that no one could bear it any longer, or at least, that it became intolerable to the academic environment.Again, this excuse fails a logical test. If such an evolution took place, then we would have seen some measurable change in the broader culture, but at the same time that the universities became stark and suddenly more left wing, the nation stayed exactly the same, as shown by this graph depicting the ideological positions of America.What the evidence shows is that while the United States has remained remarkably ideologically consistent, the universities have become extremely left/leaning, radically and disturbingly so in the New England states and particularly in the social sciences. So there really isn’t a good reason for 28 to 1. For that sort of dispearity to exist, much more powerful and far more far more complex reasons must exist for than the often levied and extraordinary condescending “because smart people are liberal,” and many of them, aren’t innocent or even accidental.Frankly, there was a few rational reasons for a left leaning influence in the universities, but that has compounded itself many times with those left leaning voices pulling more like themselves in and pushing out all the others on an institutional level. Specifically, the problem with the left wing, let’s call it what it is, radicalization of the universities is that draws from selection biases in the way professors are brought in to teach the “liberal” arts, humanities, and social sciences. Not all, but a fair enough proportion of the professors did not gain their credibility from their early academic fields, but through activism. Look, say whatever you like about activists and the need for them, but they don’t produce unbiased people willing to accept critical analysis that may invalidate the cause they’ve championed for years. Often, after whatever gains are made, they have few employment options beyond pursuing fields in politics or becoming professors of social sciences.A problem with people going into science fields who have an agenda? They don’t produce quality science. A scientist works toward discovery, with no real goal in mind other than to discover what is unknown. They aren’t there to prove a point. These activists turned professors, however, build careers around continuing their advocacy, whether intentionally or not. Rather than a simple quest for discovery and education, they are institutionally encouraged to be fixated on researching topics related to their personal connections to the issues. This has been called by one professor of Psychology, John Ruscio “me-search”. The problem here is that, rather than simply teaching what is needed to understand a fundamental course, or in discovering new relevant truths, courses become grounds for activists turned professors to continue their original work, often at the cost of the actual science in those fields.An example? Women’s studies. When you’ve built your work around decades of theory predicated on the narrative that women are institutionally repressed by society and source as proof for this evidence such as the “Wage Gap”, you really don’t want to deal with arguments that invalidate that data point central to your theory. However, when evidence turns up showing that simply taking the difference between the averages of all women and all men may not be a quality metric with which judge the entirety of American culture to be systemically sexist, we aren’t presented with that argument in the curriculum. Furthermore, saying that factors such as the number of women who choose to leave work to start families as compared to men across the society, the amount of time taken off by women, the fewer average hours worked by women, or the relative unwillingness of women to take on dangerous (and more often higher paying) jobs, or even simply the argument that men are more likely to ask for more money, aren’t taught either. Continuing on, when evidence such that the freer a society gets for women, as defined by the feminists themselves, such as we see in the nordic and other parts of Europe, we see more gender based delineation in the types of work that women choose to take on than those societies which are deemed less free for women, meaning that the freer women are to make their own choices, the more the supposed wage gap increases due to the jobs they choose. All this considered, it becomes clear that whatever wage gap that exists is due far more to the choices and freedoms these women have, than some systemic repression of a tyrannical patriarchy. In fact, when factoring for these choices, the wage gap narrows to almost nothing, and in fact, reverses in many liberal cities for young women without children. This argument really sucks if you’ve built a career proving the Patriarchy, so it’s little wonder that it isn’t thoroughly explored more by students of these professors.And it’s very difficult for professors to adapt to new information when they were not brought into the education via the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, but as activists who continue to believe they fighting for a cause. That’s why these arguments don’t appear in campuses open discussion. Instead, they are labeled “sexist” or that they are “creating a hostile environment for students” where they don’t feel “safe”, and any professor who does allows such discussion might find themselves in a punitive meeting with their school’s ethics and diversity officer.That isn’t hyperbolic, as a similar case to this example took place in Canada last month. At Wilfrid Laurier University, a teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd was branded as “transphobic” and scolded by her supervising professor, Nathan Rambukkana, during a meeting with the Ethics and Diversity Officer of Wilfrid Laurier following the supposed complaint from a student. Her crime? Showing a video of a debate taken from Canadian public television featuring one Canadian professor of Psychology, Dr. Jordan Peterson. Her true crime, however, wasn’t in showing the video, but failing to do so “critically”, making it known that she and the university don’t support his views. That is to say, her job was specifically to not be neutral, which was what she thought her job was supposed to be. During the reprimand, which her supervising professor communicated to her as a simple meeting, the university officials informed her that the video was “problematic” because Dr. Jordan Peterson was a “key member of the Alt-Right” and that he uses the website Patreon “made by the Alt-Right to fund hate speech”, and that by showing a video representing him neutrally she was “fostering an atmosphere of transphobia on the campus.” The reprimand even compared what she did to “neutrally playing a speech by Hitler.”I can say this. I’ve followed Dr. Peterson very closely over the last year, and watched a lot of his videos. I’ve also written extensively on the Alt-Right, specifically in creating a book aimed at educating readers on understanding and dismantling their movement. That he would be compared to the Alt-Right is patently absurd. Then to say that representing one of his videos is the same as “neutrally playing a speech by Hitler,” is the sort of accusation which should see heads roll during more rational times. As an additional note, I’ve also used patreon for four years and can say that they have intentionally banned violators such as this campus tribunal has indicated, with most of their creators being creators of music videos and comics. Hardly the pipeline to hate speech described by the “campus diversity officer”. What Peterson is rather famous for is his fight against Canada’s recent Bill C-16, which mandates compelled speech for professors according to the guidelines of extreme left wing narrative board of inquiry over Canada’s education system.What seems clear is that, like at many other campuses, (see Duke LaCrosse Team) judgement was cast down based on the complaint of a single individual who was offended and when that offense met with a far left Progressive narrative of the campus,was acted upon without any investigation other than what the professor had heard through a very biased grapevine, and used to create a repressive, even fearful atmosphere for people who did nothing wrong.What seems equally questionable is the creep of the Humanities into the hard Sciences. By this, I’m referring to Feminist Biology, which isn’t the biology of women, but a program at the University of Wisconsin where the field is viewed through the lens of feminism and the female perspective. To quote one professor, it exists because “in order to do science well, we can’t ignore the ideas and research of people who just so happen to not be male,” though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that men need to be censored from the field, given that women have far surpassed men at earning Biology degrees and saying that they aren’t respected in the field ignores how many of them are being given Nobel Prizes for their contributions. Historically, men dominate the sciences, but if any quality Biology program is teaching current Biology, then I don’t see how they would be guilty of teaching about only men. Given also that such a program would specifically filter out the “ideas and research of people who happen to be male”, are not these feminist biology student being denied the foundational work of the first scientists in the field that the world of later male or female scientists are built on? The logic of the class is what it is, but what is perhaps most troubling is that this program wasn’t governed by the Biology Department of Wisconsin University, but under the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. To say nothing else, I should think that hard scientists would find that concerning.This creep can be felt in other ways to students, where more and more of their bloated transcripts are being filled with courses outside their chosen fields to “gain a deeper appreciation in the Humanities”, which is itself becoming more radicalized. Perhaps a little emphasis in economics could have explained the consequences of their rising student loan debt due to these additional classes and given them an appreciation for how hard paying it off will be if you only ever paid attention in humanities courses.Moving on, conservatives also note the problems inherent in the system by way of how professors and graduate students are promoted and advance in their careers, by means of peer-review publications. The process of peer review is fraught with controversy from scientists questioning if the system is valid for the progress of scientific discovery and acceptability, from bias to outright censorship. It can range from committees made of department heads giving the ten ton hammer to articles and manuscripts they find objectionable on any number of issues to the simple process of a journal editor sending an article to a few friends to see if they like it, where two thumbs up mean it gets published and a rejection sends the piece to the Void of Lost and Forgotten Knowledge.There are many unhappy with the system of peer review, so does this process result in censorship for or a lack of advancement for conservatives specifically? According to numerous professors, yes it does.The following was submitted by a conservative professor, Matthew Woessner, whose main work argues against the notion of that conservative views are repressed in the colleges, but here, he must contend the peer-review process, coupled with the extreme diversity problem among educators, makes it difficult for conservatives to find opportunities for advancement.The more pernicious problem occurs when right-leaning scholars submit their work for blind review with prestigious publishers or in peer-reviewed journals. Even if we presume that most journal referees are sincerely trying to judge a work based on its scholarly merits rather than its social or political implications, a jury pool dominated by left-leaning scholars will almost certainly subject right-leaning papers to greater scrutiny, highlighting their methodological shortcomings and challenging their overall conclusions. If the academic universe were evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, the unconscious tendency to challenge dissenting viewpoints would hamper the publication of conservative and liberal work at roughly the same rate. However, with a vast majority of academics falling on the left side of the political spectrum, this is an issue that, in all probability, tends to hamper the publication of conservative-leaning ideas. Thus, professors whose political instincts are right of center must either focus on non-ideological scholarly questions or endure a special degree of scrutiny as they seek to secure publication of their ideas.Richard Vatz, professor of rhetoric and communication at Towson University was less forgiving.For many decades, there has been a stunning — and manifestly appalling — general prejudice against conservatives in higher education, evidenced by curtailments on their academic freedom and freedom of speech.It is difficult for conservatives to get hired, and once hired, it is difficult for them to get promotion and tenure — particularly in the humanities and social sciences, wherein liberal orthodoxy rules.This has resulted in fewer conservatives finding their way into academe as a profession, which liberals disingenuously claim is the result of universities having limited economic attraction for those on the right, not as a result of unfair practices.He continued in a follow-up to his original piece published in The Chronicle of Higher Education - Anti-Conservative Bias in Academe is Real.Furthermore, over the past five years, outright repression of conservative views has increased to the point of direct hostility against professors and students who harbor them. A book Passing on the Right documented the growing tension and fear many conservatives have in academia. It notes that belief in campus discrimination against conservatives is widespread: 81% of conservative professors say they feel it, and even 30% of liberal professors agree that conservatives face a hostile ideological workplace. The book also lists numerous accounts brought forward to show that this radicalizing process is getting worse and having expressed impacts on the careers of conservative professors and the orthodoxy being pushed to students. Among the examples given were a professor accused of training his students to be Nazis after defending the post-9/11 War on Terror where his door was covered with swastikas, a Jewish historian calling for political diversity on a panel on reparations being called a racist and a Nazi by his colleagues, the ostracism of one professor who accepted a job in the Bush administration by colleagues, and even pro-life sentiment at a Catholic college being viewed as “shocking” and “venomous.”Continuing on, the book details requests for academics seeking to do research on topics controversial or challenging to left -wing narratives, such as reverse discrimination against whites and/or men facing rejection for explicitly political reasons with reaction such as: “The findings could set Affirmative Action back 20 years if it came out that women were asked to interview more often for managerial positions than men with a stronger vitae.” If all this weren’t enough, the book also notes one study finding sociologists were willing to give preferential treatment in offering a job to a communist over a Republican.Altogether, this process seems to have the impact of further increasing the disparity between right and left on college campuses. Most importantly, in recent year, this disparity has manifest as outright intolerance of conservative views and students by extremists allowed to rise through the academic system unchallenged. Noteworthy examples include those gathered by Sankar Srinivasan whereby A professor called students ‘future dead cops.’, another writing reports that Having 'white nuclear family' promotes white supremacy, or when Drexel was forced to suspend a professor after hateful tweets following the Las Vegas shooting. His exact words were “All I want for Christmas is a White Genocide” and “It’s the white supremacist patriarchy, stupid.” An important note, Drexel didn’t suspend him as a form of disciplinary action but because “he was receiving threats,” and that “his and the student’s safety was their top priority.”I’ll make an opinion statement here, Drexel would make a clearer statement that their student’s safety mattered if they fired the professor calling for a majority of them to be murdered. Again, that’s just my opinion.Then, of course, we have the professor who let her class protest Trump instead of taking the final exam and the one who offered extra credit to students who protest against President Trump. No bias here, folks. More recently, there was the masked professor in California who attacked pro-Trump protests with a bike lock (Former professor suspected in Berkeley bike-lock attack enters plea in Oakland court). Wonder what his classes were like. And just this last month, a student newspaper which published the article 'Your [white] DNA is an abomination'.“When I think of all the white people I have ever encountered - whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, friend, police officers, et cetera - there is perhaps only a dozen I would consider ‘decent,’” student author Rudy Martinez writes in the University Star.Without much biological explanation, Martinez informs white readers, “You were not born white. You became white… You don’t give a damn.” Later in his rant, he calls the police “fascist foot soldiers” and says a “white supremacist inhabits the White House.”How a student at a major American university, in Texas no less, could come to such conclusions as rational and acceptable to print is the real heart of the matter.Liberals in higher education are so over represented, and conservative voices so marginalized in both hiring and promotion practices, that the theories, ideas, and norms of an ever more left-leaning academia are completely and totally unchecked by dissenting arguments. It is, in fact, reaching a tipping point to the where the very idea of criticism toward these theories and ideas is itself being outlawed on campuses. With the propagation of campus speech codes, to censur both student and professor curriculum, the encouragement of campus courts falsely accusing students of all manner of criminal and non-criminal acts that destroy their future prospects of a career, the acceptance of safe-space mentalities to free students from critical thought and ideas that challenge their orthodoxy, the dogmatic enforcement of political correctness in lectures by campus “ethics and diversity” officers, the banning of conservative lecturers paid for by student donation from entering the campus, and finally the outright tolerance of hate speech such as saying that all Republicans are Nazis and that white DNA is an abomination, liberal schools have lost the right to call themselves institutions of higher learning.They have for too long accepted processes which encourage an ever present left-word shift, to the point that there was no one left to be critical of their ever more apparent radicalization.In the best case scenario, the environment of college campuses is producing a generation of students who are completely unaware of views which contradict mainline Progressive ideology, making them weaker thinkers incapable of dealing with conflicting views, having never experienced their own views challenged in the institution specifically created to do so. This hurts liberal students far more, as the conservative students must grapple with being challenged with every lecture, and those who remain steadfast are empowered with the rationale for their beliefs honest critical analysis offers them, but which is denied to their liberal students. In the worst case, the colleges are evolving into toxic grounds for free thought and becoming a bedrock of poorly vetting theory which borders now on orthodoxy, one which is taken as fact without criticism, and is being used to prop up hateful movements under the guise of their own victimhood.All that to say, well done young lady.Thank you for reading. If you liked this answer, please upvote and follow The War Elephant. If you want to help me make more content like this, please visit my Patreon Support Page to learn how. All donations greatly appreciated!

In some ways, teaching was an obvious choice for me. I loved school and became a teacher’s helper right away. My first-grade teacher let me read books to my classmates during story time. I laughed out loud reading my favorite Frog and Toad books to my fellow six-year-olds. In junior high, I started tutoring; our school’s Latin requirement, a stumbling block for many, came easily to me. In college, I was able to escape the drudgery of restaurant jobs by teaching SAT prep classes to kids only a year or two younger than myself. I taught early and often, and enjoyed it. I thought I would make a career of it, and I did, but not in the way I anticipated.In college, my advisor, bless his heart, encouraged me to become a professor. In the early 1990s, it looked as though many professors would soon be retiring, creating plenty of openings for eager young intellectuals like myself. (Little did we know that universities would instead seize this opportunity to slash the number of tenured positions and farm the teaching out piecemeal to overworked, underpaid adjuncts.) As a language nut, I did not want to limit myself to just one, so I applied to graduate school in Comparative Literature. I got a full ride at an Ivy League school. I saw myself as a generalist and future professor.A major mistake. No one in my immediate circle had ever been to graduate school, so I had only my advisor to ask about it. It turns out I hated it. I loved language and literature, the process of making my own discoveries and sparking them in others; I did not want to rake through the cold coals of other people’s. I began to resent every piece of literary criticism I had to read. I hated all those academics, adding their own pathetic dribbles to the sea of research I had to slog through. I did not want to read or write research, I wanted to teach.But professors must publish or perish; teaching is usually a negligible part of the equation. I soured on the idea of writing a thesis, a requirement for the Ph.D. I got rave reviews as a teaching assistant, but couldn’t find a professor to sponsor my research. I quit for a while and taught in a private high school, then finally squeezed out a pitiful draft. I was granted what is condescendingly termed a “terminal master’s,” a consolation prize for those who complete all the requirements but don’t quite cross the finish line to earn a Ph.D.Now what? I couldn’t get a job as a professor in the newly competitive market. But I couldn’t teach in public school, either. They require state certification, which requires a degree in education, not in your subject matter. But I already knew how to teach, I had been doing it for years. Too bad; I wasn’t “qualified.”Thank goodness for private schools, which hire whom they please, and for the words “comparative literature” on my resume, which enabled me to market myself as both a French and English teacher. I got jobs teaching both. Around 2008, the administration at my current school started making noises about requiring everyone to be certified. I panicked. Should I go back to school and get a master’s in education? I took a class in “teaching methods” at a local university. The professor had not been in a high-school classroom for twenty years. Any time a question about modern teaching practice (collecting homework online, cell phone use, etc.) came up, he looked at me. I practically co-taught the class, and gave up on the idea of getting a master’s in education from people who knew less about it than I did.Then someone suggested I apply directly to the state Department of Education for an exception. Aha! I could be certified based on my knowledge and experience, rather than penalized for not jumping through the correct hoops in the correct sequence. I put together a portfolio, buttressed with letters of reference from colleagues and former students, and was granted permission to take the certification exams alongside the new graduates of actual education programs. I aced the tests and was granted two-year provisional status, which I this year converted to a five-year professional license.Finally, I had received formal recognition for my talents and experience. But I also lived through periods of panic and disappointment along the way. My main mistake was not understanding what graduate school meant: that it was practice for the world of publish or perish; and securing a thesis director was at least as important as securing a scholarship. I thought that if I was qualified to teach at a university, then I was even more qualified for the secondary level. Not so. It took a special plea to the Dept. of Education to get them to admit that a successful teacher of young adults mightbe able to transfer those skills to teaching teens. I’ve also learned that teaching is a vocation that, ironically, is very difficult to teach. It’s a skill we can recognize, encourage, and hone, but getting a master’s in education does not automatically give you that talent.