I'm Not Even Hungry

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This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, by which I mean me posting again. Herewith, the final version of College Stupidheads. Hurrah!

At colleges across the country, this is the golden age of campus conservatism. Whether described by the painfully awkward nomenclature of “South Park Conservative” or the somehow worse “Hipublican,” conservative college students have significant voices in important debates at a wide swath of college campuses – but not, of course, at Columbia.

The conservative movement here is, simply put, a joke. And not a good joke, like the one about the Rabbi and the parrot; more like a bad joke about John Kerry’s flip-flopping that involves actual flip-flops. They have gimmicky “affirmative action” bake sales that generate far more rhetorical heat than light, while antagonizing everyone who isn’t Mr. Burns. Many students perceive the College Republicans as obsessed with Israel to the detriment of, well, everything that’s not Israel. The president of the Columbia College Conservative Club is an avowed fascist. The only way for conservatives to make themselves more marginal at Columbia would be to… I can’t actually think of a way conservatives could make themselves more marginal at Columbia.

Making fun of these poor souls may seem tantamount to laughing at that kid who ate worms in third grade, except for the prominence of conservatives at all those other schools. As an article in The New York Times recently pointed out, numerous polls demonstrate that overall student opinion on a variety of issues, including abortion, sex before marriage, taxation, and gun control, has shifted to the right in the past ten years, as students with sepia toned images of Reagan from their youth replaced those with jaded memories of the ineptitude of Ford and Carter. The terrorist attacks of September 11 pushed many students further to the right, or at least against radical anti-war groups. Although the ongoing collapse of the Bush administration’s project in Iraq may reverse this trend, for now the national political terrain still provides campus conservatives with a strong platform from which to make their case.

Various right-wing groups have also made special efforts to, in the proud tradition of McDonalds and Phillip-Morris, hook potential consumers while they’re young. Money from institutions like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute flows to conservative college organizations, creating the appearance of grassroots support among students. Some distribute handbooks with useful advice for conservative students about how to relate to the kids of today. This advice can often run perilously close to “Dressing like a douchebag with an ascot and affecting a British accent will make everyone hate you. Don’t make everyone hate you.” Seeking to capitalize on the stereotype of youthful rebelliousness, many have portrayed campuses as domains of liberal hegemony, making conservatism a logical alternative for students looking for a way to quixotically rebel against The (College) Man.

More than anything else, though, today’s college conservatives owe a debt to a book written more than 50 years ago. In God and Man at Yale, William F Buckley Jr adumbrated the basic framework college conservatives have used ever since to promote their cause. Buckley, then a recent Yale graduate, later went on to found the America’s foremost conservative journal of opinion, The National Review. In the process, he became one of, if not the, the most important journalists in America. But he first rose to fame by riding the coattails of his alma mater, if “riding the coattails” can be used to mean attack viciously in a best-selling book. God and Man At Yale, the aforementioned vicious attack, situated its critique firmly within the author’s broader conservative ideology, but focused primarily on Buckley’s college experience.

In his book, Buckley developed a radically conservative critique of the academy with an intellectual rigor and stylish (if pompous) flair that puts today’s college conservatives to head-hanging shame. He rested his book on an attack of academic freedom, a trope just as sacred to academics of Buckley’s day as to ours. In the face of this overwhelming opposition, Buckley claimed that academic freedom has “never been practiced, and in fact, can never and ought never to be practiced.” Whether universities admit it or not, Buckley charged, they create cultures that limit the bounds of acceptable discussion. While his individual criticisms – such as when he defines socialists as those who support welfare programs, the inheritance tax, the income tax, and deficit spending – have not worn particularly well, but his analysis of academic freedom’s limits has.

At Columbia, the boundaries created by our culture leave conservatives somewhere in Siberia. When Ann Coulter came to campus following the 2000 election, activists shouted at her while she tried to speak, forcing her to leave. Learning from this, Columbia’s conservative organizations have since tried to bring prominent speakers like Ken Starr to campus under a veil of secrecy, so that they can actually here what the speaker says. Even apathetic students often mock them with juvenile attacks, like comparing them to “that kid who ate worms in third grade.”

In the face of this opposition, the willful marginalization of conservatives makes sense. It takes a kind of craziness to continually oppose such an overwhelming consensus. But, others have demonstrated that kind of craziness before. The implicit message of Buckley’s book should remind today’s conservatives that even if they may never win an argument, by boldly and intelligently making their case on issues crucial to college students actual lives, they can win themselves a stall in the marketplace of ideas. For all its impracticability, if the noble ideals behind academic freedom – namely, the importance of free speech – have any value, even those of us who don’t support their cause should wish them luck.

posted by Tim @ 3:27 PM