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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| For 25 years, conservative papers have stirred campus debate |
| 2006-04-21 |
| From the Wall Street Journal, behind the subscription wall. In the summer of 1980, a clutch of students at a small college in New Hampshire, disaffected by campus liberalism and incensed by the unfair treatment of an insurgent candidate for the board of trustees, founded a conservative newspaper. That might have been the end of it, but the Dartmouth Review promptly scandalized the campus with its heterodox opinions and brash style, and hostilities escalated. In the years since, the Dartmouth administration has gone to great measures to stop the presses, including frivolous lawsuits against the paper and kangaroo suspensions of its editors. Mission hardly accomplished: As the Review tonight celebrates its 25th anniversary with a black-tie gala in Manhattan, we'd like to raise a glass to conservative student papers across the country. What was once a lonely voice challenging campus orthodoxy is now a boisterous chorus. By 1984 the University of Chicago Counterpoint, the Harvard Salient, the Princeton Tory and the Virginia Advocate had joined the fight. As more and more such publications cropped up, they were brought under the patronage of the Institute for Educational Affairs (IEA), which was funded, in part, by the John M. Olin Foundation. According to James Piereson, Olin's former director, the goal was to invest in "conservative knowledge production." And it wasn't a passive form of knowledge. Articles from the 1980s and '90s--in conservative student papers around the country--focused on the decline of academic standards, the excesses of militant feminism, the hypocrisy of racial preferences and the reign of political correctness. Their audience included alumni. In 1994, Yale alumnus Lee Bass learned from the campus conservative journal Light and Truth that his $20 million donation to the school, aimed at establishing a program in Western civilization, was not being used for its intended purpose. The university, it turned out, had refused to launch the program because of faculty hostility. In the ensuing controversy, Yale was forced to return the gift--with interest. Such victories have not come easily. In addition to being denounced as "fascist" by administrators and faculty members, conservative papers have been subject to theft and vandalism by students. In 1997, a mob stole a press run of the Cornell Review and burned it in front of an audience that included several administrators, including the dean of students. The school did nothing and later defended the protesters' "freedom of expression." Today the Collegiate Network, the successor to the IEA, supports about 95 right-leaning campus papers. Their writers and editors help to promulgate and legitimate conservative ideas that are rarely encountered in the lecture hall. Their iconoclastic tone appeals to students who are open to new ideas but skeptical of settled "truths." The papers are even contributing to a gradual shift in the culture of universities. Conservative student journalists have helped to overturn speech codes at Stanford, George Mason and the University of Wisconsin. As civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate notes: "It is now difficult or virtually impossible for a college administration to justify or rationalize censorship when it is brought to the attention of the free world." Which won't stop college officials from trying. But the American campus is no longer a liberal mausoleum. A lively debate has started, and we have intrepid young journalists to thank. For those of you considering where to send your tender young offspring, here is the list of colleges and universities that have a Collegiate Network-sponsored alternative newpaper. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #2 Hope it lasts, as the RINO agenda-less Dems, aka the future People's Revol Central Committee of the Commie Party of the USA [CPUS], are laying credit for alleged, "true/real" [deficit/fiscal] American = Amerikan, SSSSSHHHHHH SOCIALIST, CONSERVATISM!? Anti-Empire=Empire, Anti-Socialism =Socialism, COnservatism = Anarchism-Radicalism-Alternatism, Federalism = Centralism, Commies = Fascists/Nazis, Cops/Judges/Law = Mob/Mafias, ...........@etal. you know. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-04-21 23:31 |
| #1 Heh, at FSU an independent (capitalist) crushed the Student Government approved and subsidized number. Forced it into bankruptcy and bought the brand. Sometimes things work out okay. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-04-21 18:00 |