It’s a familiar story.
Young, privileged students rally around the hyper-liberal iconoclast’s calls for political revolution. In a year where self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders has captured historic levels of support among young people, surely Harvard—the “Kremlin on the Charles,” housed in“the People’s Republic of Cambridge”—is a hotbed of Sanders activism. The story will be particularly recognizable to avid readers of The New York Times or The Guardian, who have recently been offered a depiction of Harvard where “admitting that #ImWithHer is nearly tantamount to boasting ‘Make America Great Again.’”
The story’s familiar, but is it true? Interviews with leaders of Harvard’s undergraduate political organizations and analysis of Cambridge election returns paint a more nuanced picture. There are undoubtedly many Sanders supporters at Harvard, but the Cambridge campus is far from a Sanders monolith. In fact, the Vermont Senator actually seems to have garnered less consistent support here than he has among young people around the country, and Clinton supporters maintain a robust presence on campus. Harvard, after all, is not only a hotbed of college liberalism, but also a training ground for the establishment.
Jacob Carrel, former president of the Harvard College Democrats, estimates that Harvard students—unlike their young peers around the country—would actually hand Clinton a win in a head-to-head matchup. Results from Massachusetts’s March primary suggest Carrel is correct. Clinton won a majority of votes in the five precincts where almost all Harvard undergraduates live. In each of the two where undergraduates have historically made up the majority of registered Democrats, Clinton won 55 percent of the vote.
Leaders of some of the school’s political organizations also said they see their Democratic memberships as split between Clinton and Sanders. Susan Wang, current president of the Harvard College Democrats, said members of the organization and its executive board are about evenly split. Asked about students quoted in The Guardian article saying they felt overwhelmed by Sanders advocates, Wang said: “I would encourage them to check out the Dems; we like to talk politics and have a lot of Clinton supporters.”
Raya Koreh, who chairs the Harvard Political Union, also sees a large contingent of support for Clinton among her peers, something she said is consistent with parts of Harvard’s campus culture. “In choosing Harvard as a place to study, people are more likely to value institutional structures,” said Koreh, a Sanders supporter herself. “[Some Harvard students] clearly see the benefits of working within an establishment and see how they personally can thrive in that establishment.”
Sally Marsh, a student leader at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a Clinton supporter, also said that Sanders’ outsider message has not resonated as well with some of the Harvard students she knows. “I think kids at Harvard are less likely to be turned off by the elitism claim against [Clinton],” Marsh said. “My friends are excited about the fact that she’s a political insider.”
What about the claim that Sanders supporters are dominating campus dialogue, that Clinton supporters feel pressured against speaking up? “Daring to Back Clinton,” a New York Times story on Clinton supporters at Columbia, said that being a young American and supporting Clinton represents “a lonely and alienating relationship that will leave you vulnerable to accusations that you fail to appreciate the genuine, the authentic.” The Guardian story’s headline:“I’ve been silent.”
Sam Koppelman, a Harvard sophomore and the author of The New York Times letter, was quoted in The Guardian story saying he was concerned vocally supporting Clinton would “cast [him] as an outsider … as someone who’s more conservative” on campus. He said he thought The Guardian article had overstated the problem—“the victimization thing is absurd,” he said—but worries that Sanders supporters dominate “the marketplace of ideas at Harvard.” In his experience, he said, Clinton support is commonly qualified—she’s the best choice “given the circumstances” or “in spite of her past.” And he said he worried that her campaign had “been stripped of legitimacy on issues that are core to the Sanders campaign.”
None of the six other Clinton supporters interviewed for this story said they had ever hesitated to share their views with friends or classmates, and two laughed audibly at the suggestion that they would. Sarah Graham, a junior, said her experiences with Sanders supporters have always been courteous and friendly. “[Supporting Clinton] is the same as supporting any other candidate,” she said. “I’ve never had a negative experience with a Bernie Sanders supporter. It’s college; most people have political opinions and are happy to discuss them.”
Some Sanders supporters also said they had been impressed by how civil and friendly the conversation has been. Reed Shafer-Ray, a Sanders supporter on the board of the Harvard College Democrats, recalled that after a long day of campaigning for their respective candidates in New Hampshire before its primary, the two groups came back to Harvard to party together at a jointly hosted event.
“It’s never been a really angry conversation,” said senior Jordan Weiers, a Sanders supporter who says he guesses his friends are about evenly divided in the primary. “It’s not vicious or anything like [The Guardian] article made it seem.”
Note: As seniors who have been involved in political life at Harvard as students, we personally know almost everyone cited in this story and consider many of them to be friends.