Of the common archetypes in conservative thought, one of the most prominent is the notion that liberal arts universities are bastions of liberalism. Josh Lipson’s recent piece in The Crimson takes issue with this trope and asserts that conservatives should not conflate Harvard’s liberalism with a much stronger leftist ideology that hardly exists at Harvard. He argues that most Harvard students are certainly liberal, but hardly the radical Marxists called to mind by “Kremlin on the Charles.” Given the state of campus activism today at Harvard, it is clear that the days of the tie-dye shirted, building-occupying radicals are over. In that regard, one could certainly say that Harvard’s campus ideology, while swinging leftward, is hardly that far from the mainstream of the United States.
Certainly, the issues that once may have driven the entire campus to occupy University Hall barely resonate with today’s Harvard students. When Harvard set in motion the plans that would lead to a re-recognition of ROTC on campus, the reaction from opposing students amounted to a very small protest and a few opinion pieces. While it might be argued that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell removed much of the opposition that might have existed, this sort of opposition itself must be contrasted to the explicitly anti-military tone of those students protesting ROTC at the height of the Vietnam War. Even Occupy Harvard, which may have been the closest thing to the raucous student protests of old, garnered more scorn from inconvenienced students than solidarity to take down the system.
Gone are the days of Harvard’s activism for left-wing causes.
After all, while most students might consider themselves liberals, a significant portion of the student body will enter the corporate workforce after graduation. It would be hard to believe that every Harvard graduate moving into the financial sector, for instance, is a hardcore Republican looking for flat taxes and as little regulation as possible. With such an overlap of self-described liberals and future white-collar workers, it is clear that Harvard students today don’t exactly await the collapse of the capitalist system with bated breath.
Does this mean that conservatives across the country should stop using Harvard as the perennial whipping boy for academia’s liberal excesses? Students may not be the wild-eyed radicals that once stormed buildings, but Harvard conservatives still have to tread carefully when it comes to certain liberal orthodoxies on campus. Social conservatives in particular remain the object of derision, despite the claim of tolerance for a wide variety of views. For instance, in the past, Harvard Right to Life’s posters have been vandalized or outright torn down. Opposition to abortion, while certainly a contentious topic, is not exactly a fringe view in the United States. However, those on Harvard’s campus who express their belief that life begins at conception have their views denigrated. Certainly the vandalism of a few cannot reflect upon Harvard students as a whole, but the gross lack of respect to a particular viewpoint demonstrates the lack of tolerance that still exists in regards to social issues.
Gun issues, while not as high-profile on Harvard’s campus, have received the same treatment as socially conservative positions from the Harvard liberal “mainstream.” During an IOP event with the National Rifle Association’s president, the moderator asked a packed Kennedy Forum whether any private citizen should be able to purchase firearms. Nearly half the audience raised their hands to express their opposition to private ownership of guns. Even if one accepts a very limited view of the Second Amendment as not being an individual right but a “militia right,” it is very striking that such a large number of people at Harvard would completely reject any private ownership of firearms. At the school which housed Minutemen during the siege of Boston and educated so many of the Revolution’s instigators, it is hard to believe now that so many would outright deny any legitimacy to firearm ownership.
The liberalism espoused at Harvard may not be the sort of radical leftism that many conservative pundits casually refer to, and of course the vast majority of Harvard students engage political discussion without resorting to extremism. However, it would be as fallacious to say that Harvard students are merely moderate Democrats as it would be to consider them proto-Communists. The political atmosphere at Harvard on particular issues, such as abortion and gun ownership, remains well outside the political mainstream. On its own, this may not make Harvard a Kremlin on the Charles, but the school has by no means transformed into a haven of Blue Dog Democrats.
Photo credit: National Museum of American History