// essays //
Fall 2014
Columbia Needs Conservatives:
A Beleaguered Perspective from Within
Maxwell Schwartz
Fall 2014
Columbia Needs Conservatives:
A Beleaguered Perspective from Within
Maxwell Schwartz
Sitting in a Lerner Hall conference room with the lights dimmed to create an ironically sinister atmosphere in a self-antagonizing parody of the “Ivy League Republican,” the Executive Board of the Columbia College Republicans interviews fresh blood for its deputy program. Each interviewee is asked several questions, including: why do you want to be an active member of the organization? And each of the dozen respondents replies: this campus is too liberal.
This fact is well-known and long-established. It has caused Bill O’Reilly to refer to Columbia as the University of Havana–North, and many of my friends to express some surprise upon my announcement that I would be going here for university. Indeed, Columbia’s liberal reputation caused some of my like-minded peers in high school to reject Alma Mater on the Hudson Shore for some of her peers—which I would argue are similarly liberal, but perceptions (and 1968) do matter. And so, this answer of deputies-to-be is not interesting or original in itself. I probably answered the same way when I was a freshman being interviewed in an even more poorly lit, more ominous room on campus that betrayed the pervasiveness of that pernicious notion of an Ivy League Republican as the Devil incarnate. But these answers are indicative not just of Columbia’s proud tradition of liberal protest, affirmative action, and forward-thinking intellectualism. They respond to the culture of a university that is smug and even oppressive in its liberalism, one that loves liberalism for its own sake and whose members assume liberalism is a criterion for being a functional part of the community. And that is a problem.
It is a problem that makes itself known from day one at this university. The absurd liberal- to-conservative ratio among undergraduates yields an uncomfortable imbalance for every conservative trying to get settled into his or her new student orientation group, residential floor, etc. Every incoming conservative student should expect to be outnumbered in a political debate, and, while the ratio is a little unsettling, only a naïf would be caught by surprise. The problem is that too many discussions start from a point of excluding conservatives. That is, many assume a liberal point-of-view and thereby delegitimize a priori any conservative mindset, not out of malice but out of the assumption that any seemingly intelligent, intellectual, and sane person on this campus must espouse some variant of the wonderful liberal mindset that will save the world from the snobby, country-club Republicans and the brutish buffoons who vote for them.
Take, for example, a discussion that I had with several other first-year students back in the day. In what was nominally a fun way to meet people and learn about our new classmates, a bunch of us decided to let our conversation stray toward politics, namely toward liberals’ favorite straw man: George W. Bush. Rather than discussing the virtues and failures of the latest Bush administration, we discussed what irked us most about the much-maligned president. Now, how was a guy who did not find Bush’s presidency entirely awful supposed to handle that one? I simply took the opportunity to flip it around and drop a couple of jokes about Clinton and Obama instead of answering the prompt. Still, not every conservative decides to answer the question in this way—especially not every conservative who has just been on campus for one day and is still nervous about meeting new friends in an intimidatingly liberal atmosphere.
One could view this conversation that I had as an innocent attempt by presumptuous people to have fun—indeed, this is my take on it. But is it not peculiar that we all say not to talk politics on a first date, that I am not allowed (for the sake of maintaining decorum) to engage in a debate with a peer espousing socialism across the table at my friend’s dinner, but that everyone is socially permitted to go around bashing conservatives without even asking if there is some lone soul in the crowd who might have actually liked Bush? This innocent and fairly mild conversation is indicative of a broader culture of presumptiveness which yields intellectual exclusion and repression of ideas instead of the serious dialogue and the “safe space” that the modern university is supposed to provide. It is this culture of presumptiveness that allows liberal students to exclude their peers, leftist partiers to display an “anti-capitalist” guillotine at a party (as was the case at a Potluck House party earlier this semester, according to The Lion,) and left-wing professors to ridicule conservative points-of-view, conservative institutions, and conservatives themselves without any basis.
In a recent PBS special on Columbia University, President Bollinger went in front of the camera and touted Columbia’s progressiveness, its history of liberalism (vis-à-vis 1968), and its liberal projects. In this depiction, we see Columbia as part—if not the vanguard—of a large group of academic institutions that sees universities, and academia more broadly, as being fit only for “progressives.” This is a mindset shared by my friend’s professor who called Adam Smith an “apologist for injustice” and who suggested that conservatives (in this case: capitalists) were a disgrace to academics. It is one thing to criticize blatantly racist academics of yester-year, as one of my professors has done on multiple occasions, but it is another thing entirely to say that capitalism —yes, that system which has raised the living standard immensely around the globe and which dominates the modern world—has no place in academic discussion.
This drive toward liberal goals and disregard for reasonable yet non-progressive mindsets, this drive that many at this university evidently see as being inherent to academia itself, explains why the university touts racial and socio-economic diversity while completely marginalizing ideological diversity. The culture of this university—propagated actively by some but passively accepted by many—has yielded projects aimed at creating (well- deserved) safe spaces for historically marginalized groups but sees no importance in allowing a demographically significant group to feel comfortable on its campus. To the administration’s credit, the university has recognized the lack of non-white, non-male faculty and sought to rectify the apparent imbalance through the allocation of money for hiring new, more diverse faculty. But the university has not recognized that the professors and lecturers at this institution are overwhelmingly liberal, and that the quality of a diverse education and the intellectual rigor of scholarship do not depend merely on the color of one’s professors’ skin but also on one’s professors’ points-of-view.
So what we get is a faculty dominated by liberals, the majority of which are largely benign. Many teach their courses as objectively as possible for inherently biased individuals with sometimes-biased curricula. Many welcome the voices of the relatively few conservative students in class who wish to speak up when the socialists on the other side of the room are bashing Adam Smith in Contemporary Civilizations. Yet, many also do not see any problem in alienating conservatives through ad hominem ridicule. In one of my classes, a fellow Columbia undergrad stated that one of the things she really enjoys in life is listening to and laughing at the illogical, stupid bologna of conservative commentators on Fox News. This was met with a couple of chuckles from the other students and full-on approval and concurrence on the part of the instructor. In both “great texts” courses of the Core Curriculum, my professors noted prior to covering the various holy texts that we ought to be respectful of religious differences and that we should be careful not to marginalize anybody in the class by making unduly harsh statements. Even in discussing some politically touchy topics regarding economics, we were expected to keep vitriol to a minimum—though some people did better with this than others. And yet, ought everyone to be able to ridicule conservatives—not just conservative ideology— as they wish?
I do not expect that conservatives be classified as some protected class of individuals who need to be kept above the fray. I do not expect people to be compelled by political correctness to refrain from criticizing conservative thought or ideology. But just as I would not call a Marxist an immoral heathen to his face, so I would expect to not be called stupid to mine, especially not in the middle of class.
In another class that I attended this fall before finalizing my schedule, the professor noted how everyone ought to be happy to know that Book Culture has been unionized. Now, I, as a conservative, am certainly not offended that Book Culture was unionized. Nor was I personally offended that the professor just assumed that everyone in the room was liberal. I am comfortable enough to be a relatively outspoken conservative. But when some more timid conservative is subjected to such a priori exclusion, he or she is much less likely to contribute his or her conservative thoughts in future discussions, because the instructor marginalized conservative thought from the start. Perhaps that is what some people at Columbia want. But it seems to me that if the Trustees of the University hired a president whose name is synonymous with diversity via affirmative action, then it ought to value the diverse views of its students and not turn a blind eye to such polemical and quotidian marginalization of perfectly valid viewpoints.
The problem here is not just that this university is overwhelmingly liberal. This can be irritating, but ultimately it is a systemic, nation-wide issue. Academia, especially in the humanities, tends to attract more liberal individuals. Compound that with the location and historical reputation of Columbia, and you would expect that liberals would dominate Columbia’s faculty. For the moment, I am willing to assume, even if only for lack of any other knowledge or research, that the various hiring authorities at Columbia are not being intentionally discriminatory but rather that conservative academics are relatively few and far between—or that they just prefer to go work for the Heritage Foundation. And so I do not expect Bollinger to set aside funds to hire conservatives like he did for historically disadvantaged groups. Rather, the culture ought to change in a way that the statistically overwhelming liberalness of the university community does not continue to be overbearing, in a way that allows for conservative students on campus to feel free to engage in Columbia’s marketplace of ideas and ground progressive idealism to reality. That is, Columbia can continue to be liberal and even continue to shut itself into its progressive feedback loop if that is what its donors and affiliates want so desperately, but it should stop patting itself on the back for it. It is not inherently good that Columbia is a liberal boot camp. Columbia does not need to join in a race against every other institution to be the most liberal to receive Huffington Post accolades.
Liberalism should be an acceptable by-product of an academic field that constantly imposes critical theory onto the human existence and the status quo. It should not, however, be the goal of a university. In seeking liberalism, we betray Columbia’s motto and animating precept: “In Thy light, we shall see light.” Many people conflate knowledge and truth, this light to which we strive, with their own liberal “truths” toward which they try to thrust the world from their Ivy League ivory tower. But this is simply a naïve, self-serving attempt on their part to aggrandize their own beliefs, all too often by unjustly silencing and attempting to unfairly delegitimize their intellectual opposition.
To truly allow students to become enlightened, Columbia must realize that inclusive, honest, and strenuous intellectual dialogue—not self-propagated, liberal elitism—is the path toward intellectual fulfillment. Only then shall we see the light.
This fact is well-known and long-established. It has caused Bill O’Reilly to refer to Columbia as the University of Havana–North, and many of my friends to express some surprise upon my announcement that I would be going here for university. Indeed, Columbia’s liberal reputation caused some of my like-minded peers in high school to reject Alma Mater on the Hudson Shore for some of her peers—which I would argue are similarly liberal, but perceptions (and 1968) do matter. And so, this answer of deputies-to-be is not interesting or original in itself. I probably answered the same way when I was a freshman being interviewed in an even more poorly lit, more ominous room on campus that betrayed the pervasiveness of that pernicious notion of an Ivy League Republican as the Devil incarnate. But these answers are indicative not just of Columbia’s proud tradition of liberal protest, affirmative action, and forward-thinking intellectualism. They respond to the culture of a university that is smug and even oppressive in its liberalism, one that loves liberalism for its own sake and whose members assume liberalism is a criterion for being a functional part of the community. And that is a problem.
It is a problem that makes itself known from day one at this university. The absurd liberal- to-conservative ratio among undergraduates yields an uncomfortable imbalance for every conservative trying to get settled into his or her new student orientation group, residential floor, etc. Every incoming conservative student should expect to be outnumbered in a political debate, and, while the ratio is a little unsettling, only a naïf would be caught by surprise. The problem is that too many discussions start from a point of excluding conservatives. That is, many assume a liberal point-of-view and thereby delegitimize a priori any conservative mindset, not out of malice but out of the assumption that any seemingly intelligent, intellectual, and sane person on this campus must espouse some variant of the wonderful liberal mindset that will save the world from the snobby, country-club Republicans and the brutish buffoons who vote for them.
Take, for example, a discussion that I had with several other first-year students back in the day. In what was nominally a fun way to meet people and learn about our new classmates, a bunch of us decided to let our conversation stray toward politics, namely toward liberals’ favorite straw man: George W. Bush. Rather than discussing the virtues and failures of the latest Bush administration, we discussed what irked us most about the much-maligned president. Now, how was a guy who did not find Bush’s presidency entirely awful supposed to handle that one? I simply took the opportunity to flip it around and drop a couple of jokes about Clinton and Obama instead of answering the prompt. Still, not every conservative decides to answer the question in this way—especially not every conservative who has just been on campus for one day and is still nervous about meeting new friends in an intimidatingly liberal atmosphere.
One could view this conversation that I had as an innocent attempt by presumptuous people to have fun—indeed, this is my take on it. But is it not peculiar that we all say not to talk politics on a first date, that I am not allowed (for the sake of maintaining decorum) to engage in a debate with a peer espousing socialism across the table at my friend’s dinner, but that everyone is socially permitted to go around bashing conservatives without even asking if there is some lone soul in the crowd who might have actually liked Bush? This innocent and fairly mild conversation is indicative of a broader culture of presumptiveness which yields intellectual exclusion and repression of ideas instead of the serious dialogue and the “safe space” that the modern university is supposed to provide. It is this culture of presumptiveness that allows liberal students to exclude their peers, leftist partiers to display an “anti-capitalist” guillotine at a party (as was the case at a Potluck House party earlier this semester, according to The Lion,) and left-wing professors to ridicule conservative points-of-view, conservative institutions, and conservatives themselves without any basis.
In a recent PBS special on Columbia University, President Bollinger went in front of the camera and touted Columbia’s progressiveness, its history of liberalism (vis-à-vis 1968), and its liberal projects. In this depiction, we see Columbia as part—if not the vanguard—of a large group of academic institutions that sees universities, and academia more broadly, as being fit only for “progressives.” This is a mindset shared by my friend’s professor who called Adam Smith an “apologist for injustice” and who suggested that conservatives (in this case: capitalists) were a disgrace to academics. It is one thing to criticize blatantly racist academics of yester-year, as one of my professors has done on multiple occasions, but it is another thing entirely to say that capitalism —yes, that system which has raised the living standard immensely around the globe and which dominates the modern world—has no place in academic discussion.
This drive toward liberal goals and disregard for reasonable yet non-progressive mindsets, this drive that many at this university evidently see as being inherent to academia itself, explains why the university touts racial and socio-economic diversity while completely marginalizing ideological diversity. The culture of this university—propagated actively by some but passively accepted by many—has yielded projects aimed at creating (well- deserved) safe spaces for historically marginalized groups but sees no importance in allowing a demographically significant group to feel comfortable on its campus. To the administration’s credit, the university has recognized the lack of non-white, non-male faculty and sought to rectify the apparent imbalance through the allocation of money for hiring new, more diverse faculty. But the university has not recognized that the professors and lecturers at this institution are overwhelmingly liberal, and that the quality of a diverse education and the intellectual rigor of scholarship do not depend merely on the color of one’s professors’ skin but also on one’s professors’ points-of-view.
So what we get is a faculty dominated by liberals, the majority of which are largely benign. Many teach their courses as objectively as possible for inherently biased individuals with sometimes-biased curricula. Many welcome the voices of the relatively few conservative students in class who wish to speak up when the socialists on the other side of the room are bashing Adam Smith in Contemporary Civilizations. Yet, many also do not see any problem in alienating conservatives through ad hominem ridicule. In one of my classes, a fellow Columbia undergrad stated that one of the things she really enjoys in life is listening to and laughing at the illogical, stupid bologna of conservative commentators on Fox News. This was met with a couple of chuckles from the other students and full-on approval and concurrence on the part of the instructor. In both “great texts” courses of the Core Curriculum, my professors noted prior to covering the various holy texts that we ought to be respectful of religious differences and that we should be careful not to marginalize anybody in the class by making unduly harsh statements. Even in discussing some politically touchy topics regarding economics, we were expected to keep vitriol to a minimum—though some people did better with this than others. And yet, ought everyone to be able to ridicule conservatives—not just conservative ideology— as they wish?
I do not expect that conservatives be classified as some protected class of individuals who need to be kept above the fray. I do not expect people to be compelled by political correctness to refrain from criticizing conservative thought or ideology. But just as I would not call a Marxist an immoral heathen to his face, so I would expect to not be called stupid to mine, especially not in the middle of class.
In another class that I attended this fall before finalizing my schedule, the professor noted how everyone ought to be happy to know that Book Culture has been unionized. Now, I, as a conservative, am certainly not offended that Book Culture was unionized. Nor was I personally offended that the professor just assumed that everyone in the room was liberal. I am comfortable enough to be a relatively outspoken conservative. But when some more timid conservative is subjected to such a priori exclusion, he or she is much less likely to contribute his or her conservative thoughts in future discussions, because the instructor marginalized conservative thought from the start. Perhaps that is what some people at Columbia want. But it seems to me that if the Trustees of the University hired a president whose name is synonymous with diversity via affirmative action, then it ought to value the diverse views of its students and not turn a blind eye to such polemical and quotidian marginalization of perfectly valid viewpoints.
The problem here is not just that this university is overwhelmingly liberal. This can be irritating, but ultimately it is a systemic, nation-wide issue. Academia, especially in the humanities, tends to attract more liberal individuals. Compound that with the location and historical reputation of Columbia, and you would expect that liberals would dominate Columbia’s faculty. For the moment, I am willing to assume, even if only for lack of any other knowledge or research, that the various hiring authorities at Columbia are not being intentionally discriminatory but rather that conservative academics are relatively few and far between—or that they just prefer to go work for the Heritage Foundation. And so I do not expect Bollinger to set aside funds to hire conservatives like he did for historically disadvantaged groups. Rather, the culture ought to change in a way that the statistically overwhelming liberalness of the university community does not continue to be overbearing, in a way that allows for conservative students on campus to feel free to engage in Columbia’s marketplace of ideas and ground progressive idealism to reality. That is, Columbia can continue to be liberal and even continue to shut itself into its progressive feedback loop if that is what its donors and affiliates want so desperately, but it should stop patting itself on the back for it. It is not inherently good that Columbia is a liberal boot camp. Columbia does not need to join in a race against every other institution to be the most liberal to receive Huffington Post accolades.
Liberalism should be an acceptable by-product of an academic field that constantly imposes critical theory onto the human existence and the status quo. It should not, however, be the goal of a university. In seeking liberalism, we betray Columbia’s motto and animating precept: “In Thy light, we shall see light.” Many people conflate knowledge and truth, this light to which we strive, with their own liberal “truths” toward which they try to thrust the world from their Ivy League ivory tower. But this is simply a naïve, self-serving attempt on their part to aggrandize their own beliefs, all too often by unjustly silencing and attempting to unfairly delegitimize their intellectual opposition.
To truly allow students to become enlightened, Columbia must realize that inclusive, honest, and strenuous intellectual dialogue—not self-propagated, liberal elitism—is the path toward intellectual fulfillment. Only then shall we see the light.
// MAXWELL SCHWARTZ is a Junior in Columbia College. He can be reached at mes2235@columbia.edu. Photo courtesy of www.gop.com.