The College Fix

Recently, the student editors of the Harvard Crimson called for more conservatism on campus, suggesting in a staff editorial that the Ivy League university should hire more right-of-center professors and offer more conversations that challenge the liberal orthodoxy on campus.

The student editors cited their recent poll which found only 1.5 percent of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences identify as conservative or very conservative, compared to 83.2 percent who identify as liberal or very liberal, then essentially called on campus leaders to hire more right-of-center professors.

But the student editors went on to say hiring such professors is not enough to solve the problem. They want to be challenged intellectually.

“Initiatives to promote campus conversations in which beliefs are questioned should be encouraged, as should giving students the resources they need to feel comfortable but not unchallenged in their identities. By doing so, we expand the diversity conversation to make as many students feel as welcome as we can,” they state.

The question is: why? Why would the editors essentially call for more conservatism on campus? It’s a conundrum, considering most leftwing students have zero tolerance for views not their own.

I recently went on Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News to discuss the students’ possible motives. Apparently O’Reilly’s people had asked the Crimson editors to come on, but they ran scared. So Bill and I were left to ponder what had gotten into these students. Here’s a couple possible explanations:

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1) They know that having little conservative or libertarian thought on campus is kind of like playing hockey with no goalie — what’s the fun in that?! The progressive “victory” on campus isn’t really winning when the other team isn’t allowed to show up.

2) These are HARVARD students, supposedly this nation’s best and brightest. They were the top of their class in high school. Clearly, they thrive on competition. They want to be challenged. On some level, they understand that living in a liberal echo chamber is condescendingly shallow.

3) Maybe they don’t mean it? Perhaps when push comes to shove, and conservative speakers are invited on campus, they’ll balk and take it all back.

4) Maybe on some level they are jealous of their conservative and libertarian peers, who a lot of times are having all the fun. Right-of-center students are the underdogs nowadays, they’re the ones who get to wear the counter-culture badge, and a lot of these students are living it up, inviting speakers who they know will launch their liberal peers into fits of apoplectic rage. The conservative students get to — rightly — call their leftist peers fascists for shutting down free speech and academic inquiry, and maybe leftist students are getting sick and tired of being the uptight campus Brownshirts.

5) The Trump effect: Like it or not, Trump won. Fifty percent of this country voted for Trump, and he is now president of the United States of America. But so many liberal elites still do not understand why. The two biggest newspapers in the world — The New York Times and The Washington Post — had egg all over their faces on Nov. 9, 2016 after Trump won and they did not see it coming, at all. These Harvard Crimson editors are the ones who will work at these newspapers after they graduate, and perhaps they realize to report on half of America, they need to understand it. Maybe they are tired of paying $65,000 a year to only hear one side?

These are just five ideas. You got one, too? Leave it in the comments section.

MORE: Harvard students condemn liberal echo chamber

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