Crashing the Conservative Party

I am looking forward to my 45th reunion in a few months and will enjoy seeing the remarkable changes in the student body, the beautiful campus, and hanging with my classmates and new friends I am bound to meet. I am a gay man who came out late in life. Princeton was a very closeted place when I attended almost 50 years ago. I thought that my memory might have been distorted by my personal conflicts with my sexual orientation at the time. However, after reading the oral histories of other students of my generation, I concluded that homophobia was endemic at Princeton in the mid-1970s. 

Professor George and his followers would have us return to that state of repression. His “natural law” is nothing more than homophobic bigotry dressed up as high-minded theology and abstract political theory. Second class status for LGBT individuals results from application of his theory to society at large. There is nothing more natural than gay men and women living authentically, falling in love, and having a full range of human experience, including long term commitment.  His cramped view of human sexuality, social order, and our political system would restrict the freedom of gay people to live in a manner consistent with their sexual orientation as an exercise of a civil right, granted and protected by our government on a pari passu basis with the rights granted to straight people. Call me closed minded and uncivil, but at this point in my life, I am intolerant of homophobic thinking and wish that Princeton stop glorifying Professor George.   

I was a steady contributor to Annual Giving and participated in a number of campaigns over the years. Around a decade ago, I corresponded with the development office and informed them that I will not make any further contributions until such time as Professor George is no longer affiliated with Princeton. Don’t bother sending the letter, save the postage.

I made a point of reading “Crashing the Conservative Party,” as I hoped it might have some insight into the plight of conservatives in a time when they are, nationally and internationally, in decline and retreat, beset on all sides, but especially on their right, where various authoritarian and reactionary strains of right-wing politics have largely purged them from, e.g. the Republican Party. I was greatly disappointed, then, to read an article that fails in its most basic task:  to define who and what a “conservative” is.

The author notes multiple forms of Princeton “conservatism” in passing, but gives only the barest of definitions, “ways the school tends to resist change.”  He then elides all left-wing movements into progressivism and/or liberalism (they aren’t the same thing, and are only a tiny part of the “left” spectrum), and seemingly defines everything on the right side of the coin as conservatism. This leads to ridiculous statements like Dobbs v. Jackson being a “high-water mark” for conservatives. (Destroying precedent and removing — for the first time in U.S. history — a Constitutionally protected right isn’t conservative; it’s radical and nihilist.)  Or to holding up someone (Matt Schmitz ’08) who supports Donald Trump — a man without a conservative bone in his body — as somehow being representative of conservatives? Undermining democracy and the rule of law, as Trump consistently does, is the utter opposite of conservatism. (And before you say, “But Trump’s a social conservative,” please, please, think about who you’re talking about.)

This division of the political spectrum into two sides of a coin makes it impossible to identify conservatives on campus; to wit, the main metric for judging student attitudes is The Daily Prince’s presidential election polls. Which candidate better represents conservative values in a contest between Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden and Donald Trump? (Hint:  It’s not Trump.)  Corporate/Liberal Democrats have much more at stake in conserving the status quo than MAGA Republicans who are busily burning “RINOs” at the stake and scheming to start a second Civil War. I submit that there are now, just as there were in my day, plenty of centrists of all stripes at Princeton, and that it, in fact, is probably a more welcoming home for conservative ideology than the modern day GQP. (And that there continues to be a dearth of “far left” perspectives, but that’s another story.)

I greatly appreciated the recent article on conservatism at Princeton. While I was accepted into many equally prestigious doctoral programs (including Harvard and Columbia), I chose to pursue my doctorate in political philosophy at Princeton primarily because of Robert George. I should note that I dislike labels like “liberal” and “conservative,” because my values and commitments do not line up with those of any mainstream political party — I am, for instance, strongly opposed to both abortion and capital punishment, because I am convinced of the profound and intrinsic value of every human life. Nonetheless, as someone whose views on many controversial issues would typically be labeled conservative, I knew that I would not find many like-minded people among my fellow graduate students or professors at Princeton. Having done my undergraduate degree at Harvard, I was used to this, and have always enjoyed robust dialogue with others whose perspective differs from my own. And I generally found faculty and students at Princeton to be respectful of me and my views. Indeed, I am greatly indebted to professors Melissa Lane and Anna Stilz for agreeing to be on my dissertation committee (along with Professor George) and for providing thoughtful and constructive critical feedback on my work, which was a defense of parental rights in education. Despite disagreeing with my perspective on the topic, they were supportive of the project, and their criticisms helped me strengthen my arguments. Nonetheless, it was also crucial for my education to interact with at least some like-minded faculty and students, and this was made possible largely by Professor George and the James Madison Program, which provided needed intellectual diversity to campus and ensured that “conservative”-leaning voices would not be absent from the campus environment.

The presence of conservative voices is crucial not only to support “conservative” students like myself, but for the academic integrity of the University as a whole. As Jonathan Haidt has pointed out in The Coddling of the America Mind and other works, one of the great dangers to the contemporary university is the lack of genuine ideological diversity. Given the human tendency toward confirmation bias, the absence of voices that challenge reigning orthodoxies is sure to lead to intellectual sloppiness and a decline in academic rigor, as shown recently when several academics wrote fake articles using popular jargon that played to editors’ and reviewers’ biases, and had their work accepted by supposedly serious peer-reviewed journals in fields like gender studies (https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/). Even those who completely disagree with the views of Professor George and the scholars he is able to bring to campus through the Madison Program should recognize that he is doing a great service to the University by ensuring that Princeton retains at least some degree of viewpoint diversity, and so helping to preserve it from mindless groupthink and intellectual corruption.

Editor’s note: The author is an associate professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

I was struck by two omissions in David Walter’s “Crashing the Conservative Party.” First, how does an article that spends so much time on Princeton conservatism in the ’80s fail to even mention the Concerned Alumni of Princeton and its mouthpiece, the convicted grifter (and, naturally, Trump-pardoned) Dinesh D’Souza? Sam Alito boasted of being a CAP member. Bill Bradley had the good sense to resign from the group. If Professor George now laughs at his early liberal colleagues, where did he stand on D’Souza when he arrived on campus in 1985?

Second, how does an article that spends so much time on Princeton conservatism today not even try to put any of its subjects on the record about the Trump con, election denial, or January 6 — or their inevitable imitators among Netanyahu’s new cabinet and Bolsonaro’s thugs? Look, it’s all fun and think tanks — speech, scotch, and seersucker — until someone storms the Capitol. Where are George, Hazony, Gold, and Anthony on those conservative “successes”? At least Matt Schmitz ’08 has the guts to tell us he’s still in the tank for insurrection. What about you, Professor George? Signed up with Ron DeSantis’ thought police yet?

That said, thank you, PAW, for the helpful history lessons. I had no idea that through the ’50s, according to Yoram Hazony, Princeton mostly served wealthy New Jersey families, as opposed to being the favorite Ivy of Virginians and Carolinians. And of course I am proud to learn that no Princeton student was ever publicly drunk or indecent before 1960!

As publisher of the Tory, Princeton’s journal for conservative thought, I’d like to thank David Walter ’11 for his thoughtful coverage of the state of conservatism on campus. I’m proud to study at a university where conservatives are allowed a prominent presence. Conservatism thrives at Princeton not only due to Professor Robert George’s efforts, but also thanks to the University’s adherence to the Chicago Principles, which fosters a greater degree of free expression than many other campuses in this country.

Conservative perspectives are by no means treated equally in the broader campus conversation. Still, Princeton remains a place where young conservatives can meet like-minded peers who challenge their ideas and inspire them to think more deeply. The Tory will continue to fight to keep it that way and ensure that thinkers of all stripes can engage with current events, debate, write, and evolve at Princeton.

I appreciate this article for several reasons, not the least of which is that it captures well part of what I experienced at Princeton as a graduate student from 2000-07. I had the good fortune of arriving on campus the same year that the James Madison Program debuted, and while I came primarily to study with Robert George, I also sat at the proverbial feet of a host of thinkers, formally and informally, liberal, conservative, and difficult-to-classify. The Madison Program brought in a different set of fellows each year, and still does, without hewing to a narrow ideologically conservative line. And yet that infusion of fresh blood onto campus each year led to scores of intellectual feasts as there were JMP events, co-sponsored events with the University Center for Human Values, partnerships with the politics department, and opportunities of all sorts for a deeper sort of genuine pluralism that is vanishingly rare on elite campuses. “We practice what they preach,” was a mantra of the JMP, and if one peruses the archives one will certainly find plenty of conservative speakers of various stripes, but also a significant number of progressives and outright leftists.

Of course there were disappointing moments. For me perhaps the most significant marker of one understanding of “conservative” is the rather stark difference between a 1941 telegram featured in Frist reprinting President Dodds’ message to President Roosevelt immediately following Pearl Harbor “pledging unqualifiedly” Princeton’s support to the war effort on the one hand and a (then) Woodrow Wilson School sponsored panel following 9/11 at which the theme seemed to be that what happened was our fault. And of course I encountered views I found strange, even at times offensive, both in and out of the classroom.

But that’s part of why I came to Princeton: to work with the brightest minds in the world thinking and reasoning and arguing (not quarreling!) about the things that matter most. That I could do so with like-minded figures like George, Deneen, and Whittington, who didn’t think I was irrational for my religious and moral convictions, was a blessing. That I could be challenged robustly while respectfully by professors like Stephen Macedo and George Kateb was a privilege. That’s what was so exciting about studying when I was there. I could be seated next to Peter Singer listening to him challenge a pro-choice Georgetown ethicist’s reservations about abortion-as-art one evening, witnessing a debate between Jeffrey Stout and John Finnis another afternoon, and sit with a very diverse group of graduate students shooting questions rapid-fire at Justice Scalia not long after Bush v. Gore. I fervently hope Princeton has not lost the confidence it once had to play host to these robust conversations. They are desperately needed by liberals and conservatives, those of religious conviction and those of none, and all creeds and colors.

With more than half a century having passed since I graduated from Princeton, I found this article to be an interesting read. For one, it is significant to see that some of the campus conservatives are women. Back in my day at Princeton, especially during my junior year, there was actually significant opposition to Princeton accepting women students, not only from alumni but also from certain (male, of course) students. What is encouraging is that today, I don’t hear of any conservative movement to return Princeton to the good old days of its being an all-male institution or students and faculty arguing that Princeton would be better today if it were still all male. It’s clearly better as a coeducational institution and that appears to widely be accepted, including amongst today’s conservatives.

Another major liberal-conservative battle line, when I was a student, was the Vietnam War. While I wouldn’t expect today’s students to refight the Vietnam War, there doesn’t seem to be any groundswell amongst conservative students and faculty to argue that the U.S. would be better off today had we “won” the Vietnam War and that the students in my day should have supported the U.S. in that war. The Vietnam War has been left to historians to explain its causes to today’s students, which is where it belongs.

It is difficult to imagine being a Princeton student today because so much has changed. Having spent 46 years married, in a monogamous relationship, to my wife, having been a regular church member for many years, and having worked for the bulk of my career in the private, for-profit sector, I suppose today I could be branded on campus as a conservative. Regardless, I think Princeton is better off today supporting LGBTQ students and maintaining affirmative action to assure a diverse student body. I’m proud to be a Princeton alumnus since the university remains one of the best in the world, if not the best, and is leading society in forging the nation’s, and the world’s, future.

Go Tiger!

I confess to finding this article a disappointment. It isn’t that I disliked the political views presented or the people featured. It is that I learned little of value. 

The article is structured around three tensions: 1. Has conservatism been wildly successful or is it dying? 2. The unity, then disunity between four conservatisms (political, aesthetic, academic, and elitist). 3. Brief profiles of seven archetypal conservative leaders at Princeton.

None of these devices helped me to understand conservativism, its prospects, or the people profiled. I would like to think that their thoughts and convictions run deeper than the tweet-like quotes and sartorial asides shared in this article. The four conservatisms did nothing to help me to understand the rifts within the most consequential today: political conservatism. 

To my eye, the author cheapened the conservative movement. He also missed some important points:

First, conservative activists are not alone in feeling maligned, labeled, and attacked. I attended Princeton with Sally Frank ’80. I can think of few people who were treated more maliciously and who were more alone in the world.  We might learn more from an article that considers the plight of any person or group that chooses to tilt at windmills.

Second, the author seemed unaware of a fundamental irony captured in this article: In one breath, many of those featured rail against indoctrination of students by those with other perspectives.  A sentence later, they lay out their own agenda for indoctrination, thinly disguised by terms like “shared values” and appeals to founding fathers.

For example, Yoram Hazony is quoted, “Enlightenment rationalism was the construction of men who had no real experience of family life.”  Wow.  Was the Catholic Church any more experienced in family life? Were the founding fathers experienced in womanhood, servitude, or poverty?

The author, too, shares quotes that are dismissive of pronouns and the experiences of women and racial minorities. He does nothing to critically examine these.  I (a trans woman) have sympathy with people who are bewildered by the recent explosion in pronouns.  But we are a long way from the 51,000 varieties of Christian denominations in the world. I find those confusing. Maybe the younger generation’s emphasis on pronouns is a sign of their rejection of all the traditional institutions (religious, economic, and political) that have vied to colonize our minds. That would be an interesting article.

I don’t mind that these people have different perspectives from my own. I simply feel that the author did little to help me to understand their convictions. Nor does he help me to understand where their movements are heading.

After reading this article three times, I finally put it down. I wandered to my bookshelf and pulled out my dog-eared copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I thumbed my way to a favorite quatrain: “Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument about it and about: but evermore came out by the same Door as in I went.” 

Indeed.

Thank you, David Walter ’11, for the in-depth analysis of conservative trends at Princeton. The most astute observation was from Tory founder Yoram Hazony ’86:
Princeton scoops ambitious young people up, “it cuts them off from their local roots, and then they don’t go back.”

Whether you are connected to “conservatism of the elite,” “Big Business, Big Finance,” or not, people from the small towns from which we came have started to view us not as that overachieving kid down the block but as part of the “globalist” elite.

Stripping the most high-performing students from all over America, combined with economic trends that have moved jobs to coastal cities while leaving exurban and rural areas stripped of manufacturing jobs and plagued with high poverty and an opioid epidemic, is a huge problem. Princeton needs to refocus its energy into ensuring its sons and daughters are committed to working in the nation’s service, not just in D.C., or New York, or L.A., but in the smaller communities that need them the most.

As a liberal living in a very Trump-friendly region (central Washington state), it is not always easy. But liberals and conservatives alike need to join together in tearing down this wall of perceived (and real) “elitism” that is dividing our country and destroying our future.

This article offered an interesting high-level view of conservatism at Princeton. Its finest feature is its presentation of Professor Robby George as Princeton’s last great hope for conservative students. Beyond his tremendous instruction, Professor George was a source of sanity for me during my tenure at Princeton, and I feel deeply grateful for his example. 

I think the current state of affairs at Princeton should worry alumni of all political persuasions because the campus climate is producing closed-mindedness and distrust amongst students. 

In my first semester, one of my teachers told me after class that my presence often made them uncomfortable because I was a white male and a representative of the U.S. military — a force this teacher considered destructive to global peace. I actually liked this teacher despite our clear differences, and I respected the opinion even while being hurt by it. But as I continued my studies, I realized this episode wasn’t what I thought it was — something of an awkward miscommunication. Instead, it was perfectly emblematic of campus ideology.

I wasn’t especially political when I came to Princeton, but I left as a principled conservative. At least some of my political evolution was due to the devout fanaticism of my progressive classmates. These classmates of mine didn’t challenge my deeply held beliefs with well-reasoned arguments and win me to their way of thinking. They simply attempted to bully me in one way or another, something I always found incredibly fascinating considering I’m a combat veteran and was, on average, about six years older than the members of my graduating class.

The author notes that the ideological battlefield at Princeton might be an effective breeding ground for future leaders of the political right. Perhaps that’s correct. I certainly believe that Princeton sharpened my conservative beliefs and forced me to defend them more strongly than I ever thought I’d have to. However, I also think the political philosophies of a substantial number of Princeton graduates — those who just want to be left alone — will be the result of fear and coercion if the current social order doesn’t change. Princeton alumni should be aware that the tribalism and intolerance we all lament as disastrous to our country’s social fabric are alive and well on our own campus.

Limiting the ability of others to express divergent opinions is not a threat to conservatism — it is a threat to the entire Socratic method upon which the liberal arts university model is based. One doesn’t have to be a MAGA redneck or a PETA tree-hugger or anything else to be horrified by America’s trend (from extremes on both sides) of trying to silence or eliminate one’s intellectual opponents. I recall Princeton as an eclectic mix of caffeine-stoned intellectuals espousing diverse (and occasionally batshit crazy) views on politics and everything else. I can think of nothing more depressing than the idea of Princeton one day rejecting anything except the “correct” way of thinking, whatever that may be.

Professor George is the poster child of conservative Catholicism. He champions faith and adherence to traditional values, but needs to remember that a person may be a good person if unaffiliated with a church. In the 1950s Father Hugh Halton, Catholic chaplain and a fiery Dominican prior, created quite a stir on campus when he demanded to be appointed to the faculty to offer balance to the atheist professor Walter Stace. The Daily Princetonian had a field day with the controversy, creating some issues for Catholic students. Good luck, Professor George, as you face students unaccustomed to doctrinal orthodoxy and a rigid moral code. You now have the pulpit Father Halton coveted.

David Walter ’11’s encomium/eulogy to the Princeton conservative skirts with, but never really addresses, the obvious. A political ideology that demands fealty to a man such as Donald Trump, a human firehose of lies, grift, hate, and venality, will find it hard to gain support at any institution that is founded on free inquiry and rational thought. This is as it should be.

Nothing supports the above more than the conservative students, alumni, and scholars quoted in the article. Judging from them, the intellectual core of conservatism appears now to be “anti-wokism,” whatever that actually means. One can argue whether the conservative project of the late 20th century was ever anything more than the intellectual Zamboni for segregationists; perhaps there were real desires for limited government and “traditional” values that were unrelated to undoing the civil rights movement. But it is hard to argue that modern conservatism stands for anything at all. Its failure to thrive at an institution of higher learning, particularly one of Princeton’s caliber, should come as no great surprise.

I read David Walter’s article on the state of conservatism at Princeton with great interest because I was deeply involved with conservative groups as an undergraduate. I was a writer, editor, and publisher of the Tory, the treasurer of the College Republicans, and a member of the Madison program and the Clio party. Although I was not involved with the Anscombe Society or Princeton Pro Life, I was friends with many people who were.

I was at Princeton from 2008 to 2012, so my experience was very different from that of today’s conservative students. Most political conversations I had centered around topics like the economy, the national debt, and foreign policy, rather than the types of very online culture-war themes that Walter describes. Unlike the students and alumni featured in the article, I generally found that liberal and progressive students were willing to engage with conservatives and libertarians in thoughtful, respectful conversations on those issues. This was a time of center-left dominance at the national level, with Barack Obama in the White House and Democrats in Congress using their comfortable margins to pass sweeping reform bills like the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank. Seemingly assured of a permanent majority in American politics, liberals and progressives may have been more inclined to treat conservatives and libertarians as a harmless relic of the past, rather than the existential threat that some now perceive us to be.

After graduating, I didn’t remain politically engaged. I went to work in an apolitical field, ended up in an area where conservative voices are marginalized, and felt politically homeless in Donald Trump’s Republican Party. I share the skepticism about Princeton’s direction expressed by conservative thinkers like Hazony and Schmitz, and I’m outraged by the excesses of cancel culture and sympathetic toward its victims, but I’m not gearing up to wage online battle with social justice warriors. In other words, I’ve dropped out of “movement conservatism” and settled into what you might call “normie conservatism.” I suspect many of my fellow Princeton conservatives have followed similar trajectories.

I am fed up with the abusive, intolerant attitude of woke people and institutions. Princeton seems to be permeated with woke intolerance and stupidity. The Katz episode is a perfect example of crossing the woke consensus as dangerous. The idea that ballet dancers should be told that “[b]allet is rooted in white supremacy and perfectionism” is appalling. Calling a conservative “transphobic, racist, fatphobic, and an enemy of queer people” is outright harassment and should be grounds for suspension, just as casting epithets at a minority should be punished.

My bottom line is that I am no longer willing to support intolerance. Over the years, I have contributed faithfully to Princeton, even when I was financially strapped. I will contribute no longer until tolerance is restored. I will attend my 50th reunion to celebrate the time when a relatively conservative student body tolerated every kind of idea and opinion. Students today are being cheated by being deprived of alternative points of view.

I’ve debated with myself whether I should venture to comment on Walter’s piece on conservatism at Princeton. After all, I am not an alumna, (educated at Harvard-Radcliffe and Columbia) and I am currently Professor Emeritus at Princeton in Classics and Comparative Literature (1976-2010 with sporadic teaching until 2019). But I cannot contain my consternation and dismay at how this piece airbrushed out the desperate peril this country is facing by lauding the smug, nostalgic, good old days when everyone voted Republican. When I read approval of Ted Cruz, Texan protégé of Robby George who voted against certifying the presidential vote, among other sordid stuff, and Samuel Alito and his unprofessional behavior on the Supreme Court (to say nothing of the current tattered reputation of the court itself); when the author seems to celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which the results of the 2022 elections showed how the attack on women’s bodies brought unexpected victories; and when I read that Matt Schmitz supports Trump’s 2024 re-bid for president, I wonder at the audacity of the ideological complaints about their alma mater.

Not getting into whataboutism (of which there are also extremes), please compare the recent fiasco in the House vs. Hakeem Jeffries’ alphabetical list of what really counts for the people of this country. “House Democrats,” he said, “will always put American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, economic opportunity over extremism, freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred, inclusion over isolation, justice over judicial overreach, knowledge over kangaroo courts, liberty over limitation, maturity over Mar-a-Lago, normalcy over negativity, opportunity over obstruction, people over politics, quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression, working families over the well-connected, xenial over xenophobia, ‘yes, we can’ over ‘you can do it,’ and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation.”

Very thought-provoking article. As a stated moderate independent, politically and probably in lifestyle, I am appalled by behavior on both sides of the aisle. While I abhor certain right-wing speakers, to prohibit them from speaking on campus based purely on the content of their views, and not their academic achievements or credentials, is totally against the tenets of our country and our university. The only possible way to try to break the current political and societal impasse is to encourage enlightened discussion of differing opinions.

Banning conservative thinking and speaking is revenge against all the past evils when there was blatant discrimination against liberals, minorities, and all subjugated peoples. But how can we progress when we are more interested in exacting revenge or wronging past atrocities without seeing a way forward? To coexist, we need to understand each other and learn more about each other. I have no confidence in our country’s ability to do this since the two major parties are catering so much to their base that there is no place for moderate thought. The best legislative victories in the past were when ideologically opposite people came together and each compromised something for the greater good.

We don’t need to agree with each other, but we have to hear and respect each other. Princeton would be wrong to ban a speaker that I personally loathe. Princeton is the standard to which all academic institutions should emulate, but we need to lead by example. Princeton has embraced diversity which continues to place Princeton as the preeminent undergraduate institution in the country. However, we cannot swing the pendulum so far to the left that we no longer have the very diversity necessary to grow as a university and then hopefully, drag the country to a more balanced place. “Princeton in the Nation’s Service” means conservatives as well as liberals. If we can achieve that, then we will have accomplished something sorely needed in these divisive times.

The fundamental mistake of Mr. Walter’s article on conservatism at Princeton is that it attempts to frame through a political lens what is essentially a cultural divide. One need not be a fan of the contemporary Republican party — and certainly not of Donald Trump — to dissent from America’s reigning ideology of “progressivism.” As a quintessential establishment institution, it is also no surprise that Princeton (and each newly admitted cohort of “first-years”) is nearly univocal in its adoption of the ideology. To put it bluntly, to dissent publicly from progressivism is to risk one’s chance at getting ahead in contemporary American life, particularly for the rising generation. Progressivism is championed by America’s universities, narrativized by its media, embraced by its HR departments, and increasingly enforced by the administrative apparatus in Washington. As Abigail Anthony attests, to question the advisability of “gender-affirming care,” racial quotas, and the University’s official sexual morality of consent and consent alone is to risk marginalization, intimidation, and worse. The current atmosphere at Princeton is as intolerable as it is unreasonable, and I applaud Professor George for fighting to create room for dissent from the odious ideologies that have come to dominate American life.

Thanks for the thought-provoking, informative article on the status of conservativism on campus. It’s hard to know whether things are “worse” for conservatives now than they were before.

I think a lot depends upon subjective personality type, aside from whether the place is objectively welcoming and hospitable to conservatives. How one personality responds to an environment can be very different from how another personality responds! In my case, I believe the Princeton environment made me even more conservative because I had a rebellious personality back then. I liked to challenge authority structures in my youth, especially the snobby hypocritical ones. Since the prevailing orthodoxy at Princeton was radical liberalism and since — except for Peter Singer — there was plenty of snobby, radical liberal hypocrisy around me, going “rogue” was a real pleasure, and it made me more conservative.

I arrived in 1996 from Texas, the daughter of very conservative Mexican immigrants. (Marxism in Mexico had made my family very politically conservative; and our beloved Catholic faith made us morally-conservative, especially in the sexual arena). I hoped Princeton would be just like Dead Poets Society, a place where great ideas from great books and great friendships would be forged, with plenty of opportunity for nighttime escapades into the woods to light fires and get into healthy mischief. I found all that and relished it among my Humanities Sequence pals and Cottage Club friends. The old, aesthetic, liberal arts type of conservative culture was indeed alive and well in corners of campus. However, what was nowhere to be found was sexual conservativism.

Challenging abortion, hook-up culture, pornography use, and same-sex sexual activity was respectfully permitted in seminars, but you felt like an oddball voicing those views. Still, they were permitted. I had frequent debates with preceptors and friends in class and dorm rooms. Here Robby George, Patrick Deneen, Michael Sugrue, and Princeton Tory friends were my lifelines, helping me to think clearly. However, all those friends who debated me in class and in hallways remained friends — none of us ever took those ideas so personally that we couldn’t have a laugh and a beer later. In the realm of personal relationships, however, navigating the radical sexual culture was another matter.

Dating around while not hooking up, forced me to “grow” and appreciate the conservative sexual ethic all the more. There was no Anscombe Society or institutional structure available then to find like-minded practitioners. You were on your own. Still, it was possible to be “known” as sexually conservative and still be part of mainstream culture. For example, in Cottage my junior or senior year (I don’t remember which) the social chair approached me one day because the board was concerned that young women that season were afraid to bicker Cottage due to rumors of “third floor bicker,” some “incident” that had happened the previous bicker season, and the idea that sexual favors were a sine qua non of getting into the club if you were a woman. He asked me if I could think of any way to curtail this concern. I suggested we organize a fireside chat, that we invite any young women interested in bickering to come talk to the current (female) members behind closed doors. No guys allowed. That night was a great success — like a mini MeToo movement — where I listened to fellow club members tell the younger women to “know where you draw the line and stick to it!” and “Don’t be ashamed to say ‘No!’, say it with confidence!” and “Don’t let the male members pressure you to have sex!” It was very eye-opening. I thought all my female friends were enjoying hook-up culture, but there was plenty of pent-up discontent. (By the way, I’ve been told those fireside chats are still happening, which is just awesome.)

Can a conservative young women today, especially one with traditional sexual morals, still find creative ways to be part of Princeton on her own terms? Can she participate as a conservative thinker in seminar conversations and friendly debates while forging deep friendships with peers who think very differently? Can she belong to an eating club and socialize as an “out of the closet” conservative? Or has Princeton become so hostile that that’s it’s not realistically possible anymore, not even for the rebellious, mischievous type?

The conservative movement as a GOP lobby is quite dangerous to American democracy. Insofar as the conservative movement is a GOP analog and a Federalist Society recruitment base, it is a menace to American freedoms as it embraces autocratic leadership, the spread of guns in America, the exclusion of LGBTQ people from opportunity, the embracing of nationalism for Christianity, opposition to abortion and women’s right to choose, and Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Green, Lauren Boebert, and Donald Trump.

The conservative movement at Princeton produced Ted Cruz ’92, Donald Rumsfeld ’54, and Samuel Alito ’72. These individuals are hardly a ringing endorsement of a Princeton education or of being a shining example of being in the nation’s or world service. The conservative justices on the Supreme Court are wreaking havoc based on a twisted idea of originalism. Whatever Alito learned at Princeton, hopefully it did not contribute to his lack of compassion and his devotion to legalism philosophies.

Until conservatism separates itself from Trump, the GOP, election denialism, and advocacy for the free flow of guns and the suppression of rights for women, and the support of higher education institutions like Hillsdale College and the new University of Austin, which are just indoctrination factories for GOP extremists, it has no place at any institution that considers itself a credible place for study and investigation.

On July 30, 1956, a conservative coalition replaced the U.S.’s original motto “E pluribus unum” with “In God we trust.” Since our British founders used, and still use, the phrase “Dei gratia” on their coins to inform the 99% that the existing social structure is the will of God and cannot be changed, I think it’s obvious what conservatives were doing. They were following their British forebears defining themselves as divinely better than the 99% below them. It shows.

To me, the goal of Princeton, or any other true university, should not be to espouse the most popular political flavor of the moment, whether liberal or conservative, but rather to encourage free and open dialogue and respect for all perspectives, including those with whom one disagrees. Rejecting opposing viewpoints without taking the time to understand and consider them is what has led to the polarization that plagues our country and much of the world.

Attending Princeton in the late 1960s, I experienced much political ferment on campus, particularly as a participant in ROTC, but at least as I recall it, the discussion was open and free, if heated on occasion. Four hundred protested President Lyndon Johnson when he came to open the Woodrow Wilson School in 1966, but he was made to feel welcome and was able to give his speech. SPIA is still here, but under a different name now of course.

What upsets me most is that the administration, by its actions, gives the appearance of having its thumb on the scale in favor of one political outlook and concurrently fails to strongly enough endorse open, but mutually respectful, dialogue among people with opposing views. I believe any speaker who does not advocate violence or promote hate speech should be equally welcome on campus, regardless of political persuasion or affiliation, and hope that in time the administration will see its way to endorsing, and enforcing, such a policy.

When I was a graduate student during the 1970s, the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) was a very active conservative organization opposed to coeducation. (Samuel Alito was a CAP member and included his membership in the organization on a job application to work in the Reagan administration in 1985.)

This article features the views of Abigail Anthony ’23: the president of the Princeton chapter of the Federalist Society, chief copy editor of The Princeton Tory, vice president emerita of the POCC, a founder of the Princeton chapter of the Network of Enlightened Women, and an undergraduate fellow of the James Madison Program.

It is nice that CAP was unsuccessful (it disbanded in 1986), thus making it possible for Anthony to be an active participant in these current on-campus political debates.

When I was an undergraduate in the ’60s, Princeton’s faculty was regarded as liberal or progressive while the student body was regarded as leaning conservative. Of course, in those days, there were liberal Republicans (Nelson Rockefeller of New York, for example) as well as conservative ones and conservative Democrats (Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, for instance) as well as liberal ones. Even though the required age to vote was 21, I volunteered for John Kennedy’s campaign in 1960. Nevertheless, I paid hardly any attention to partisan politics as an undergraduate. As far as I am aware, most of my classmates rarely shared partisan political views.

If conservatism really is “crashing” on campus today, my guess is the cause may be the utter collapse of the Republican Party’s conservative identity along with the near total absence of Democrats who espouse conservative policies. I worry less about the health of conservatism on Princeton’s campus than in Washington.

This self-aggrandizing treatise on the wild successes of the conservative movement in stripping rights and proliferating an unequal national status quo is emblematic of why conservative values are eroding from an institution that is still in a state of evolution. The changing political landscape so lamented by this article is something that should be celebrated as a generational shift towards shaking off the fetters of a practiced apathy to the plights of others and a centering in on a culture of tolerance and empathy. Instead of harkening back to days of dark spirits and cigar smoke, we ought to concern ourselves with rendering true the assertion that Princeton is in the service of humanity rather than a bastion of a rightfully declining elite.

I am very much not at home with conservatives for one important reason. I believe, with a British historian, Andrew Roberts, who wrote George III, The Last King Of America, that the revolution against Britain was evil. Some 25 or so complaints in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence about George III were lies and exaggerations. The revolutionaries were anti-British for their own selfish social and economic reasons, not because British rule was oppressive. I exempt only one military fighter from Europe from my condemnation, Kazimierz Pulaski, a hero who died fighting the Brits in the battle of Savannah where I live. Pulaski probably came to America because his parish priest at his baptism discovered he was, as we say today, intersex. He would have had more trouble than he needed in his Poland which was in political and moral debasement. He could fight and die in America for what seemed a good cause with his maladjustments revealed.