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Do Colleges Breed Liberals?

© Frank Monaldo

"INot to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head." - French Premier Georges Clemenceau. [1]

CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERALS LONG TO unreasonably extrapolate from the supposed inundation of Liberals on American college campuses. Some Liberals attempt to draw the fragile inference that the infestation of Liberals on campus constitutes evidence of intellectual superiority, i.e., where supposedly the smartest reside, Liberalism reigns. The comparative isolation of Conservatives in engineering departments and the natural sciences is taken to mean that the closer one is to the human condition, the more likely one is to be a Liberal. An alternate, though just as unproven assertion, is that the more one is accustomed to rigorous thought and verifiable propositions, the less likely one is to be a Liberal.

By contrast, some Conservatives believe that the reason Liberals are thought to dominate colleges and universities is that there is a correlation between being Liberal and the length of exposure to Liberal indoctrination. As far back as 1959, William F. Buckley, Jr. argued "American higher education has mostly developed into an engine for the imposition of the prevailing orthodoxy."

The truth is a little more complicated as evidenced by a recent survey conducted by National Review, the magazine Buckley started. In 1995 the survey began by interviewing freshman at twelve universities ranging from conservative Liberty University, where 80% of incoming freshman identified themselves as Conservatives, to Brown University, where 54% of freshman identified themselves as Liberal and only 14% called themselves Conservatives. In 1998, National Review repeated the survey with seniors at the same colleges.

The truth is that most students gravitate to places where they feel comfortable. If politics is personally important, they will find campuses where they will not feel isolated or embarrassed. With a few exceptions the National Review survey showed that there was only a slight leftward drift in the opinions of students over four years.

It should be remembered that 1995 marked the ascendancy of the Republican Congress. Republicans had just swept into Congress after more than a generation out of power. The zeitgeist was Conservative and Republican. President Clinton?s victory in 1996 stopped and reversed the momentum. The slight leftward drift from the 1995 freshman to 1998 seniors may be as much a measure of the mood of the times as the effectiveness of Liberal pedagogy.

It should not be surprising that college students tend to be Liberal. Youth is a time of hubris and ambition. The Liberal mind is certain it knows what is best for others. There could be no more accurate description of a typical 19-year old. Conservatism will settle in when it comes time to get a houses mortgage or braces for the kids.