College Campuses:  The Last Frontier For The Right

By David Halperin, WireTap



Conservatives have been mobilizing college students for the last 30 years.



It's
accepted as a given among much of the media and public that American
campuses are lock-step liberal indoctrination centers, where lonely
conservative students struggle to express their views. Noting these
perceptions, journalist Howard Kurtz recently asked about our
organization's new effort to support progressive students, “Isn't that
a bit like pumping sand into the Mojave Desert?”



But the
reality on campus is very different from the popular perception – and
it is rapidly tilting rightward. Conservatives, now dominant in
government, seem to be aiming for control of remaining frontiers. Today
there is strong evidence of an intensified conservative effort to grab
the upper hand in the campus world.



Conservatives
already have spent 30 years intensively organizing on campuses and now
spend over $35 million annually pushing their agenda to students, with
support for student publications, visiting speaker programs, training
sessions, and mega-conferences. A recent newspaper story highlighted
the paid jobs, free dorms, and sumptuous food the conservative Heritage
Foundation lavishes on its summer interns. Conservative funders spend
tens of millions more for academic chairs and fellowships. Conservative
activists have led a persistent effort to eliminate affirmative action
programs that enhance campus diversity.



All of
these efforts have created a well-known new generation of younger
conservative leaders – the Ann Coulters and Sean
Hannitys who dominate the agenda.

.

Now conservatives are doing even more to deepen their influence over campuses. For example:



•
Right-wing activist David Horowitz moves across the country lobbying
state legislatures and university overseers for a so-called “Academic
Bill of Rights” aimed at having the government regulate the content of
professors' teaching – dictating what professors must teach and what
they cannot teach.



•
Conservative campus groups joined with conservative media and
politicians seeking to tar all liberal faculty members with a bizarre
statement by an obscure Colorado professor, Ward Churchill, and dragged
out that controversy for weeks.



• James
Piereson, long-time director of the conservative Olin Foundation,
announced that when the foundation finishes distributing its assets
this year, he plans to create new efforts to counter liberal influence
in academia. He told a reporter, “There are some people who are
prepared to spend large sums of money to address this problem.”