Conservatives Aren’t Hiding. The Crimson Isn’t Looking.

Contributed by Alexander D. Hughes

The first Conservative and Republican Student Conference at Harvard.

When I read the Crimson editorial board’s opinion piece entitled “Harvard’s Conservatives Have to Stop Hiding,” I was left with one question: why, exactly, do they so badly want to talk to people who are “dull” and “ideologically extreme”?

The article repeats a now-common refrain. For years, the Crimson’s message to conservatives has been the same: ‘We’re glad that there are conservative voices on campus (no, really, we promise). But could you please stop using pseudonyms (or stop getting “jobs in politics and law,” or stop maintaining “ideologically homogeneous” organizations)? It makes it so much harder for us to hold you accountable for your bad ideas.’

It’s flattering that the Crimson is so interested in our small but merry band. As someone deeply embedded in the conservative ecosystem here at Harvard—I have been the president of the Harvard Republican Club, the editor-in-chief of the Salient, and a member of several other groups—the fact that they object so strenuously to our supposed anonymity makes me think that we must be doing something right. I speak for myself and not in an institutional capacity, but my experience makes me about as well-equipped as anyone to point out some of the errors in the Crimson’s presentation of conservative life on campus.

The piece begins with an unwarranted swipe at the Harvard Republican Club and the Conservative Coalition. It’s not clear why the editorial board thinks that these groups are somehow disconnected from the “conservative intellectual revival” on campus, except insofar as they challenge the editorial board’s presumption that we are trying to hide what we really believe. Instead, both groups often open their speaker events to the entire student body, not just their members. 

The idea that conservatives are hiding the ball is even more absurd when one considers that the Salient delivers its issues to every dorm at the College. It’s hard to imagine how we could be making a more immediate contribution to the “marketplace of ideas” than writing essays on culture, politics, and campus life for everyone to read and, if they choose, respond to. The Salient also, unlike the Crimson, allows readers to post comments on its website.

The Crimson has also long complained about the Salient’s use of pseudonyms as somehow impeding that public conversation. Of course, in its earliest issues, the Salient regularly published letters to the editor about pseudonymous articles alongside responses from the authors of those pieces. Additionally, for two years, the Salient has included numerous attributed articles alongside those which remain pseudonymous. With few exceptions, this has not led to increased engagement with the substance of those articles, including by the Crimson. The Salient’s editors remain eager to publish letters offering substantive critiques of its work, and its writers remain eager to respond to them. Perhaps the members of the editorial board would be better served to write some rather than accusing conservatives of being unwilling to share our ideas in a public forum.

If they can only engage with conservatives in person—a rather strange notion coming from an editorial board, but nonetheless—they are welcome to attend the annual Conservative and Republican Student Conference. This event, held for the first time last year, is open to all Harvard students. The Crimson knows this because they sent several reporters last year, although they never published a report about it, even after conference organizers interviewed with them. This year’s event will be held on February 8th; liberal students—even Crimson writers—are more than welcome to join us. 

The editorial board also falters in its treatment of the Abigail Adams Institute, where I am a John Aroutiounian Fellow. The article lists the institute as one of several conservative organizations on campus. But the institute is nonpartisan. This is not just a question of public posture. The institute’s director, Dr. Danilo Petranovich, frequently asks me and other student fellows for advice on how to more effectively engage students from across the political spectrum. As he told the Crimson earlier this month, the institute wants to “encourage all sorts of perspectives.”

Indeed, while the op-ed acts as though AAI is a “quasi-secret societ[y],” nearly all of AAI’s programming is open to all Harvard students. The editorial board knows this—or they ought to, anyway, seeing as they quote from the institute’s October 1 lecture and have previously sent reporters to its weekly coffeehouse. This week alone, the institute is co-hosting a showing of the 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility and holding a discussion group on Rousseau’s Emile, as well as its weekly office hours and coffeehouse. If the editors of the Crimson really want to talk about “Plato and the good life,” nothing is stopping them.

I wish I believed that the Crimson was serious about this kind of intellectual engagement. Consider, however, their main piece of evidence that conservative “seclusion” has damaged our “intellectual rigor”: it’s that, in the aforementioned AAI lecture, the speaker said that “increasing America’s fertility rate must be ‘our top national priority.’” This idea is not “ethically dubious,” nor was it “thinly supported”; Dr. Fernández-Villaverde presented heaps of evidence indicating that low fertility rates could have catastrophic economic and social consequences.¹ But setting aside that fact, the event was a widely advertised public lecture held in Sever Hall. If a wider conversation didn’t ensue, it’s because people who might have disagreed either didn’t show up or were unwilling to ask him a question. That’s their prerogative, of course, but it’s pretty poor proof that conservatives won’t come to the table.

The real motivation for this piece becomes clear when the Crimson tells us what they find “even more alarming”: the professional success of conservative Harvard graduates like Rep. Elise Stefanik ‘06. If conservative groups and ideas are worth engaging with—the nominal argument of this piece—why is it so scary that some of us might, like so many other students, find our way “from Harvard Yard to the halls of power”? It’s hard to read that section of the article as anything other than an implicit threat against those who would dare deviate from the Crimson’s orthodoxy.

Of course, the Crimson does not speak for all campus liberals and progressives, and I hope to see more left-leaning students writing letters to the editor for publication in the Salient, attending AAI reading groups, and asking tough questions of the HRC’s guest speakers. The editorial board is correct to say that “conversations about the enduring insights of great thinkers aren’t just vital for conservatives,” and I have enjoyed having such conversations with those on the other side of the aisle. It is indeed good for all of us to have our ideas challenged. But the Crimson has acted in bad faith time and again. They don’t want to debate us—they want to discredit us.

I suspect that if someone at the Crimson replies to this piece, they will bring up the fact that most of the students they contacted for their article “Is the Next JD Vance Sitting in Your Philosophy Seminar?” allegedly declined to respond. But when the editorial board can’t even stop themselves from calling us extremists in a piece asking us to engage with them, it’s no wonder that we find other ways to express our ideas. 

When we do try to extend a hand, however, the results are telling. When Salient President Sarah Steele provided the Crimson with some back copies for their ‘JD Vance’ article, she included a note inviting Crimson members to get coffee and talk about the problems facing Harvard. Up to now, her note has gone unanswered. The offer stands open. If the Crimson can’t find conservatives on campus, maybe it’s because they aren’t actually looking.

1. He also emphasized, for what it’s worth, that solutions can and must be found to this problem which do not interfere with the individual right to decide whether to have children. As he pointed out, the average American woman today wants more children than she has—he simply wants people to have as many children as they want.