The New Face of the Campus Left (Reality: Same Burnt-out Face, More $$)

The Nation ^ | 1/26/2006 | Sam Graham-Felsen

[Pyro7480]

The assumption that America's campuses are impenetrable bastions of liberalism--where left-leaning faculty predominate, progressive student activism flourishes and conservatism is fiercely marginalized--still rules the day. But in reality, since the 1970s the conservative movement has become the dominant political force on many American campuses....

"We didn't have our act together," says Joshua Holland, a fair-trade and antiwar activist.... "We tried to keep things nonhierarchical and loosely structured, but at the end of the day... we weren't getting anything done."

...At the University of North Carolina senior Jessica Polk says students have long been "sick of what the left is doing--they want to walk to class without being handed a flier about a rally or vigil."

Meanwhile, student conservatives have managed to balance organizational and ideological discipline with ragtag rebelliousness, positioning themselves as perpetual underdogs on oppressively liberal campuses. Armed with their version of a screw-the-man mentality, the student right's activism is often shocking: affirmative action bake sales where white students are charged more for cookies than blacks....

The right actually ends up looking cooler than the left," agrees Mani Mostofi, who recently earned his master's degree at the University of Texas. "I don't know how this is possible, but it's true!"

...The most widespread disappointment has been the failure to generate a sustainable movement opposing the war in Iraq. While student mobilization in the run-up to the war was massive in scope and energy, the typical problems plaguing the campus left--ideological splits and lack of organization--have caused the movement to fade considerably....

How, I asked, would Campus Progress respond if students requested radical intellectual Noam Chomsky as a speaker? After all, right-wing groups like Young America's Foundation almost exclusively fund speakers from the radical end of the right's spectrum.

[hubbubhubbub]

If it appears in the Nation, it's drivel.

[justiceseeker93]

But in reality, since the 1970s the conservative movement has become the dominant political force on many American campuses.

Earth to author Graham-Felsen: You can probably count the number of campuses where "the conservative movement has become the dominant political force" on your fingers. Like so many leftist journalists, your concept of reality and history is warped so as to better promote your perverse agenda and those that welcome it.

[TSgt]

As a college student who is currently surfing FR at UC before class starts I can tell you that liberalism is alive and well at this and many other colleges.

It's the same thing in every class, "Bush is evil. Bush is spying on me, Bush (fill in the blank)." And this mantra is not limmited to the humanities classes.

Thank God I graduate in June...and no, I'm not getting my Master's.

[yer gonna put yer eye out]

"Liberals don't get anything done for the same reason they are liberals: they are stupid and lazy."


Yes, but they ARE self impressed.......:0)

[hschliemann]

The students are one thing.We'll have to wait another 20 years for all the Ward Churchills to die off.Of course,they CAN'T be fired.

[tuff_schlitz]

Hinckley must've been kicking himself for days when he found out Foster was a lesbian. Not entirely relevant, but something that's ben rattling around in my head for a long time.

[Galveston Grl]

**The right actually ends up looking cooler than the left," agrees Mani Mostofi, who recently earned his master's degree at the University of Texas. "I don't know how this is possible, but it's true!"**

Well....I would not be hanging out with conservatives if they weren't the coolest ones around! ; )

[RightWingAtheist]

students have long been "sick of what the left is doing--they want to walk to class without being handed a flier about a rally or vigil."

Well, they got that part right. But the rest?...

But in reality, since the 1970s the conservative movement has become the dominant political force on many American campuses....

[Question_Assumptions]

The reason why they can't galvanize young people to oppose the Iraq war is that there is no draft. The protests against the Vietnam war were ultimately narcissistic and selfish, as their indifference to the plight of the people of Vietnam (Cambodia, etc.), after they were no longer in danger of being drafted, demonstrates. They didn't care about the people of Vietnam. Like the French with Muslim terrorists, they sucked up to the North Vietnamese in the hopes that they wouldn't get shot by one. They could care less how many Vietnamese were murdered when the North took over.

The still don't give a hoot about the plight of the Iraqis but without the threat of the draft, they aren't going to galvanize young people to oppose it.

[MNJohnnie]

protests against the Vietnam war were ultimately narcissistic and selfish

Just nailed it. Very well said.

[Grateful One]

Maybe it is their rabid emotional hysteria with NO intellectually rational platform of ideas other then being anti-everything.................................

The young fool has to be forgiven (somewhat) because he has not yet learned to discard what the old fool still clings to.

How they hate authority! Follow it back.

[VOA]

But in reality, since the 1970s the conservative movement has become
the dominant political force on many American campuses....

This is the same kind of tripe I heard form "journalists" during
the recent Supreme Court hearings.
Many of these reporters talked about how Renhquist (sp?) had
assembled a cadre of conservatives and taken over the court.
Truth be known, he was only able to slightly correct the course of
the court and stop it from sliding even further left.
(a near super-human feat in my view).

Now, from some of the lefty crap I hear about the universities,
you'd think every tenured faculty member was a right-wing,
gun-toting libertarian.
Absolutely 180 degrees from the truth!