[CaptIsaacDavis]

Tufts University is an interesting place. The alumni are definitely NOT overwhelmingly Liberal (the school graduated some unusually -- vs. other universities in the region -- conservative classes on average in the 1980s by the way), while politics on campus reflect the fact that it combines leftist also rans unable to get into Ivy league schools (but who want to go to an "elite" school in Boston), with very competitive and bright local kids who get screened out from Harvard and Brown for being, well, local and normal (and exceeding the quota for kids from NE states, or for coming from "bourgeois" prep schools, or for not being into this or that progressive activism in high school to pad resumes. It is, for lack of a better phrase, New England's Ivy League school (where the modern Ivy League schools have very internationally diverse student populations these days).

Conservatives should know more about Tufts, because it is the ONLY university in the past 15 years to have seen a Leftist campus speech code overturned through a student protest movement without having to resort to lawyers or the courts (1989). That "free speech" campaign was led by the conservative student paper, The Primary Source (support them!), and backed by some Fletcher school graduate students. They won NOT by focusing on a first amendment argument, which would have taken them into the courts, but by aggressively propagandizing, including through a late-night stunt of roping off the campus with flyers, that the administration was creating a "Concentration Campus" [Soviet and German style] -- in a campaign intended to go over the head of the extreme leftist dean of students and strike at the heart of the former dean, Jean Meyer, who was a resistance fighter against the Nazis in WW2, in France no less). Boston lawyer Harvey Silverglate wrote about the trend in the Shadow University (and did a poor job of researching and describing the uniquely successful struggle at Tufts), which revealed that since the Orwellian assault on our culture through "hate crime" and "speech code" regulations/laws started in the mid-1980s, a mere 5 (from my latest count) universities have rolled them back (mostly under legal coercion).

The reason Bush was even on campus is that the most conservative elite faculty anywhere in the United States is at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts, which has a former NATO Supreme Commander as a dean and sits prominently right in the middle of the campus (ex-Pres. Bush was giving a lecture there).

[Dutchgirl]

On the one hand...YEAH!!, alumni able to influence this decision, alumni shamed by inappropriate behavior...and on the other hand- U of F has invited Slick Willie to Gainesville and I want to see inappropriate behavior over their decision to spend $80k of student money to hear the prevaricator in chief.

[SandRat]

Tufts University alumni leaders have revoked an award given to a senior because of her ''inappropriate and offensive'' behavior during a recent campus protest of former President George H.W. Bush.

Now if we could just get more alumni from other universities to behave likewise.....

[an amused spectator]

A women's studies and peace and justice double-major with an A-minus average...

Just another chirping little bird who is simply not ready for the adult world. ;-)

[S.O.L.]

Wow! I wish I had known or remembered this. When my oldest son was scouting colleges four years ago we visited Tufts and were turned off by the left wing propaganda posted all over the campus. Based on that we discouraged our youngest son from even bothering to visit Tufts even though their double degree program with the New England Consevatory would have been a good fit for his musical talents.

[429CJ]

"A women's studies and peace and justice double-major with an A-minus average,"

I wonder how much demand there is for 'women's studies' or 'peace and justice' mojors?

[an amused spectator]

Liz "Chirping Bird" Monnin is quite the little activist at Tufts.