The New York Times Magazine has an interesting look into conservative organization on American college and university campuses. As always, the Times couldn’t help but inject some bias into their discussion, but the article is a fairly illuminating and surprisingly sympathetic one. (Although whoever selected the photos that accompany it could have done far better – especially when it goes against the point of the piece.)
Conservatism has been a suppressed ideology in academia since the 1960s when the counterculture became entrenched in academia. Granted, conservatives still have to look outside to groups like ISI and the College Republicans for support, but as the 60’s showed, today’s campus activists could very well be tomorrow’s academics.
It’s true that attitudes are slowly beginning to shift, especially as the anti-war movement brought out the true colors of many on the left. However, until college and university campuses give as much credence to Burke, Hume, and Kirk as they do to Derrida, Foucault, and Sartre, there is still a long way to go before true ideological diversity can be achieved.
UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg notes that the Times forgot to mention National Review Online. Certainly in my college days, NRO was daily reading (and still is). Perhaps the Times is afraid that mentioning NRO will lead more people to read it and they would quickly realize how biased and elitist the Times really is?
