Oh. I see. Uh huh.
It’s a comment that almost never fails to draw response.
Hmm. I didn’t know. Well, that explains a lot.
No matter how I frame the point, the reaction ranges from shock to incredulity.
Really? Seriously? You actually mean it?
You see, dear reader, I have a startling confession to make. I am a Republican.
How can you be so smart and so dumb? (I was particularly proud of that last one.)
Conservatives are, perhaps, the most exotic species at Harvard. As early as 1701, a group of Congregationalist ministers, worried that the university was growing insufficiently lax, quit the school in protest and promptly founded Yale. Richard Nixon enjoyed denouncing the faculty as “the Kremlin on the Charles.” And, indeed, this place’s reputation is often well deserved. One of the more traumatic memories of freshman year was my having to explain to a political philosophy section why I was, apparently, the only student to agree with Edmund Burke.
Yet the image of Harvard as a hotbed of wild revolutionaries is often an overstated one. To my immense disappointment, I have only met one avowed Communist over my four years. The vast majority of Democrats on this campus are almost disappointingly moderate in their politics. And Republicans, though a substantial minority, stand far more numerous than they could be. As a graduate of a Washington, D.C. high school, I am shocked that more than one conservative per year is allowed.
Still, I write not to bury Ivy League conservatism, but to praise it. For it seems to me that Harvard conservatives enjoy substantial benefits to which their liberal friends have no recourse. The school’s political culture, one-sided as it may be, serves to sharpen those on the right and enfeeble those on the left. The reasons for these are several.
Liberals live in a cocoon. Conservatives enjoy no such protection. A Democrat can pass through four years without hearing a dissenting viewpoint. A Republican can scarce do the same for a day. There are certain conservative principles that I feel more confident about, having had to defend them some dozens of times. There are some others that I abandoned, finding them unable to withstand the assault.
Conservatives learn to appreciate the nuance of their opponents’ positions. This is, to be sure, not always a helpful thing. One of the responsibilities of an editor of the Harvard Political Review is to read their writers’ articles and muster all possible objections to the thesis. One of the first times I did so, my writer had written an article with which I largely agreed. Unfortunately, my objections from the left proved so sufficiently close to the real article. The author promptly agreed with me and began revising the article in that direction.
Most of all, Republicans learn the value of selectivity. Most of my friends probably dispute my politics. Were I to constantly emphasize that disagreement, however, we would find each other’s company intolerable. It’s often fun, and important, to talk politics. But being in an environment where an opinion means a fifteen-minute debate has taught me judiciousness too.
Now, I should emphasize that the vast majority of Harvard liberals I know are thoughtful and sincere in their beliefs. And conservatives are not free of stereotypes either. I have one Republican friend with whom conversations often revolve around our mutual admiration of Brooks Brothers. Still, Republicans often state that competition promotes superior outcomes. It is tremendously gratifying to be able to note that Harvard’s ideological marketplace proves that point.
In closing, I offer a challenge to those readers who disagree with the politics of the writer. Take time to test the assumptions under which you suffer. Seek out the viewpoints of those opposed to you. And have no fear of any Republican’s opinions, Harvard-variety or otherwise. We may think different. But we think Right.
Photo Credit: Gina Kim, HPR
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