From Ben Shapiro to Turning Point USA, a current of grievance culture has emerged on the political right as a response to the prevailing orthodoxies in academia. While the discord between the different ideological camps becomes more evident by the day—and the level of discourse grows increasingly unserious—these battles aren’t at all new. To understand the growth of progressive ideas on college campuses, one must go back decades in time.
Nearly 70 years ago, conservative icon William F. Buckley wrote a censorious indictment of his alma mater, Yale University, in his preeminent God and Man at Yale. Yale, Buckley posited, orients its curriculum and extracurricular activities in a way that subordinates both religious and free-market perspectives to those of secularism and interventionism. Buckley’s thesis, however, spoke not much of the merits of these issues. Rather, he contended that Yale’s teachings were at odds with the religious and classical economic views espoused by Yale’s alumni and donors.
To resolve the discrepancy, he held that its alumni should exert their influence by withholding donations. This solution, however, is not universally applicable. The ideological composition of Yale’s alumni and trustees has assuredly changed in the past seventy years, in large part due to inaction from these members early on. While it’s too late to apply Buckley’s solution, his account of progressivism in academia, shielded by “academic freedom,” is necessary to understand the formation of universities today. And, more importantly, a solution to rectify the ideological imbalance in academia could be found by understanding its history.
Buckley contends that, throughout his time at Yale, religion was relegated to a mere abstraction, and studied primarily in the historical context. Meanwhile, atheistic ideas were being openly promulgated. This problem, Buckley suggests, isn’t that there were no classes or professors on this topic. Rather, it’s that religion was taught dispassionately, whereas atheist professors were passionately hostile toward religion.
Meanwhile, economics professors infuse their teachings with moral judgments that had very little to do with economic theory. Economic inequality, for example, was axiomatically a problem to these professors, rather than just a consequence of a free society. While economics professors were not Marxists, basic economics courses were primarily taught in the Keynesian persuasion, which calls for robust government intervention in markets.
When talking about the Yale Political Union, an undergraduate organization devoted to debated political issues, Buckley said this:
“I must here repeat that no effort is being made to pass off the Union as a rigidly representative politics sample of undergraduate Yale. Such a generalization would not stand up under examination for several reasons, not the least important being that the student body as a whole seems to be apathetic to politics.”
Sound familiar? This, more than anything, describes the dynamics of campus politics today. Anecdotally, very few people at my undergraduate university voted, much less participated in student government. This allowed a minority of deeply-engaged political activists to control the affairs of student government, resulting in manifestly unpopular actions, like passing a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions resolution targeting Israel.
Buckley contended that the perspectives imposed on the students diverged greatly from those of the alumni. This was evidenced in part by the composition of the Yale Corporation, six of whom were elected by the alumni. According to Buckley, these members were all avowed Christians and overwhelmingly supportive of free markets. Moreover, the president of Yale at the time, Charles Seymour was openly critical of communism. And yet, Buckley claimed, openly atheistic and statist views were allowed to dominate the curriculum.
Buckley holds that the source of this dichotomy is “academic freedom.” Under the aegis of academic freedom, professors have been allowed to propound any beliefs—however incompatible with the values of Yale’s donors and consumers— with little scrutiny. This, Buckley says, is partly because the precepts governing academic research, which are supposed to foster open-minded inquiry, are incorrectly applied to teaching. Consumers of education end up subsidizing the research. As a result, ideas like Marxism, despite their seeming unpopularity, were being propagated throughout the classrooms.
Buckley’s solution is simple. The material taught in the classroom should reflect the values of the institution, which should reflect the values of the donors. The academic research, on the other hand, should be independently funded. And if an area receives insufficient funding, then that’s an indication that such inquiries and projects are not worth subsidizing in the first place. Had this been the case in the 1940s, atheist and socialist sympathies might have struggled to gain the necessary oxygen to grow a movement. Or, at the very least, college campuses would have grown to be more balanced.
Nowadays, academic departments have ever-increasingly in favor of progressives. In a 2017 study from Brooklyn College on liberal arts colleges, professors overwhelmingly vote Democrat. In philosophy, history, and psychology departments, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 17 to 1. Unsurprisingly, the departments most favorable to Republicans were in the sciences and engineering. Even then, economics and mathematics had a ratio of 5 to 1, and engineering a ratio of 1.6 to 1— all in favor of Democrats.
The ostensibly straightforward answer to this imbalance is that these statistics just reflect overall trends of declining religiosity and favorability toward capitalism. This view, however, might mistake the effect with the cause. If Buckley is correct, the progressivity of academia was able to gradually shift public opinions on issues, the alumni of elite institutions began to reflect the beliefs of their professors. So much that “academic freedom” began to collapse within itself. For example, in 2018, Brown University removed a study conducted by an assistant professor on the relationship between environmental factors and gender identity. This decision was motivated, in part, because the conclusions of this study might “invalidate the perspectives” of transgender members of their community.
It is surely the case that it is too late to call on the alumni to help dictate the curriculum. As Buckley warned, the influence of progressive professors would gradually shift the predominating political views of the alumni toward progressivism– so much that the alumni and professors might be more ideologically aligned than ever before.
As a solution, conservatives and libertarians could appeal to academic freedom in the same way progressives did when their beliefs faced higher scrutiny in the public square. Buckley, early on, recognized the potency of academic freedom in supporting ideas that were considered unpopular. And while Buckley was critical of academic freedom at the time, it might be the one way to protect religious and classical economical views today, amidst an increasingly progressive environment on college campuses.
Another way to counteract the imbalance in academia—and other mainstream institutions, for that matter—could be to look to Buckley himself as an inspiration of some sort. God and Man at Yale portended Buckley’s ascent, but by no means did it define his influence over the years. Too often nowadays, campus conservatives, libertarians, or anyone with heterodox views use liberal bias in the classrooms as a platform to build their personal brand. Getting retweets and hits in conservative media may feel like a dopamine hit for some, but it does little to tilt the discourse in their favor. Such stunts, whether it be an affirmative action bake sale or bringing in an inflammatory speaker just because that speaker may be inflammatory do little to move the ball in the right direction, and I don’t think Buckley would be particularly impressed.
Buckley, upon graduating Yale, went on to host an Emmy-winning award show in “Firing Line” and founded a magazine that shaped the conservative movement for decades to come. By no means did he shy away from the mainstream. He was in the business of persuading.
There are lots of lessons to be learned when reading God and Man at Yale, not only as an anthropological exercise but also as some sort of inspiration. Institutions have changed and will always continue to change. Critiquing an institution from the outside and retreating to one’s ideological comfort zone—a safe space, some may call it—is easy, but one mustn’t lose sight of the bigger picture.