The Way They Were

Conservative students opting out of campus battles in favor of national ones may want to refocus their efforts. To be sure, the local campaigns can be hazardous.

Just ask Ruth Malhotra, who needed a police escort when she waged one at Georgia Tech. Nevertheless, they give students the opportunity to expound on that which they know best.

Moreover, it gives them a chance to follow in a noble tradition, namely that of William F. Buckley, Jr. when at Yale.  “For his valedictory in 1950 he convened a dinner to honor the retiring Yale president,” Rick Perlstein writes in Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. “The guests of honor included such fellow college presidents as Harold Stassen of Penn and General Dwight D. Eisenhower of Columbia, both 1952 White House contenders.”

“Chairman Buckley stepped to the podium and browbeat them for letting enemies of religion and free enterprise reign in their classrooms under cover of academic freedom. His conclusion brought stunned silence: trustees of elite universities must compel their employees—professors as well as administrators—to show a proper measure of piety and patriotism.”

“And if they cannot, Godspeed on their way to an institution that is more liberal,” Buckley told the VIPs. And in 2010 they would be even easier to find.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.