Confronting Academic Liberalism

One sued her university, another was caricatured in her college newspaper, and the third stood up against school administration and would not back down.

Conservative student activists are no longer anomalies, rare individuals who stand up to fight against liberalism on their campuses. The Eagle Forum Summit not only drew student activists, it featured several student speakers who have been waging battles for conservatism in Georgia, Virginia and Utah.

Ruth Malhotra spoke first about her experiences at Georgia Tech which included being singled out in class and being threatened with lower grades because of her conservatism. She also explained that the College Republicans at Tech were consistently deemed intolerant according to the speech code of the university, and received unequal treatment and discrimination regarding funding.

“I sought to work within the system to change it,” said Malhotra, who told stories of protests being shut down and forced censorship of speech. “I realized those were part of a systemic problem of unconstitutional policies that needed to be changed.”

Malhotra encouraged the students to take advantage of opportunities to change their campuses. In addition to on-campus options, there are legislative options such as Academic Bill of Rights. In Georgia, Senate passage resulted in some changes and an ABOR will bring more accountability, said Malhotra.

There is also, for some, the litigation option. Malhotra filed a federal civil rights lawsuit with the assistance of the Alliance Defense Fund that would make Tech repeal their speech code, eliminate the religious component to their Safe Space Program and ask for funding fairness, said Malhotra who has been the recipient of threats, racial slurs and other intolerant actions.

University of Virginia student Karin Agness has not been threatened, but she has been mocked. A front-page cartoon caricatured women like Agness, who founded the Network of Enlightened Women (NeW), by showing a woman in an apron cooking, and attached to a machine with 12 babies coming out.

All Agness wanted was to start a book club to talk about the women who are never talked about in the newspaper and in women’s studies courses, but she became a veritable threat to feminism. The purpose of NeW is to foster the education and leadership of university women, said Agness.

Soon, NeW became more than a book club, it began challenging feminism intellectually and publicly. Agness said that they brought Christina Hoff Sommers to UVA and drew 200 people to the event on a Thursday night, but preceding the event Agness had trouble finding a feminist who would debate Sommers.

Eventually she found a columnist to engage with Sommers, but the others who said they were too busy or didn’t want to publicly debate Sommers all came to the event.

NeW has become a way to promote conservatism and to make great friends, according to Agness. It is now a national organization with chapters at William and Mary, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Drake, Boise State and University of Alabama Birmingham.

“Educate yourself and then engage on local issues,” said Agness.

Following Agness, Cory Seegmiller of Salt Lake Community College talked about his confrontation with school administrators.

“We wanted a [EF Collegians] club and needed an adviser,” said Seegmiller, who then told the story of how trying to locate one through university email became a battle.

Most of the emails were so angry or mean that finally, one “tree-hugging liberal” wrote that “Cory has put you all to shame” and told everyone Seegmiller had as much right to start a club as others did.

So Seegmiller went to the administration and asked them point blank if the school’s code of conduct was going to prevent the group from existing and saying what they want to do. The administrators said a lot about being nice and needing to be careful, but they couldn’t say no.

Seegmiller says the group is for people who “believe in families and small government and making choices.”

Since Seegmiller’s group was formed, they have held an event for those who choose to leave the gay lifestyle. Confusion over the title “Silencing Gay Voices” caused many to be upset and led university officials to tell him to remove the posters or the school would. Seegmiller refused to agree to either and the university eventually settled on the compromise of a disclaimer.

The group has also hosted films and an event with the Utah Minutemen, said Seegmiller.

Julia A. Seymour is a staff writer for Accuracy in Academia.