Woods compares Harvard to the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, "where if you hold certain views you're wrong, out of the bounds of debate." Woods adds that the "reckless name-calling" of liberals, employing epithets like "fascist" and "racist", greatly damages political discussion.
E. Adam Webb '93, former president of the Association Against Learning in the Absence of Religion and Morality (AALARM), explains the "welcome" conservatives receive with a hypothetical: "It's your freshman year and you come from a traditional community. You come to a place where people abhor your entire way of life--your desire to have a wife and kids, your belief in God."
"You feel like you have no place here, you feel that people don't care about your issues," Webb says.
AALARM, Webb explains, was conceived as a group to raise campus awareness about the views of the right on issues such as abortion and homosexuality, and to serve as a support group for conservatives.
Robert K. Wasinger '94, chair of AALARM's presidential council, says the group has about 50 members, and engages in postering and debate to alert the campus to a "large silent conservative minority" that deserves fair consideration.
Strong denies the existence of left wing intolerance at Harvard. "There is a general liberal respect between the left and right," he says. "Harvard's not as bad as they [conservatives] make it out to be. They look for straw figures, and raise more alarm than there really is cause for."
The liberal leader insists that while conservatives are a minority, their views are respected. But conservatives respond with anecdotal evidence to support their charges.
"One time, I debated someone very heavily on an issue, and did my best. Her response to her friend, after the debate, was, 'Oh, he's crazy,"" says N. Van Taylor '96, president of the Harvard Republican Action Council, a splinter group of the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Club which focuses on working directly with the GOP and its campaigns.
"As a conservative, I can respect other people's opinions. It hurts when someone dismisses me just like that," Taylor says.
Background Noise
Both liberals and conservatives think they other side retains a high profile in campus debate and each side accuses the other of receiving over representative media coverage.
Boyle says that although there is "a great conservative force here too," liberal groups get more attention here. She attributes the greater focus on liberal opinion to the campus media, saying that the events of the left-leaning groups get more coverage.
Strong, on the other hand, maintains that conservatives are helped by the media.
"The ultra-right-at Harvard is overrepresented due to the media and sensational views of the ultra right," Strong says. "Newspapers engage in a feeding frenzy over the right wing."
If conservatives do make aggressive attempts to grab the attention of the student body, there is a reason for it, they say. Conservative students--and conservative professors like Mansfield--often use widespread campus liberalism as an explanation for their own activism.
"It is fair to say the general tendency on this campus is not to take the conservative opinion into account," Brown says. "Expression of our opinion must be done vigorously, to overcome leftist background noise."
Despite the continuing back and forth on the issue du jour, whether it's a long-running campus debate or a national controversy, one thing is clear: The campus left has grown tamer. When it comes to partisan politics, the visible activists on campus are predominantly conservative. And perhaps it is conservatives, more than liberals, who will forge Harvard's reputation for the future.