He describes Crimsonites from this era as students "interested in rock-and-roll, skeptical of big business and concerned about the environment."

Conservatives who joined The Crimson in the late '80s and early '90s found themselves still in the minority but no longer facing a uniformly liberal editorial board.

The paper "began to shift somewhat away from the existing liberal slant toward a more centrist viewpoint," says Ira E. Stoll '94, a Crimson president.

Joanna M. Weiss '94, a self-avowed conservative, became editorial chairman in 1993. Stoll, who is currently the managing editor of The Forward, remembers that this "upset some people."

Weiss, now at The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans, considers that her appointment "shattered a grand editorial tradition" by moving The Crimson's top opinion page position out of the leftist camp.

Writers across the political spectrum at The Crimson in the early '90s found common ground in their promotion of free speech.

When the Black Students Association (BSA) demanded an apology from Keenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 for making disparaging remarks about the performance of African-American students, The Crimson was torn between backing the BSA on principal and infringing on the professor's liberty.

The BSA's invitation of Leonard Jeffries, a professor at City University of New York and an alleged anti-Semite, to appear on campus in 1992 provoked another debate over supporting campus protest groups at the expense of Jeffries' right to express his opinions.

Concern for protecting free speech resurfaced in The Crimson's deliberation over its position on gay rights demonstrations during General Colin Powell's 1993 commencement address. Having supported gay rights editorially, the newspaper came down in favor of the demonstrators.

The Crimson faced a similar paradox this year, with the visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

A New Outlook

That a visit from a national military leader led to a discussion about preserving free speech shows how far The Crimson has come from the days when any member of the Establishment would have been shouted down upon arrival.

Any residual anti-war fervor left over from Vietnam was not sufficient to prevent The Crimson from supporting the Gulf War in 1992.

The decision followed an editorial meeting Stoll describes as "lively and long."

The paper's endorsement of Bill Clinton over Ralph Nader and Jerry Brown in the 1992 Democratic primary demonstrates "the shift in The Crimson's politics in the '90s," Stoll says.