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A conservative intellectual revival is quietly brewing at Harvard.
It’s not unfolding in classrooms or lecture halls, or the Harvard Republican Club, or the Institute of Politics’ Conservative Coalition. Instead, it’s happening mostly out of view, in spaces replete with antique pseudonyms, formal dress, and — supposedly — extreme intellectual rigor.
Within these spaces — the John Adams Society, the Abigail Adams Institute, and The Salient — a group of classics-oriented conservatives are attempting to revive the Western canon and inject contemporary conservatism with intellectual substance.
Quasi-secrecy aside, these students have a point — certain elements of classical humanities education have faded at Harvard. But there’s no reason to sequester conversations about Plato and the good life to an ideologically homogeneous — some might say, ideologically extreme — group named after a founding father.
Whether or not the humanities are dead, it’s certainly the case that quantitative methods have claimed pride of place at Harvard. In 2018, for example, the Government Department introduced two new tracks oriented towards quantitative methods to counter a decline in the number of concentrators.
But these conservative bastions of such inquiry hardly helps the broader state of discourse on Harvard’s campus. Exclusive, quasi-secret societies don’t much figure in the marketplace of ideas.
If anything, their seclusion hurts their own intellectual rigor.
A case in point: The Abigail Adams Institute hosted a speaker who said increasing America’s fertility rate must be “our top national priority.” Encountering such thinly supported, ethically dubious ideas in any space is unsettling; finding them in groups dedicated to philosophical inquiry is outright baffling.
Even more alarming is the pipeline that guides many of these groups’ graduates from Harvard Yard to the halls of power. Many end up in positions at influential think tanks like the Heritage Foundation or prestigious clerkships for conservative jurists — potentially on their way to become the next Vivek G. Ramaswamy ’07 or Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-N.Y.).
The problem is not the existence of conservative thought on our campus, nor the sense of community the spaces offer. There’s nothing wrong with tweed jackets, crackling fire, and spirited debates.
Rather, the issue is the insularity. Conservatism, like any ideology, grows dull the less it is challenged. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences should seek to cultivate spaces that instead invite conservative students to engage openly with those who disagree. Likewise, conservative students in these organizations should step out of the shadows and into the broader intellectual life of the university.
Conversations about the enduring insights of great thinkers aren’t just vital for conservatives — they’re vital for all of us. It’s high time we have them together.
This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
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