Ever since William F. Buckley wrote his landmark book “God and Man at Yale” in the 1950s, conservatives have had a deep love/hate relationship with higher education. That relationship has only soured in recent decades with some prominent conservative thinkers—such as the recently deceased sir Roger Scruton—suggesting it may even be time for conservatives to work to “get rid of universities altogether.”
But unlike Buckley’s generation, conservative groups today have emerged and even thrived on college campuses across the nation. Many of these groups have successfully instilled conservatives in prominent think tanks, political offices, the media, law, education, and other important areas of society. But as conservative speakers and ideas become increasingly marginalized in American Ivy League universities, so too have these groups grown increasingly aggressive in demanding their right to freedom of speech.
Many college conservatives and their organizations are in danger of losing sight of what it is they demand to have the right to say. So much so that, were Leftist administrators and students to suddenly tolerate anything and everything their conservative counterparts had to say, they may find themselves quite dumbstruck. We are in danger of fighting for freedom of speech for the speechless.
Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is international and returning guest Avi Woolf to weigh in on where conservatives can go from here. Avi is a translator and editor whose work has been published in Arc Digital, Commentary, National Review, The Bulwark, and The Dispatch. He is chief editor of the online Medium publication Conservative Pathways, and he hopes to help forge a path for a conservatism which is relevant for the 21st century while not abandoning the best of past wisdom. Avi hosts his own podcast entitled “Avi’s Conversational Corner”, a podcast on culture, history, and politics in a broad perspective, which can be found at https://avisconcorner.fireside.fm/
Avi can be found on Twitter @AviWoolf