College Campuses:  The Last Frontier For The Right
Alternet.org

By David Halperin, WireTap

 Conservatives have been mobilizing college students for the last 30 years.

It's accepted as a given among much of the media and public that American campuses are lock-step liberal indoctrination centers, where lonely conservative students struggle to express their views. Noting these perceptions, journalist Howard Kurtz recently asked about our organization's new effort to support progressive students, "Isn't that a bit like pumping sand into the Mojave Desert?"

But the reality on campus is very different from the popular perception - and it is rapidly tilting rightward. Conservatives, now dominant in government, seem to be aiming for control of remaining frontiers. Today there is strong evidence of an intensified conservative effort to grab the upper hand in the campus world.

Conservatives already have spent 30 years intensively organizing on campuses and now spend over $35 million annually pushing their agenda to students, with support for student publications, visiting speaker programs, training sessions, and mega-conferences. A recent newspaper story highlighted the paid jobs, free dorms, and sumptuous food the conservative Heritage Foundation lavishes on its summer interns. Conservative funders spend tens of millions more for academic chairs and fellowships. Conservative activists have led a persistent effort to eliminate affirmative action programs that enhance campus diversity.

All of these efforts have created a well-known new generation of younger conservative leaders - the Ann Coulters and Sean Hannitys who dominate the agenda.
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Now conservatives are doing even more to deepen their influence over campuses. For example:

 • Right-wing activist David Horowitz moves across the country lobbying state legislatures and university overseers for a so-called "Academic Bill of Rights" aimed at having the government regulate the content of professors' teaching - dictating what professors must teach and what they cannot teach.

 • Conservative campus groups joined with conservative media and politicians seeking to tar all liberal faculty members with a bizarre statement by an obscure Colorado professor, Ward Churchill, and dragged out that controversy for weeks.

• James Piereson, long-time director of the conservative Olin Foundation, announced that when the foundation finishes distributing its assets this year, he plans to create new efforts to counter liberal influence in academia. He told a reporter, "There are some people who are prepared to spend large sums of money to address this problem."

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