Student Activism, Politics, and Campus Climate in Higher Education

Demetri L. Morgan, Charles H.F. Davis III

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138327566
• eBook ISBN: 9780429829888
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Student Activism, Politics, and Campus Climate in Higher Education presents a comprehensive, contemporary portrait of political engagement and student activism at postsecondary institutions in the United States. This resource explores how colleges and universities are experiencing unrest and in what ways broader sociopolitical conflicts are evident on-campus, ultimately unpacking the political dimensions of student engagement within campus climates. Chapter authors in this book critically synthesize relevant research, illuminate interdisciplinary perspectives, and interrogate how current issues of power and oppression shape participatory democracy and higher education at large. A go-to resource for researchers, faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals, this text addresses the most intractable challenges facing society and its institutions of higher education.

Section II
Students as Political Actors

Diverse Strategies and Tactics

3
Understanding American Conservatism and its Role in Higher Education

Garrett H. Gowen, Kevin M. Hemer, and Robert D. Reason

Introduction

Over the past 70 years, the conservative movement has exerted enormous influence on the trajectory of American society. This statement is perhaps trite, especially in the wake of recent Republican victories from the 2010 takeover of the House of Representatives to the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president. However, American conservatism as an object of study is largely absent from higher education scholarship. In a comprehensive review of the literature on the topic, Gross, Medvetz, and Russell (2011) noted that scholars (sociologists in particular) have dismissed conservatism as anti-intellectual, resistant to change, and religiously fanatical. As a result, conservatism has suffered from a lack of definition that belies its contested political reality and fragments research agendas. This gap in scholarship further mirrors the empathy walls that exist between people and communities of opposed political persuasions (Hochschild, 2016, p. 5; cf. Graham, Nosek, & Haidt, 2012). Empathy walls are obstacles to deep understanding of another person and can make individuals feel indifferent or hostile to those who hold different beliefs (Hochschild, 2016). It is difficult to pursue empathetic lines of research, which seek understanding without preexisting assumptions and judgments, amidst an environment of increasingly antagonistic political polarization and isolation (Pew Research Center, 2014). This task is uniquely challenging without a well-conceptualized approach to how conservatism is embodied and enacted (Gross et al., 2011).

Understanding conservatism is especially important for higher education scholars and campus educators, who are at risk of marginalizing the topic as well. College campuses are regularly accused of restricting the constitutional rights of outspoken conservatives and maintaining a hostile environment toward deviant worldviews (e.g., Buckley, 1951; D’Souza, 1998). Moreover, the institution of higher education was central to the formation of the contemporary conservative movement: in his foundational tract criticizing overt liberalism in college, Buckley (1951) opined that, “after each side has had its say, we are right and they are wrong; and my greatest anguish is… the knowledge that they are winning and we are losing” (p. lx). The assurance that the conservative worldview is “correct” and is successfully repressed by the liberal bias of higher education formed the basis for Buckley’s early conservative activism. Higher education thus performs a dual role in conservatism—as a villainous boogeyman and as an essential site for the construction of new conservatives (Binder & Wood, 2013; Gross, 2013; Kidder, 2016).

Accordingly, this chapter explores the enactment of conservatism on campus. First, we will synthesize multiple approaches to understanding conservatism. We conceptualize conservatism as a relational identity rooted in symbolic claims, interaction, and abstract logics. Second, we will situate conservatism within higher education. Finally, we will turn to the politically charged debates over free speech on campus, providing a brief context for these debates and conceptualizing the different uses of free speech. Ultimately, we understand free speech as an important signifier of conservative identity that is used as a weapon against the liberal façade of higher education. This chapter integrates several disciplinary approaches to conservatism and provides context for educators and researchers to contextualize and engage with conservatism on campus.

Conceptualizing Conservatism

The history of conservatism as a political movement stretches back to the late 18th century. European aristocrats, the parliamentarian Edmund Burke chief among them, viewed the French Revolution as a dangerous threat to the prevailing social order—the ancien régime. Robin (2018) argued that this reactionary origin remained a potent force within the conservatism of the proceeding centuries: “From its inception, conservatism has relied upon some mix of [reactionary] elements to build a broad-based movement of elites and masses against the emancipation of the lower orders” (p. xi). For political theorists like Robin, conservatism as a reactionary ideology comprises predispositions to war, capitalism, and aristocracy. Gross and colleagues (2011), however, argued that this theoretical perspective overlooks the social elements of conservatism in favor of more intrinsic social attitudes.

Since WWII, American conservatism has been largely characterized by a fractious coalition amongst multiple, potentially contradictory wings of the movement (Deutsch & Fishman, 2010). Figures like William F. Buckley and his National Review colleagues sought to unite the various factions of right-leaning intellectuals in the United States, but differences still abounded: after meeting Buckley, a devout Catholic, for the first time, Ayn Rand, author of the atheistic, market-capitalist manifesto Atlas Shrugged, reportedly remarked, “You are too intelligent to believe in God!” Buckley argued the path to conservative victory was through “fusionism,” an effort to reconcile tensions between the traditionalists (i.e., social and evangelical conservatives), the anti-communist neo-conservatives, and the libertarians (Gross et al., 2011). As part of their fusionist aims, conservatives associated with the National Review magazine emphasized what they believed all permutations of American conservatism shared in common: patriotism, opposition to communism, individualism, a concern with states’ rights, and moral objectivity (Adler, 2004; Nash, 1976; see Kirk, 1953 for a contemporary outline of fusionist conservatism). Higher education, which stereotypically stands in opposition to all of these values (see Buckley, 1951), exists at the nexus of unified conservatism and marks a continued point of consensus among disparate wings of conservatism.

Framing Conservatism

Despite coalescence among conservatives, scholars from multiple disciplines have pursued isolated definitions and conceptualizations as part of attempts to identify the core essence of conservatism. As part of their review of the literature on conservatism, Gross and colleagues (2011) highlighted three common ways to understanding conservatism: 1) a series of semi-aligned, issue-based countermovement’s that arise in reaction to progressive social movements, 2) a movement seeking the wholesale installation of contemporary free-market capitalism, and 3) a commonly shared view of human nature and a conception of moral order rooted in Christian theology. These approaches are not strongly bounded—Buckley (1951), for instance, evinced a synthesis of the anti-communism and pro-Christian faith that defined the Cold War era; however, the promise and promotion of free-market capitalism and suspicion of socialist values remained paramount. Thus, it is not necessarily productive to search for a single true essence of conservatism, but rather to focus on the “social relations through which particular meanings come to be defined as conservative” as well as “the processes through which individuals, groups, and movements come to adopt these meanings and mobilize around them” (Gross et al., 2011).

Ultimately, Gross and colleagues (2011) understood conservatism as a “collective identity” that is embedded in a relational web of meaning. Conservatism is not a fixed category of belief or practice, but rather a symbolic activity that is adapted according to context and proximal relationships (Binder & Wood, 2013). The evolution of fusionist conservatism, for instance, marked a historically situated process of group-making and mobilization that presaged a national conservative movement—by emphasizing a series of commonalities among the disparate factions, Buckley and others began redefining what and who could be considered conservative (Gross et al., 2011). Moreover, the conservative movement benefitted from a vast institutional infrastructure, beginning with the National Review and including organizations such as the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF),¹ Liberty University, and the wide array of right-leaning think tanks. These institutions spanned the conservative factions and were vital outlets for disseminating conservative ideas (Pierson & Skocpol, 2007). American conservatism was thus instantiated as a defined logic, replete with meanings that could be understood and negotiated on a national scale.

Conservative Identity

As a macro-level logic, conservatism prescribes a series of scripts and behaviors, or ‘strategies of action,’ that are conservatively typed (Swidler, 1986). These strategies of action are employed locally in response to emergent problems (e.g., ‘coddling snowflakes’) and are guided by cultural knowledge, language, and skills. However, conservative students are not ‘cultural dopes’ who bend to the abstract whims of conservatism writ large (Giddens, 1984); rather, broader conservative logics are constantly contested, negotiated, and reformed to suit the local context (Fine & Hallett, 2014; Hallett & Ventresca, 2006). Binder and Wood (2013), for example, identified how similar conservative logics were enacted differently according to the campus environment. Colleges and universities boast unique contexts with a series of shared understandings about acceptable behaviors. These shared understandings, or ‘cultural repertoires,’ are durable, local strategies of action that define the scope of legitimate conservative action on campus (Binder & Wood, 2013; Kidder, 2016). Thus, college-going does not necessarily influence political identity development so much as identity negotiation and enactment.

Further, the introduction of identity as a constituent element of understanding conservatism complicates prior research that claimed party identification as a marker of political orientation, a practice which obscured nuance and complexity (Green, Palmquist, & Schickler, 2002; Gross, 2013). This chapter thus approaches conservatism as a symbolic arena in which individuals make claims to markers of conservatism that must be validated by others (i.e., either fellow conservatives or oppositional liberals; Goffman, 1967; Kidder, 2016). Validation by others is an essential component of maintaining the interaction order and is likewise a necessary part of identity construction (Goffman, 1967; Stryker, 2007).

Conservatism and Higher Education

College campuses are an ideal setting to investigate the social mechanisms of conservative experience and socialization (Stevens, Armstrong, & Arum, 2008). The liberal monolith of higher education is simultaneously is a foundational trope of conservative messaging² and an important site for “constructing” new conservatives. According to conservative activists, liberal professors and student activists indoctrinate students into a hegemonic, progressive philosophy; those whom they cannot convert are shamed and treated with hostility³ (Woessner & Kelly-Woessner, 2009). Fosse and Gross (2012) and Gross (2013) investigated these claims, finding that, although college professors are indeed more liberal than the general population, they are not dramatically so. Moreover, the common explanations for why the professoriate is so liberal (e.g., conservatives are less intelligent, sociodemographic characteristics) do not hold up under scrutiny.⁴ Gross (2013) advanced the argument that the liberal reputation of higher education itself is a powerful force for shaping who persists throughout postsecondary and graduate education (cf. Woessner & Kelly-Woessner, 2015). The professoriate is thus politically typed, a result of the long-standing popular conceptions of higher education that produce institutional logics about which students are supposed to seek graduate degrees (Fine & Hallett, 2014).

Conceptualizing this liberal reputation as a relevant construct is a new direction in research on political engagement in higher education. Previously, higher education researchers assiduously investigated whether college attendance made students more liberal (e.g., Bobo & Licari, 1989; Dey, 1996, 1997; Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Moore, 1995). As research on the effects of college developed, particularly within quantitative traditions (e.g., longitudinal designs, propensity score matching), scholars began to question how college experiences interact with preexisting demographic characteristics (Kam & Palmer, 2008; Jennings & Stoker, 2008). Although positions on policy or social issues (e.g., abortion, health care) may change, such stances are largely decoupled from claiming a political identity (Kidder, 2016). Commitment to a particular identity likely occurs before coming to college and, contrary to popular political messaging about indoctrination, it is unlikely that such identities will change as a result of college attendance (Campbell & Horowitz, 2016).

Yet this line of research masks the nuances of identity construction and enactment, especially considering the relational and symbolic elements of conservatism in practice (Goffman, 1967; Swidler, 1986). Dodson (2014) argued that “different aspects of the college environment operate either to reinforce and strengthen [preexisting beliefs] or to undermine and diminish them” (p. 139). Time spent in classes led to more moderate beliefs as compared with time spent in social settings, which led to more extreme beliefs for both liberals and conservatives (Dodson, 2014). Similarly, Binder and Wood (2013) and Kidder (2016) described the social links among campus conservatives as a major source of reinforcement and symbolic validation. College conservatives viewed themselves as combatants against a perceived liberal consensus, underscoring the relational approach advanced by Gross and colleagues (2011). Although Dodson highlighted several important conceptual relationships, the ethnographic approaches advanced by Kidder and Binder and Wood elucidated the unique environment of college and how it interacted with the symbolic claims made by conservative students.

Binder and Wood (2013) further highlighted the role played by external conservative organizations, who supplied talking points, organizational tactics, and merchandise to distribute and use to display their affiliations. Sponsored conservatism, a term which refers to the vast network of organizations specifically established to advance the cause of young conservative activists, strongly conveyed the message that conservative students on campus are ideologically at odds with the political and social commitments of faculty, administrators, staff, and other students, “not by their own choosing but by the very nature of America’s liberally-skewed higher education system” (Binder & Wood, 2013, p. 78). Colleges and universities thus exist at the nexus of interlocking institu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half TItle
• TItle
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Foreword
• Preface: Transforming Campus Climates by Reframing Student Political Engagement and Activism
• Acknowledgments
• SECTION I Historical and Contemporary Foundations for Student Political Engagement as Activism
• SECTION II Students as Political Actors: Diverse Strategies and Tactics
• SECTION III The Role of Non-Student Campus Actors
• SECTION IV Integrating Student and Institutional Contexts
• List of Contributors
• Index