Today's WSJ has a story (link for subscribers only) on how young Republicans are "flourishing at liberal Berkeley." According to the story, the College Republicans chapter is among the largest student groups on campus, with over 600 members. While liberals still outnumber conservatives by a large margin on the campus, the story claims, the young Republicans are more unified, while liberal students are splintered.
The growth of the Berkeley College Republicans at one of the nation's most liberal campuses echoes some broader political trends. At Berkeley, while leftist students still dominate and outnumber conservatives, the liberal groups have splintered and are now spread across factions from the Cal Democrats to the International Socialist Organization to groups formed to oppose the war in Iraq. At the same time, several faculty members say, there are more conservative-leaning students than in the past, propelled by swells of patriotic feeling after events like Sept. 11 and an increase in the number of religious student groups.The story discusses the growth of the group, and closes with this cute anecdote from last year's annual student organization fair:The modus operandi of the Berkeley Republicans over the past few years has been to be provocative. In 2003, its members opposed affirmative action with an "Affirmative Action Bake Sale," where students paid for pastries on a sliding scale: White students were charged more, while Hispanics and African-Americans paid less. Under Mr. Prendergast's presidency, the group this year protested the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, by giving away hot dogs and encouraging students to eat meat. Mr. Prendergast also held an "Anti Antiwar Rally" in nearby San Francisco, and staged a "Dunk a Republican" contest. The group gets several thousand dollars a year from the Berkeley student government. It also does its own fund raising and will sometimes get donations from local Republicans and others.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau walked by. When he saw President Reagan's cardboard figure, the chancellor chuckled and stopped to talk."I gave an interview to a British newspaper recently, and the journalist asked me about Berkeley's liberalism," said Mr. Birgeneau to the group. "I had to tell him that the largest student political group on campus is Republican. You should've seen him: He was so disappointed."
Related Posts (on one page):
- Conservative student groups and the logic of collective action:
- Young Republicans at Berkeley:
I was v-chairman of the Conservatives at the London School of Economics, another school with a reputation for radical socialism. We, too, were the largest political society, surpassing Labour and the Liberal Democrats by a considerable margin, and narrowly defeating the Greens and the Socialist Workers.
Tellingly, perhaps, the Clown Society beat all the political groups...
Thats just cause its British. The same is true for most colleges at Oxford I'm sure.
Just a tip: In your admissions essay, you should probably avoid ending sentences with more than one question mark or exclamation point. Many "lefty university types" believe that the intelligence of the writer is inversely proportional to the number of consecutive exclamation points he uses to end a single sentence.
I used to wear an NRA hat to law school just for grins. It got some interesting reactions shall we say from the overwhelmingly more liberal than me student body.
Says the "Dog"
Socialists are liberal, and tend not to be provocative.
While the College Republicans may be the single largest organization on campus (although the number of highly active members is dwarfed by various Asian ethnicity associated groups; when I was there, I believe that the Asian (maybe Chinese, it has been a while) Business Association had the largest number of active members), remember that it is essentially the only organization on that side of the political spectrum- the city's, and general student body's, political choices in a given election year aren't "Democrat or Republican" but "Green Party or Democrat," after all.
"What's not known about Berkeley is that it has a prominent conservative streak. Many more students live in fraternities and sororities than in Berkeley's world-famous co-op student housing."
Because, yeah, joining a frat makes you a blazer-wearing, cigar smoking, GOP voting good ole boy. You might be surprised to know that a student chapter of the ACLU formed while I was an undergraduate, and every single one of its officers were then members of a fraternity. True, frat life doesn't appeal as much to the angry socialist or radical minority fringe groups, but that doesn't mean that there weren't plenty of very liberal democrats who were happily members of the Greek system at Cal.
"I don't think that the folks manning some of the pro-Palestine and other tables on Telegraph Avenue are University students"
Not on Telegraph, no, but there were a large number of them on Sproul Plaza itself, and they would, every year, storm and lock down an academic building. None ever got arrested, sadly.
Co-Students in my CS150 class (primarily asian descent) boo'ed an affirmative action supporter out of the room one day. She was trying to promote a rally they were holding on campus.
The irony, of course, is that modern day liberalism/progressivism doesn't come close to reflecting the free-thinking, classical liberal values that gave Berkeley it's academic reputation. At least there's Top Dog, a popular hot dog stand in Berkeley, where the walls are lined with quotations, pamphlets, articles, and comic strips all promoting libertarian, free market ideas. The pro-gun ones really have to make some those on the fringe left pitch fits.
This doesn't mean Berkeley is surprisingly conservative or anything -- smaller groups can plausibly be more active because they're more beleaguered than at a relatively apathetic place like UCLA (that's the demand side), and they can plausibly be more unified because there's less ability to split the conservative population with niche organizations (that's the supply side).
Every lawyer here knows that the federalist society dwarfs ACS at most law schools. Is anyone surprised that at over $30,000/year, most large public universities have more issues of The Economist than Mother Jones delivered to their dorms? Yet even at the University of Texas, the conservatives circle their (BMW) wagons.
I’m also not particularly impressed with the fact that the Republican organization has 600 members. Cal, like my university, is enormous, so even if a small percentage of the population as a whole is conservative -- say, 15% -- that still equals an enormous number of people as an absolute number.
Secondly I have to say I'm not a big fan of the Berkeley republicans. Their paper (the patriot) spends more time whining about people who wear pink or other Berkeley cultural activities (the city is liberal) that giving reasonable arguments on serious issues. It generally appears to be more of an emotional reaction against liberals that a consistant statement on policy.
What really annoyed me recently was that in the same issue they had one article bashing affirmitive action on the grounds that taxpayers/students shouldn't have to support special benefits for anyone. Then they had another article about benefits for students with families without the slightest hint that this might be an unacceptable benefit for a particular group.
I can understand the position they take against affirmitive action but if you are against special benefits for groups then surely you must be against special benefits for a group which volountarily chooses to do something for their own enjoyment.
My view is that the vast majority of students in Ann Arbor in those days were apolitical. The loudest and most obnoxious of the politically active students were the multiple far left groups, but the right had almost as strong of a presence. Which side any particular member of the "silent majority" leaned toward was difficult to determine.
Remember who the *second* chair of Poli Sci was at the LSE? I've always thought that LSE was probably much less radical than my--admittedly loopy--undergrad college, at least.
But the largest student political group during the 1960s was YAF, not SDS. And the university where I teach now has a high-quality conservative student weekly, but nothing from the student left.
I think the right tends to feel so beseiged by the overwhelming tendencies of faculty that they stick together. Even moreso, however, conservative students perceive a *need*. I don't think our leftist undergrads are apathetic--at least not more than any other group. But they read faculty editorials in the campus paper and the local newspaper. Why would any of them say "Hey, we need to start a paper to get our views out there"?
Really? Do they also have more Time magazine than National Review? You are comparing apples and oranges - The Economist is a slightly left of center mainstream publication. Mother Jones is socialist.
When I attended Berkeley back in the free speech movement era of the 60's I took a course in Constitutional Law given by the head of the San Francisco ACLU. (Coleman Blease)
He questioned why I considered myself a liberal after I voiced my opinions. It later turned out I wasn't an ACLU liberal but a libertarian. It was just that that term wasn't around.
In retrospect those were indeed "interesting times".
I speak as someone who is about as far right as possible (at least in terms of foreign policy and market freedom) but that's not quite fair to The Economist. They're a bunch of squishes and are trending far too close to RINO style, but they're not one iota left of center. They're foreign policy wimps (and have become more so since 2003) and the Ivy League background of too many authors leads to non sequitirs in favour of regulation and opposing markets on occasion, but they're still to the side of good. Now Fortune and BusinesWeak (especially BW, a business magazine for Mother Jones subscribers) are left, and while The Economist doesn't hold a candle to Forbes in its stance it's still an ally on most days.
While the Economist is no National Review, I would consider it slighly right of center in its views. It's staunchly for free markets, vigorously against Socialism and for market solutions for social problems.
A half-dozen or so friends of mine were once brought in as ringers to vote in an internal BCR election. We were made members on the spot so we could support another friend of ours who was running for some office. I carried around the membership card in my wallet for a number of years.
Something like that wouldn't be possible if all 600 or so reported members of BCR were active. If memory serves, there were about 50 at that meeting. Apparently there were enough people that six new members weren't noticed...
I don't remember if my friend won or not. I do remember I was paid in beer!
It is especially surprising that any sort of Affirmative Action speaker would show their face in front of an audience with a significant number of Asian students. The UC AA program is very aggressive in discriminating against asian students, so that they have to vastly outperform other students to get accepted ("there's too many of them!"). Outside of a few people who try to encourage racial grievances (Margaret Cho), Asian students and their families tend to have views (and even religion) that mirror conservative Southern Baptists. Berkeleys radicalism is the province of a few silly white kids with trust funds, while most everyone else from all backgrounds are there to work hard and get a VERY high paying job.
Some interesting things about the Republicans and Cal that kind of fell outside of the article:
1. The Republicans are almost single-handedly responsible for shutting down the more irritating antics by Left groups. While I was there, they became a conduit passing on stupid stuff like theft of newspapers or taking over classrooms to people like Drudge &the major blogs. (I did this too). Not only did they get great national publicity, donations flooded in everytime someone got called a fascist. Eventually Leftist groups got tired of being used and got smart about stuff like paper thefts.
2. While the Republicans at Cal are interesting, the REAL story is the huge growth in Christian groups at Berkeley. Walk down Sproul -- or down UCLA. (Where I'm going to Law School now). A near MAJORITY of student groups advertising there are religious. The growth of a solid core of Republicans is interesting, but the huge increase in religious groups and students is dramatic. That story probably hasn't gotten the attention it deserves because most of the religious students are Asian.
3. The Republicans aren't just antagonistic anti-democrats. Over the years I've been there, they've been consistent allies in the student government to the dominant political party. That party -- Student Action -- is an alliance between Fraternity/Sorority/Asian/Jewish/Engineering groups, along with Dorm elements. They're opposed to the more-left group, mostly composed of what we usually consider minorities, along with Progressives.
4. Tying the growth of Republicans to the Frat scene makes, like, 0 sense. Most of the hardcore Republicans I knew were not Frat boys. (In fact, almost none were). I knew as many hardcore Progressive frat boys as I knew Conservatives. Far more likely it's tied to the NATIONAL political scene, where being a Republican at Berkeley earns you accolades, donations, and a probable post-graduate political career. The Republicans at Cal have it GREAT now, after all -- they're heroes! If you're thinking of a Conservative political career, Berkeley is now a great place to go.
I should clarify that I am talking about large, well known private universities. (Oral Roberts is certainly conservative.)
Almost all of the students in the law school are big-time lefties. No surprise. And most of the law-school profs are also way left-of-center. Again, no surprise. But what may surprise some is that this is a fantastic place for a conservative law student to thrive. I get to be the one to articulate the right-of-center pov in class. And since the lefty prof would rather have me be the moutpiece for those views than his/her seriously insincere representations of those views, I receive huge amounts of faculty attention. I know for a fact that this faculty attention has "paid off" in terms of grades (profs who have specifically told me that non-anonymous grade bump-ups at the margin have gone to me because of my class participation....participation actually induced by the lefty prof's questions). I also know that such attention has paid off in terms of letters of recommendation and offers (begging) to co-author papers (mostly from the few conservative profs who are struggling to find RA help from conservative students).
Anyway, I just wanted to point out that there are large gains to be had by being a conservative law student at an otherwise liberal institution. I don't believe I would have received such attention had I been yet another conservative law student at a place like GMU or Chicago. Of course, I might not have to regularly cross a protest (both in-class and out) against John Yoo by students in hoods, chains, and orange jumpsuits at such schools, either.
Just a plug for being conservative at Boalt.
I was involved in Bruin Republicans at UCLA while I was in college from 1989 to 1993. Berkeley consistently had a largest Republican club than any other school.
</blockquote>My, how times change. I was on campus one day in 1981 when I saw that the Bruin Republicans were holding a candidates's forum for the Santa Monica City Council race. Since I was one of the 12 candidates for the four open seats, I thought it strange that they didn't invite me.
So I showed up, and discovered that they had only invited registered Republican candidates. (There was just one. I was a registered Libertarian at the time.)
In the course of the discussion, I found myself having to defend private ownership of electric utilities—this bunch was convinced that it was more efficient to have the government own utilities, and could not imagine why anyone would defend private ownership.
Based on my own experience, the guy who calmly articulates the conservative legal viewpoint, although he may get derisive chuckles in the process, ends up getting a lot of silent respect from everyone at the end of the day.
I'd wager that this sort of conduct ends up attracting more adherents to the conservative cause than the obnoxious, confrontational techniques described in this post.
It's not always easy to avoid stooping to the level of one's detractors, but I'm impressed that you seem to be making the most of your opportunity. I think it's more productive in the long run.
It generally did not take much effort to guess in the elevator who would go which way when the doors opened upstairs (except there was one Republican chess player).
You didn't get the memo? Only those that unquestionally praise the dear leader (except when he does occasionally foolish things like pretend that illegal immigrants may not all be drug running scum) can even be described as centrist, much less "slightly right of center."
I think Constantin is right. While society MAY be as a whole more conservative today than in the 1960s, university society is skewed to the left. I attended a supposedly conservative Catholic university, and in my departments (History and Government) I had maybe two conservative professors, one of whom was an anti-communist Chinese immigrant. That is why college student conservatives see themselves as iconoclasts -- because they do try and break the liberal campus shiboleths.
What from my post do you think indicates that my behaviour is either confrontational or obnoxious?
While admitting that I can't have an unbiased view of my own participation, it doesn't seem reasonable that I would get the wide variety (and quantity) of faculty attention I described if I was being confrontational, obnoxious, or "stooping to level of my detractors", as you put it.
It just occurred to me that maybe you were referring to the confrontational and obnoxious conduct of the orange-jumpsuited protesters...?
The John Yoo protests are the work of LaRouchites (many of whom are not students) who are small in number but extremely vocal and disruptive.
That said, Berkeley-style conservatism is certainly not Alabama-style conservatism. I think many students identify as Republican to be contrarian and to react against extreme left-wing rhetoric (I saw a poster the other day advertising a debate on whether the Left should support Hezbollah!). I would guess a large number of College Republicans have not seen the inside of a church since they left their parents' house and many are friendly toward gay rights.
I think Steve was referring to the Berkeley College Republicans, and praising your example in contradistinction to theirs.
I went to Cal (undergrad 1984-88, grad 1989 to whenever it's fair to assume that the ABD is staying that way), and I found the political environment rather difficult. A considerably-left-of-US-center position is more or less assumed. If you're anything else, you're apt to get trapped in conversations where you're pegged automatically as one of the correct-thinking folk, and it can be difficult to find your way out.
The BCR is pretty much what happens when a bunch of smart and articulate people discover that their not-at-all-outside-the-US-mainstream political views cause a lot of their fellow-students to regard them as scum. I knew several people at Cal who were obnoxiously and abrasively outspoken conservatives purely because the prevailing culture on campus put their backs up. Many others just stewed quietly, taking the odd opportunity to say something but generally not raising a ruckus.
I remember one sort of quiet protest that happened my first year. This is when a general campus strike had been called to force UC to divest from businesses trading with South Africa. My (lefty) physics prof didn't exactly cancel class, but he devoted the hour to a discussion of apartheid. When the strike was extended to the day of the next class meeting, the prof began another discussion of apartheid — until a student protested that he'd rather hear a physics lecture. The prof put the matter to a vote, the class voted for physics, and he was compelled to teach.
MS, the problem with the Economist/Mother Jones comparison is that the Economist is a mass-market weekly, and Mother Jones is a monthly with a much more specialized readership. Even taking the latter's claimed circulation as gospel, one has four times the readership of the other.
One good thing about Berkeley is that you can find good free market and anti-communist books there. At least it used to be a favorite spot of mine to locate the same. It seems no one else wanted them so the prices were reasonable. I never went to the books shops there without loading up on books. Moe's Books especially.
Apparently a few Republicans are willing to support the war by enlisting in the military.
Washington Post
Not true. There was at least one student while I was there, named, if I remember correctly Seth Norman, who joined up on graduation.
This also doesn't count the number of ROTC members who also were active in the college Republicans.
I suppose, though, that it is all well and good to repeat the brainless "if you like the conflict so much, why don't you go enlist!" line rather than, you know, actually engaging the subject.
It's no surprise that the Right is so vocal-- college students are pretty conventional these days. But how much of this political action is financed from the outside, by well funded right-wing groups? And what if that financing disappeared?
That could be a contributory factor. Left wingers are poor, for the most part.
Not only that but wouldn't these be the people the least likely to be in combat positions? That is aren't the long term career people in positions of authority where they send others to do the fighting? These are not young Republicans facing combat but old Republicans sending others to combat. My point was that where Democrats want charity with other people's money Republicans want war with other people's blood. And all you did was point to a second group which illustrates my case.
Not only that but wouldn't these be the people the least likely to be in combat positions? That is aren't the long term career people in positions of authority where they send others to do the fighting? These are not young Republicans facing combat but old Republicans sending others to combat.
Have you ever seen a want-ad in the newspaper for a five star general? You speak as if a career military person has little combat experience....but it's to the contrary; that's how a person gets promoted to their position of authority. Someone who has seen plenty of combat is not flippant about seeing other men die as it seems you are ascribing.
I'm not sure that an old poll from two years ago indicates the willingness of young Republicans to join the military.
A two year poll is still probably a good indicator of the political make-up of 1.4 million military members. A Republican Commander in Chief has been calling the shots for the last 7 years, so it makes even more sense that young Republicans are still signing up to fight.
Most liberals who are against any war would not sign up since there is a good chance that they would be fighting against their own ideals.
When was the last war of any protracted length (outside Iraq)? It would be Vietnam. That ended 30+ years ago. So most today's officers are too young to have served then. Now is there another reason for career officers to vote for Bush, regardless of whether they have combat experience or support the war? Sure there is. They are in a department of government where they know Republicans will throw money at them. They will like that. Just as you will tend to find teachers overwhelmingly voting Democratic -- also because the Dems. throw money at them. Military officers are career bureaucrats like any other career bureaucrats and will tend to support the party that will be good to them. Military bureaucracy is one area where Republicans love to waste money.
And you are well away from your original claim which was that young Republicans must be willing to enlist since the career officers supported Bush two years ago. If they were already career officers two years ago then it is very likely they enlisted when under Clinton not under Bush. We still have no evidence that young Republicans are anything but chicken hawks.
Oh, and CLS, why do you keep repeating "career officers"? That's not what the article said.
And you've got your stereotypes wrong. Republicans throw money at military contractors, not at military personnel.