One Way to Counter the Radical Left Discourse in Academia

This article first appeared in Eagle Rising.


As a conservative part-time teacher at the University of California at Irvine, I became a campus activist when I saw the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel propaganda on campus, much of which has resulted in a rise in campus anti-Semitism. In addition to attending campus events and challenging leftist speakers, I have found that another effective way is to get involved with the various university campus newspapers, which, of course, tend to lean to the left.

Being an adjunct teacher at UC Irvine has more or less given me an "in" with UC Irvine's campus paper when I want to submit a written response to an issue on campus. I also don't hesitate to submit comments to the online reader comment thread.

This is an area where I think we as conservative thinkers can make some inroads into the campus discourse. Thus, I not only monitor my own campus paper (New University), but when there is a story of interest on any other campus, I go to the respective campus paper and look for a story or opinion piece to which I can comment from the conservative side.

There are some great conservative sources of information out there on stories coming out of academia, blogs like Campus Watch, Campus Reform, The College Fix, and College Insurrection. Find a story that stirs your interest and then find the online site for that school's campus paper.

Surprisingly, there are a lot of student comments that don't go along with the standard liberal party line. We need to support them with our own comments. Keep in mind that our comments should be well thought out and articulated in a manner so as to influence the undecided student who is trying to formulate his or her own opinion on various topics. It is they that are our target audience. Simply calling someone a slime or some such word is not going to influence a college student.

In addition, we should focus most (not all) of our attention on campuses within our own community. It is vital that the local community be aware of issues on campus. There are many forces in and around campuses that would prefer that the community not be aware when there are problems on campus such as radical hate speakers, campus groups that engage in intimidation, and classroom indoctrination by leftist professors with their own personal agenda they wish to shove down students' throats.

Currently, I have jumped into the comments thread in the Daily Californian, the campus paper of UC Berkeley, over the Bill Maher commencement address brouhaha. It's fun, and it seems that most of the students (who are commenting) are standing  up for Maher's right to speak at UCB in the wake of his critical comments about Islam and an organized effort by the usual suspects to force cancellation of his commencement appearance.

Conservative voices are few and far between in academia. Here is an avenue where we can add our voice and support conservative students.