Listening to the Right Voice

By Michael Gaworecki, October 27, 2003

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In the name of protecting free speech, right wing college publications are on the rise -- with help from national foundations.

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Sitting on the outdoor terrace of UC Berkeley’s Free Speech Café last spring, Seth Norman gave every impression of being in his element. His arms were folded on the table, his legs crossed at the ankles. He hunched forward eagerly as he spoke, occasionally waving his hands in politician-like gestures for emphasis. From his body language, it was apparent that he might just as easily have been sitting at his own kitchen table.

His ease of manner is remarkable because Norman is a self-identified neo-conservative on one of the most notoriously liberal campuses in the nation. He is a member of the Berkeley chapter of the California College Republicans and was managing editor of the right-wing California Patriot for the 2002-03 school year. It was only a few days from graduation when we spoke; Norman’s post-graduate plans included starting up Moxy, which will serve as the state-wide publication of the California College Republicans, and joining the Army, because he wants to help in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq.

As if that’s not enough to set him apart from the majority of students on this campus, he is in the midst of expounding his view that he and Berkeley’s other conservative activists represent “the new free speech movement;” the old movement (the one that gave this café its name) was set off in 1964 when the university’s administration banned information and registration tables from one of the main campus crossroads, at Bancroft and Telegraph, in a naked attempt to curb political expression it saw as divisive.

Free Speech

There are plaques on one wall of the Free Speech Café commemorating the movement. One bears a photograph of its lean, hipsterish-looking leader above a dreamy quote about free speech being that which “marks us off from the stones and the stars… as just below the angels.”

The October 2003 issue of the California Patriot.

“The great thing about Mario Savio is that both Democrats and Republicans on campus look up to the guy,” Norman says. “In the 60s, they took this outstanding ideal, they fought for it, and they won the right to free speech. And now, 40 years later, they’ve one-eightied, and it’s ‘freedom of liberal speech.’ And it’s our magazines that get thrown away if we don’t distribute them by hand. It’s our magazines that get stolen and our office trashed. It’s our reporters who get spit on. It’s the exact thing that happened to them 40 years ago.”

It is bold indeed -- in a time when a conservative U.S. president is projecting America’s military power ever-more extensively across the globe in what some see as an attempt to protect the world from the enemies of the “free” (free to them, not to us) market -- for conservative students to claim they constitute a new free speech movement. Certainly it is inexcusable for anyone to get spit on, and it is never right to destroy something a group of people have dedicated much of themselves to producing just because you don’t agree with what they’re hoping to achieve with that product. I think anyone would agree that the responsible students should be punished. But is there really a stiflingly liberal atmosphere on most American college campuses, as conservative students claim? Has the political balance truly shifted so much in the past 40 years that conservatives can rightly claim to be the radical protectors of free speech?

“This campus, which prides itself on being the vanguard of free speech, is actually one of the most intolerant places I’ve ever been,” says Norman. “If you want to be a Green Party member, be a Green Party member. But you gotta let me be a Republican. And they don’t do that here.”

Norman wears this alleged persecution as a badge of honor, and comes across as proud to stand decisively for what he believes in. He sees the left as so divided it often bogs itself down with internal dispute. He claims there is a trend toward conservatism amongst the common man today -- at least partly due to the fact that Democrats “haven’t created a strong platform based on morals” -- and he’s glad to lend an unequivocal hand in shaping that trend.

		College Republicans once hosted an Affirmative Action Bake Sale, which charged for its goods on a sliding scale: “25 cents if you’re Asian, 50 cents if you’re black, a dollar if you’re white.”

The conservatives on Berkeley’s campus have employed various strategies in order to insert their views -- whether they’re wanted or not -- into campus debates. They feel that linking themselves to the Free Speech Movement is key to their cause, and employ leftist rhetoric accordingly. They have also been known to stage street-theater-esque stunts, borrowing another page from the progressive movement manual. Norman and other College Republicans once hosted an Affirmative Action Bake Sale, which charged for its goods on a sliding scale: “25 cents if you’re Asian, 50 cents if you’re black, a dollar if you’re white.” They hoped to “underscore how affirmative action works,” according to Norman.

Employing such tactics seems to be a calculated strategy for overcoming the fact that conservatives are massively outnumbered on Berkeley’s campus. But this nation-wide movement is a response to more than just the fact that conservatives are often in the campus minority: The impetus for many students who identify with conservative values and are publishing or writing for alternative newspapers and magazines seems to be a genuine dissatisfaction with the campus environment and the school’s curriculum.

Nation-wide Network

Whereas Savio was backed only by his fellow student activists in his stand against officially-sanctioned oppression, however, there is a large network of well-entrenched, well-funded, national foundations and organizations sponsoring publications like the Patriot, which raises every penny for each of its $3500 press-runs without resorting to university funds.

Because the current neo-conservative movement's power base isn't built exclusively on grassroots activism, it seems their appeal as a subversive, countercultural movement might be inherently limited. It would be unfair to characterize this as a top-down movement, but it is originating from somewhere much nearer the top than did the Free Speech Movement of the 60s.

		“These publications, in my view, arose out of students saying, ‘Hey, we want conservative value development in the academy,’” says Bryan Auchterlonie of Collegiate Network, Inc.

The Patriot is one of the premier conservative college publications in the nation, which probably helps attract donors who, like Norman and the rest of the Patriot staff, feel something is wrong with American academe. “These publications, in my view, arose out of students saying, ‘Hey, we want conservative value development in the academy,’” says Bryan Auchterlonie, Executive Director of Wilmington, Delaware-based Collegiate Network, Inc. “It’s not as if they want to revolutionize the academy, and make it a conservative environment. What they want to do is give students another way to think about things.”

The Collegiate Network (CN) is a program administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), which was founded by William F. Buckley, Jr., author of "God And Man At Yale." Auchterlonie says that CN is devoted to helping students on campus, especially those interested in journalism, “be it through training, financial subsidies to their newspapers, assistance with public relations on campus, or editing stories if they need it.” The CN disperses around $200,000 in operating grants every year to 55 of its 80 member-publications (the other 25 make enough from other sources to go without CN funds). They also help bring conservative speakers to campuses, provide training seminars, and host an annual editors’ conference in Washington, D.C. (all expenses paid).

The CN and ISI are just two of the many groups that provide such services: the Leadership Institute, Young America’s Foundation, and Young Americans for Freedom are a few other organizations ready and willing to aid campus conservatives. 50 years after Buckley founded ISI with the express purpose of fostering conservatism on college campuses, a new type of conservative student activist is emerging, and they aren’t just writing their own columns. They’re also not the bow-tie and penny loafers, boys-only crowd any more, either, according to Auchterlonie, who says that it’s just as important for conservatives to “use leftist strategies a little better” as it is that they “loosen up” and “not take themselves too seriously.”

Seth Norman says that at least half of the Berkeley College Republicans are women (including the president and vice-president of the club for the current academic year). He says that there are Asian members, as well, though Asian students are perhaps not as large a percentage of the club as they are of the student body. “We do only have two black members, and a few Latino members,” he admits. And though he’s quick to point out that the Log Cabin Republicans are donors to the Patriot, he also says that there were no openly gay members of the club or the publication’s staff last year. Depending on the spin you want to put on it, this could be indicative either of the still-nascent stage of the movement, or a lack of truly broad appeal.

		A new type of conservative student activist is emerging, and they aren’t just writing their own columns. They’re also not the bow-tie and penny loafers, boys-only crowd any more.

It’s tempting to see in the conservative students’ use of leftist rhetoric and tactics a well-coordinated marketing strategy. In fact, "Start the Presses, A Handbook For Student Journalists," which CN sends to those aspiring publishers and editors who contact them, advises: “If you generate public controversy, you, too, [sic] can expect media attention.” There are sections that deal with everything from division of staff labor and generating story ideas to manipulating the media in times of controversy. The book contains a lot of valuable advice for any student journalist involved with an alternative publication, though it's also full of diatribes against “on-campus left-wing orthodoxy.” It also makes explicit the reasons for using leftist speech: After a sample response to a reporter’s question, the author writes, “Note the use of traditionally left-wing terms such as 'racial justice' and 'open-minded' in new contexts. When possible, use these kinds of terms ('dialogue,' 'bridge-building,' 'awareness'). Who can object to dialogue or justice?”