Conservatism Revisited

The Summer School abounds with professors from other Colleges, but not all of them are here to teach. Edward R. Cain, for example, has no official connection with Harvard; he is in Cambridge simply to take the University up on its longstanding policy that anyone with a worthwhile purpose may use books from Widener.

Cain, a government professor at the State University of New York, spends several hours in the stacks each day, doing research for a book he is writing on Campus Conservatism. He has finished 10 chapters so far; the completed manuscript -- to be about half again as long -- will go to the printer in early September for publication sometime during the winter. A tentative title is "Conservatism in Youth: A Portrait."

Cain joined the ranks of Campus Conservatism cognoscenti only through a chain of rather indirect circumstances. Last spring at his home university he circulated a petition advocating the abolishment of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Cain sent his petition to his local congressman, whose reaction was to transmit a copy to the state police. The troopers responded by having two agents from their Bureau of Criminal Intelligence Interview the president of the University. Most of the two hours they spent with him was devoted to discussion of the 35 professors who had signed the petition.

It was Cain, however, who got the last word. He described the entire affair in an article entitled "The Legion Invades a Campus," which was published in the Sept. 9 issue of "The Nation." The Trade Editor of the MacMillan company read the article, liked it, and invited Cain to work on a book for MacMillan taking up the general subject of conservative learings in American youth.

Since then, Cain has visited Princeton, Duke, North Carolina, Cornell, the University of Virginia, and, of course, Harvard. His usual technique is to spend half a day or a day at each campus, calling first on the editors of the student newspapers and gathering information from them on whom to see next. Typical questions he asks concern the relative strengths of the Young Republican and Young Democratic Clubs, the size of the local Young Americans for Freedom contingent, or the general feelings of the students at large.

Other interviewing has taken him all over New York city to the various local colleges. His research in the libraries has been on such topics as conservatism in past generations, or the psychological aspects of the problem.

The most recent book on student conservatism was M. Stanton Evans' "Revolt on the Campus," a work which Cain describes as "pinning merit badges on undergraduate political attempts." Cain promises a broader approach (he does not confine himself to the colleges in his search for young conservatives). And he takes up the subject from a multitude of different points, including the historical, the sociological, the political, and the religious.