Losing the Culture Wars

Last Friday night, more than 250 Columbia University students gathered in front of Faculty House on the university's campus in Manhattan. The students "chanted, held up posters, and jeered at conference participants as they entered," according to the Columbia Spectator. Inside, University of California Regent Ward Connerly--a leading opponent of affirmative action--was opening a two-day conference sponsored by a group advocating conservative education reform.

Hours later, the university capitulated to the students' pressure and effectively shut down the conference by banning anyone without a Columbia identification card from the campus. Administrators cited security concerns; student organizers hailed the decision and declared victory. "It was great," said Roxanne Smithers, president of Columbia's Black Students Organization. "They were entirely dislocated. The black people have been dislocated for years, and they were dislocated for a few hours. It doesn't equalize it, but it's a start."

Is it? Since when is shutting down a peaceful conference, at which the most hateful topic of discussion was likely affirmative action's dismantling, a success? Have defenders of affirmative action now deemed it necessary to sidestep the system and rely on threat of force to remain politically viable?

I don't like Ward Connerly or his ideas. Affirmative action, be it through active minority recruitment or the use of racial preferences, remains necessary to counter a living legacy of discrimination traceable to centuries of wrongs. But truth be told, liberals are losing the affirmative action debate. As the referendums, polls and court decisions pile up, we are not getting the results we want.

What do we do in response? One option is to follow the example of the Columbia student protesters and close ranks on our opponents. Certainly we Harvard liberals could use a lesson or two in civil disobedience; when Connerly spoke here in April, more noise was made about predictably insensitive comments by Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield '53 in introducing the regent than about Connerly himself. But would preventing the airing of prevailing conservative ideology do any good? If we are already in a minority, why further alienate the majority?

Rejecting those with whom we disagree might only set back our cause. At Columbia, when the conservative conference participants were barred from the campus, they relocated on Saturday to nearby Morningside Park, where they proceeded to gave their speeches outdoors. What symbolism! Forget the fact that affirmative action may be quite popular in Morningside Heights; the fact is, the liberals drove the conservatives off their sacred space and out into the public domain. The liberals secured the ivory tower for themselves and left the city--and the masses--to the conservatives. When they most needed to be convincing the people, the liberals fled toward one another.

We must let our opponents speak everywhere, but all the more so on college campuses. The debate over affirmative action is not going to be won or lost inside the ARCO Forum or Columbia's Faculty House; it is going to be won where the people are and where they make up their minds on political issues. Saving affirmative action will not take more academic discourse; it will take massive public relations effort--a smart television ad campaign with a healthy bankroll and a popular spokesperson would be a start.

Liberals, however, are not the only ones who need to let people speak unfettered on college campuses. Also pushing the panic button last week were officials at New Jersey's private, Catholic-affiliated Seton Hall University. On Thursday, the day before the Columbia confrontation, Seton Hall announced that Governor Christine Todd Whitman would be prohibited from receiving a public service award on the campus due to her support for a woman's right to choose. "No public recognition is given to those espousing positions contrary to our Catholic mission," said Monsignor Robert Sheeran, president of Seton Hall.

Just as liberals live in growing fear that America has had it with affirmative action, conservatives have to wonder if the future of the pro-life movement is not equally bleak. No doubt, the pro-life lobby remains strong and abortion continues to be restricted (i.e., parental consent requirements, bans on partial-birth abortions). But I would be just as surprised to see abortion outlawed in this country in the next 10 years as I would to see affirmative action embraced by the masses. Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned; the voters will not let it happen.

Religious conservatives, then, have reason to be just as afraid as liberals. If forbidding conservatives from meeting to talk about why they dislike affirmative action makes liberals look scared, the declaration that the pro-choice position deserves "no public recognition" belies an even more desperate turn to principle in the face of increasing public opposition.

As fears escalate on both sides and debate on these and other issues seems ever more intractable, will colleges with student bodies and affiliations on both sides of the political spectrum increasingly shut out dissenters? That would not only threaten the free discourse that makes universities special places; it would also accomplish little except to further strengthen the prevailing opinions of the masses. If you want to see affirmative action reinstated or abortion banned, leave the classroom behind and work on changing the minds of the voters.