Whither Ideological Diversity?

I grew up a Republican and have slowly edged towards the center—the sort of conservative moderation for which I’ve felt the faux-persecution at Harvard with which only the wolf-criers gallantly risking it all for the establishment can commiserate. But even RINO types like me thought this campus could use a bit of ideological diversity, and we figured ourselves just out-of-step enough with the prevailing winds to feel superior championing that cause. It wasn’t difficult, especially when the face of the right was a garden-variety Bush.

As a result, I have always viewed any sliver of ideological diversity in Cambridge as an unalloyed good. Harvard isn’t exactly an ideological cross-section of the country. In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney (a man with not one, but two, degrees from this august institution) barely cleared the double digits among students, and this year, 91% of faculty donations were bound for the Clinton camp.

Of course, ideological diversity gets endorsements in the occasional convocation address by President Drew G. Faust—and from the Republican Club and a few right-wing professors. But, on the whole, inertia and apathy rule the day.

This has always frustrated me, because I believe that a more diverse set of views makes for better debate, richer discussion, and wider outlooks. To be sure, this is painting in broad strokes, but I can’t help but think that section in my government courses would be more dynamic if half of the country were more vocally represented. Let me put it another way: The folks who Dean Khurana loves to say are the citizen-leaders of tomorrow often appear to only be looking to lead those citizens from blue states.

Traditionally, the university resolves these issues by adding a tablespoon of Republicans and stirring. Witness the IOP fellows, where invariably two or three of the six are the token conservatives. Indeed, ideological diversity is often equated with bi- or non-partisanship. It’s why the temporary decamping of IOP Director Maggie Williams to Hillary HQ in Brooklyn has some conservative alumni up in arms.

I could imagine a 2012 version of myself being worked up about those sort of dust-ups. That was before the Donald stepped onto that escalator—and upended my conception of ideological diversity.

In the long, gold-plated list of things to deplore about Donald Trump, the cognitive dissonance he gives me is a pretty minor footnote. Nevertheless, put simply: I don’t know where my policy preferences stop and my principles start.

I’ve sadly found my commitment to ideological diversity fraying. I don’t think my politics have changed, and neither have my arguments for why Harvard needs a loyal opposition. But once mine eyes had seen the coming of the Trump, there was no going back.

Usually, in our firmly entrenched two party system, if I merely dislike the name next to “Republican” on the ballot, my instinctive response is have a lively debate and then cross the aisle. When that name is anathema, and for bigotry and ignorance no less, I simply have no wish to hear the apologists.

For a while, I wondered if that was intellectual cowardice, a desire to curl up in a Fox-free zone. (Dare I say safe space?) Some are anxious to seek out the “true” conservatives as sparring partners, but this too is an exercise in intellectual half-truths. The base voted for the elephant in the room, and it is orange. Sure, he may be a bigot, but is there not some threshold of support and respectability and mainstream-ness – he is the nominee of one of this country’s two major parties, after all – that he has earned? And are universities not places where ideas can be freely debated?

Let me be clear: I think anyone, including Harvard students, has the right to speak in Trump’s defense. Yet the outer bound of the legally possible ought not to be the limits of the desirable. Especially in an academic environment, it is not censorship to tell racism to get lost any more than it was when Bob Dole, George W. Bush, or John McCain did it.

Therein lies the difference between this election year and every other: The Republican nominee’s proposals are so fringe, so offensive, so misguided, and so un-American that their inclusion serves only to push the conversation towards what a recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review called “deviance.”

Trump’s danger is that he drags the deviant into the arena of legitimate controversy. When budget policy and the President’s birth certificate can share a stage, the merger of the fringe and the mainstream is complete, thoroughly complicating any attempt to argue for political balance in an academic discussion. I can keep wishing for more ideological diversity at Harvard, but it’s an impossible ask when separating conspiracy theorists from the “true” Republicans requires a fine-toothed comb and a pair of tweezers.

For me, this isn’t an election to count the number of Ds and Rs on the faculty. It’s an election to be counted, to stand up in favor of principles held even more deeply than any musings on partisan balance. If a commitment to some platonic ideal of ideological diversity requires putting Donald Trump next to Hillary Clinton, treating him like an ordinary conservative, and asking ourselves with a straight face whose tax plan we’d prefer, count me out.

Derek K. Choi ‘18, a Crimson editorial executive, lives in Leverett House.