Conservatives Deserve Better than the Salient

In the sea of liberal voices that dominate Harvard, conservatives are searching for space in campus discourse. The Harvard Salient, a publication devoted to platforming an “alternative viewpoint,” should be this space.

Instead, our campus’ foremost conservative publication is also our most common door decoration, often untouched until its inevitable replacement.

After a thorough reading of one of the publication’s issues, it became clear that this apparent disregard is not because of a lack of intellectual vitality on campus, but rather because the Salient misrepresents itself as committed to “free speech, intellectual rigor, and open debate.” It instead publishes homogenous pieces that reinforce an exclusionary and restricted ideology and offer little to persuade readers of their claims.

This is not a conservative publication meant to explain and give space to right-wing voices. It merely drops hateful and dogmatic rhetoric to inflame. Rather than fostering debate, the Salient insulates itself by advancing dogmatic claims with little intellectual backing, lacking any persuasive force. Editorials should at least make a good-faith effort to convince, not just anger.

It publicizes itself as Harvard’s conservative publication, but this line seems to be mere-lip service to actual, legitimate, conservatism. Either fix the content or fix the advertising.

If the Salient wants to establish itself as a legitimate and respected source, it must move past its rigid line and engage in actual intellectual discourse. Until then, they shouldn't whine to University President Alan M. Garber ’76 when people don’t want this dogmatic excuse for journalism in their doors.

Take the March edition: “City of God: Faith in the Public Square.” Framed around “discuss[ing] the role of religion in society,” the issue features editorials, biblical selections, and an interview with a Harvard professor who is a Latter-day Saint. As I read — cover-to-cover, I promise — I couldn’t help but wonder: Why is this only about Western Christianity?

For example, one piece describes the mere “Jewish legend” while seeming to treat Christian doctrine as fact. Another article lauds the idea that Buddhism and Islam are merely stepping stones on a path of Christian salvation. Yet another suggests atheism is a direct affront to God and inherently disrespectful to our predecessors. Throughout the issue, authors repeatedly indict secularism as the fault of all American woes and call upon a reintroduction of Christianity into education and mainstream cultural norms.

I’m not outraged by the classic Christian rhetoric that these conservatives can’t seem to escape. I’m just tired of it. The constant and homogenous blaming of America’s heathen departure from its historical “values” is not rigorous journalism.

If the Salient truly valued intellectual rigor, it would not disregard non-Christian perspectives. Instead of limiting the publication’s scope to mere condescension and scape-goating, they should acknowledge their dissension and support it with evidence. High quality discourse requires that the publication actually acknowledge and engage with other belief systems, rather than just excluding them.

Additionally, the Salient drops controversial opinions without any real intellectual engagement. The effect is articles that anger, not convince. In a one-off sentence in “The Arrogance of Now,” the author indicts that faculty claim as fact such “egregious fictions: that a man can become a woman, that life does not begin at conception.” Nested within an argument about honoring the “wisdom of the past,” the author fails to mention, support, or engage with this evidence again.

How would an unsympathetic reader ever be convinced of such a claim? Rigorous discussion requires rigorous engagement. A casual hat-drop of a controversial argument that goes unsupported is far from that.

Abortion and transgender rights are obviously emotionally divisive topics in America today. The author even brings up Harvard-specific dividers like renaming Winthrop House or editing the school motto. The argument does little more than drop this classic conservative goad before returning to its charge against change. It angers liberals, then merely says we’re unquestionably accepting cultural and political orthodoxy. It disregards “impressionable students” and academics as “already conditioned by said orthodoxy.”

With this, they refuse to acknowledge or engage with countless amounts of the literature and science in support of these controversial topics, dismissing them entirely as modern hubris. It is not presenting this conservative line in an intellectual manner, but in an inflammatory one.

Authors sometimes engage with controversial topics in a patronizing manner, far from the good-faith engagement required for serious discussion. In “The New Religion,” the anonymous author writes “The LGBT have gone from a ghettoized subculture to a religion for the disillusioned.” He describes gay pride and drag shows as “not merely weird,” but a new “atheistic religion” formed around social media because “LGBT individuals tend to spend more time using social media and have trouble emotionally regulating themselves.” They use scientific studies — that are conducted to help address the widespread mental health issues of LGBTQ+ youth — to promote pejorative generalizations.

It is important to have an explicitly conservative publication on campus to combat the hardly-deniable liberal lean of our campus and publications. But the Salient is doing a disservice to conservatism by publishing articles that appear to incite rather than persuade.

It must seek to truly engage in complex social discussion without dismissing and misrepresenting dissention. If it wants to genuinely promote “the fearless pursuit of truth,” it cannot continue to platform this unsubstantiated provocation.

The widespread disregard of the Salient is not because Harvard is inherently hostile to conservative thought; it is because the publication refuses to engage in serious debate. The Salient must reject its current insular platform and give conservatives the respected space they deserve.

Katie H. Martin ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Wigglesworth Hall.