Champion for Freedom
At home (on campus) and abroad.

he passing of W. Glenn Campbell last week at age 77 was not widely noted, save for the obituary pages of California newspapers and the hearty community of conservative scholars. Still, it marked the end of a gilded age, and hopefully the cessation of a conspiracy of silence that denies a dark truth about one of America's most prestigious universities.

From 1960 until 1989, Campbell served as director of the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace, located on the campus of Stanford University, and founded by Herbert Hoover himself, a member of Stanford's first graduating class.

At the time of his selection, Campbell was a Harvard Ph.D and 34-year-old research director at the American Enterprise Institute, and he immediately set about leading the Institution's human, financial and archival resources to become the best-endowed think tank in the world, with an unequaled research staff and several Nobel laureates.

Importantly, the 31st president also cautioned Campbell to be wary of "sneak attacks" from Stanford's notorious Left wing. This proved to be a prescient warning.

According to Paul Craig Roberts, a Hoover Fellow during the 1970s, tenured professors regularly referred to Hoover scholars as "war criminals." It was also common to see the windows of the stunning Lou Henry Hoover building broken out and boarded up, and its doors even chained on the inside to protect Hoover personnel from assault by Stanford students.

But Stanford's hatred of Hoover is not widely known, as Hoover fellows seemed to value their roguish campus reputation. When former hippies-turned-academics hurled foul invectives their way, and the thuggish punks they instructed vandalized Hoover property, they at least figured they were on to something.

Indeed they were. In the tumultuous times of Campbell's tenure, the institution became a leading resource chronicling freedom's global struggle against Communism, and making what was then not a widely popular case for America's prime role as the world's bulwark for democracy.

Ronald Reagan called it "the brightest star in the constellation of think tanks," and his presidential administration was stocked with numerous Hoover personnel who played an influential role in both its policy success and intellectual underpinning.

This included Campbell himself, who also later served as a member of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, as well as chairman of its first board of trustees.

This last service proved too much for Stanford's radical left to endure, and in 1989, with Reagan safely out of office, they moved on Campbell. First, the school scornfully rejected the opportunity to house the Reagan Presidential Library. Next, it forced him to retire at age 65, attempted to take control of Hoover's endowment and tried to subject its hiring and research to the approval of Stanford faculty committees.

But Campbell was equal to the task. He understood that in exchange for a Purge At Palo Alto, Stanford would pay a steep price. He was thereby able to negotiate Hoover's ironclad control of its endowment and budget and a reaffirmation of its independence from the university.

This colorful history leaves unanswered, however, if Stanford's Forty Years War with Hoover is merely the extension of a political argument by other means.

Of course, the university is home to outstanding students and extraordinary teachers. But Stanford is hampered by its denigrating attitude — still fighting new and old culture wars, all the while sneering at the rest of us.

This year brought news of a Stanford course entitled "The Language of Hip-Hop Culture" where students interact with local hip-hop performers J.T., The Bigga Figga, and Tha Comissiona. The Associated Press reports a sample discussion topic: What does Killarmy mean when he raps, "Lyrical poems cock back with sharp tacks laced with Ajax."

But don't conclude that Stanford is anti-tradition. There's the annual commencement exercise known by the cultured alliteration of "The Wacky Walk." This is where the Stanford graduating class runs around the commencement area (as described by Stanford Report, the university's official magazine) "goofing off as part of the nonconformist answer to the more mainstream (and, some would say, boring) commencement processional."

Missed Stanford's 2001 commencement? Stanford Report describes the scene: "While there were plenty of caps and gowns, these generally were festooned with accoutrements like fairy wings, boas and balloons. One group of students had attached white dots to their black gowns, giving them the appearance of dominoes. At one point, they lined up and fell down — like dominoes. Some other students held aloft an inflatable pool. Still others played wiffleball."

What can we conclude from Stanford's chuckling approval of infantile behavior — and sanction of a class where students can interact with Tha Commissiona — when it just couldn't find room for Ronald Reagan's presidential library? Simple: Stanford is no longer among the very elite American undergraduate universities.

Every slum needs a property that's too proud to slide down with the neighborhood. Thus does Stanford need its Hoover, rising above a school once great, but now characterized by a sense that it is an emerging academic ghetto — and proud of it.

In the end, Glenn Campbell won both the battle and the war; building up the Hoover Institution into a preeminent voice for freedom, and beating back all of Stanford's attempts to tear it down.

Let everyone who has benefited in some way from Campbell's work pause to remember the legacy of one of conservatism's most gallant champions, and the passing of one of its most loyal friends.