Progressive Campus Culture: Students, Too, Need Academic Freedom

Sometimes striving to make converts creates dissidents instead — so Adam Hoffman observes in a recent piece in the New York Times.

Hoffman, a senior at Princeton University, argues that “puritanically progressive campuses” drive students to the political right. Not just to the right but to what Hoffman describes as a more radical and anti-institutional version of conservatism. After explaining, he concludes that “campuses that are more welcoming to conservatives are in universities’ own interest” given the risk that a strict and severe progressive culture will produce “conservative firebrands.”

About the Author

Adam M. Carrington

Adam M. Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.

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Sometimes striving to make converts creates dissidents instead — so Adam Hoffman observes in a recent piece in the New York Times.

Hoffman, a senior at Princeton University, argues that “puritanically progressive campuses” drive students to the political right. Not just to the right but to what Hoffman describes as a more radical and anti-institutional version of conservatism. After explaining, he concludes that “campuses that are more welcoming to conservatives are in universities’ own interest” given the risk that a strict and severe progressive culture will produce “conservative firebrands.”