As conservatives, it’s easy to knock the prevailing orthodoxies at our institutions of higher education on a regular basis: There’s just so much offered up. But it’s also nice, on occasion, to savor some of the very real inroads campus conservatives have made in the past few years, and to consider their beginnings. In so doing, one would be hard-pressed not to trace the roots of this movement back to those feisty conservative journals that began to crop up on campus in the early Eighties. There are now around 100, and the number continues to grow each year.
Tonight The Dartmouth Review, perhaps the most (in)famous of the lot, will celebrate its 25th anniversary at the Union League Club in New York City. William F. Buckley Jr., Mark Steyn, and Laura Ingraham will be in attendance, as will a number of current and former staffers from TDR, and loyal Dartmouth alums. It will assuredly be an unforgettable event, one celebrating not only the paper’s numerous past successes, but the future ones that will assuredly keep it–and the campus conservative movement–afloat as a lively forum for conservative ideas. Even the Wall Street Journal took notice:
As the Review tonight celebrates its 25th anniversary with a black-tie gala in Manhattan, we’d like to raise a glass to conservative student papers across the country. What once was a lonely voice challenging campus orthodoxy is now a boisterous chorus.
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[T]he American campus is no longer a liberal mausoleum. A lively debate has started, and we have intrepid young journalists to thank.
Congratulations, and a hearty thanks, to all who have contributed to TDR over the years.