We’re Jealous of Our Conservative Peers

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We live in a very progressive space. In a survey of our peers, the Yale Daily News found that 82% of respondents intend to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket. The picture is only starker amongst the faculty, 98.4% of whose contributions went to Democratic-affiliated entities. 

Conservatives are confined to a glum minority. We hear often about how they have it tough, facing ostracization, mockery, and pressure to conform. There may be a little truth to this, but even then, we don’t pity our conservative peers. We envy them. While liberal students are cushioned by a sense of majority, conservatives are compelled to grapple constantly with difficult questions. They are forced to interrogate their own beliefs and arguments in ways their liberal peers need not. It’s challenging, but it cultivates resilience, critical reflection, and the capacity to engage in community despite serious disagreement.

It’s not always easy to engage, but exposure alone has its advantages. Just by listening to arguments contrary to their beliefs, conservatives are forced to subconsciously square their beliefs with those to which they are diametrically opposed. They likely emerge from college better versed in progressive ideas than when they entered, whether through posters around campus or Instagram infographics. Conservative viewpoints, on the other hand, are more tucked away from the public eye, relegated to spaces like the Buckley Institute or the Federalist Party. Exposure to conservative voices requires more effort.

Put through a gauntlet of ideological opposition, conservative students are met with the need to more deftly articulate their opinions. For liberal students, throwing out broad, sweeping statements like “healthcare is a human right” in discussion sections is unlikely to provoke debate. They can get away with the minimal nuance that accompanies those buzzwords and slogans more commonly accepted within the Yale political orthodoxy. Our conservative peers are not afforded the same argumentative safety net. Instead, they must brace themselves for the pushback they fear they will face, oftentimes by framing their contentions in more palatable and precise ways. This pressure to accommodate and compromise can lead to refined self-expression.

Additionally, conservatives on campus may graduate better equipped to respond to liberal ideas. Far too often, students—especially those unfamiliar with an opposing ideology—engage in “strawmanning,” reducing complex ideologies to their most extreme or immature iterations, without making an effort to truly understand the nuances of the opposing perspective. If conservative students were to choose to take advantage of the vast classes, clubs, and voices offering extensive explanation and analysis of theories on the left, they would wield the power to more accurately critique them. For liberals, on the other hand, there are far less opportunities at Yale to become well-versed in conservative ideas.

Of course, we don’t want to oversell the amount of engagement that takes place. If you picture an average Ethnicity Race & Migration class, it’s likely deplete of right-leaning students and their input. Maybe they’re uninterested, or perhaps they're afraid of grade penalties for speaking up. Regardless of the reason, though conservatives are more exposed to the “other side” than liberals, they too fall victim to the comfort of creating self-assuring bubbles. 

And we think the exposure that does exist on campus stands to be improved. Ad hominem attacks are far too normalized in today's political sphere, and they are never constructive to the actual content of discussion. In fact, beyond oversimplifying ideologies, this kind of superficial dialogue can have personal ramifications. Before you know it, these generalizing retorts transform the human before you into a political rival, who can only be characterized by a series of defamatory epithets. And while one might attempt to assert that such conduct is absent from Yale’s intellectual bubble, this seems a difficult position to maintain. The lengthy Fizz threads anonymously attacking and slandering opposing political opinions serve as a reminder that Yale students are no stranger to skin-deep and hostile treatment of dissenting voices.  

As for liberal students, it’s not true that they are completely deprived of exposure – they just have to look a little harder. They also have to overcome the temptation to generalize on the basis of a couple interactions. It’s easy to strawman nuanced ideology into some laughable form when you’re exposed to only a few of its representatives. 

Improving the quality of our engagement with the other side necessitates a level of self-reflection and humility. This journey could begin by exploring controversial ideas with friends whose political leanings diverge from our own. Or maybe a shift in mindset is all that is required: to assume that all individuals, not just those with whom we share a connection, do not harbor ill will. A debate against an antagonist is one with limited room for growth. In contrast, a conversation entered in good faith by both sides is not only constructive but necessary in our increasingly polarized climate. 

Comfort in politics is dangerous. Perhaps even more detrimental is superficial and ill-intentioned engagement. Intellectual growth demands healthy conflict in the form of real, meaningful discussion, not self-congratulatory arguments or Twitter wars with faceless foes. It matters how and why we choose to interact. So, let us all strive to feel as challenged as a conservative student navigating Yale on this Election Day. 

This editorial was published with the approval of at least two-thirds of the group’s members.