Tested: Why Conservative Students Get The Most Out Of Liberal Education | Reimagining American Institutions

>> Eryn Tillman: Hello, my name is Eryn Tillman, an Associate Director at the Hoover Institution, and we'd like to welcome you to today's webinar organized by the Hoover Institution's center for Revitalizing American Institutions, also known as rai. Today's session will consist of brief opening remarks from our panelists and a facilitated discussion with our moderator, followed by a period of where our panelists will respond to questions and answers from audience members.

To submit a question, please use the Q and A feature located at the bottom of your zoom screen. We will do our best to answer as many questions as possible. A recording of this webinar will be available@hoover.org rai within the next few days. Rai operates as the Hoover Institution's first ever center and is a testament to one of our founding principles, Ideas Advancing Freedom.

The center was established to study the reasons behind the crisis and trust facing American institutions, analyze how they are operating in practice, and consider policy recommendations to rebuild trust and increase their effectiveness. RAI works with and supports Hoover Fellows as well as faculty, practitioners and policymakers from across the country to pursue evidence based reforms that impact trust and efficacy in a wide range of American institutions.

To date, our webinar series has covered topics relating to transitions in the executive branch, trust in elections, and how polling helps us understand what is on the minds of Americans. Today, our focus is on American colleges and universities. This is a particularly relevant topic because post secondary institutions have experienced some of the steepest declines in confidence in recent years.

According to a 2023 Gallup poll, only 36% of Americans expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education, a future that has dropped 21 points since 2015 57%. It gives me great pleasure to introduce today's moderator, Brandice Canes-Wrone. Brandice is the Maurice R Greenberg Senior Fellow and Director of the center for Revitalizing American Institutions at the Hoover Institution.

She's also professor of Political Science and Professor by courtesy of Political Economics at the Graduate School of Business. She served on the faculty at mit, Northwestern and Princeton until several years ago, where we were able to entice her return to the farm. Now I'll hand it off to Brandice Kanes Roan, who will introduce our guests.

Brandice.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Thanks so much, Erin. I'm delighted to introduce Lauren Wright, who's an Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in Politics and Public affairs at Princeton University. Lauren is the author of multiple books, including Star American Democracy in the Age of Celebrity Candidate and On Behalf of the President, Presidential Spouses, and White House Communication Strategy.

Today, Lauren's a frequent guest political analyst on TV. So you may recognize her. She's appeared on Fox News, CNN, CBS, Cspan, and the BBC, among many other outlets. She is a board member of the White House Transition Project and previously served as field representative for Meg Whitman's campaign for governor of California.

Today, as Erin mentioned, Lauren will be speaking about her most recent research project, which is about an institution certainly close to my heart and close to home universities. She's going to be discussing her new work, why Conservative Students get the Most out of Liberal Education. And Lauren, you mean liberal education not just in the liberal arts sentence, but the politically liberal sense as well.

So we're going to begin with Lauren describing an overview of her research as an introduction. And then I'll ask some questions of Lauren and then we'll open it up to leaving a good bit of time for audience questions. Lauren, thanks so much for joining us today.
>> Lauren Wright: Thank you so much.

Brandice, let me go ahead and share my slides here. And the point you made about terminology is great because you probably saved me about 30 seconds there on defining terms. I'm really excited to hear the feedback from the audience today and some of your questions. Thank you for having me.

Just to get going here. So when freshmen students arrive at Princeton, here we go. They're immediately confronted with something like this called a privilege wheel. And this example is from the University of Michigan. But a lot of these orientation exercises have cropped up at top universities across the country in recent years.

So what is this privilege wheel all about? Well, I asked one of our conservative senior undergrads at Princeton about her experience with it. Her name's Danielle and this is what she told me. She said, I signed up to be an outdoor action leader. So taking 17 and 18 year olds hiking.

And to do that, I had to do a training in a multipurpose room with something called the privilege wheel, where you pick one aspect of your identity that defines you the most, religion, class, disability, status. I think height was even on there somewhere. And you go in the corner of the room set aside for people with that attribute and talk about it.

Normal people don't think like this. I was really uncomfortable and I know other religious kids who were too. But Danielle also told me that being in the intellectual and ideological minority at Princeton was valuable for her. It caused her to question her own beliefs and she elaborated like this.

If I had gone to Christian college or a very conservative college, I never would have had to follow liberal students on Instagram. The first year for me here was like boot camp. I would read their Instagram posts in my head and then have to go back and forth.

Why is that point they made wrong? Why do I disagree with it? Like I hate it, but intellectually, what is the reason I do? Every single day I'm getting sharper and sharper and they're not because they're not hearing the other side. And it's like, in a lot of respects, I should be thanking these people in the end of the day because I'm coming out so much more on top than they ever will or ever could, because they don't even have a chance.

How can you have a good argument against an argument you've never heard before? And experiences like Danielle's inform the thesis of my book in progress. Basically, elite universities are unwelcoming to conservatives. Conservative students face social and intellectual challenges because of this. They're constantly made to defend their views because they're in the minority.

And so ironically, they develop these skills and this knowledge that liberal students don't. They become, for example, more perceptive and self aware, more resilient, more prepared for a class debate and discussion. And so, in a nutshell, conservative students are getting more out of the college experience than liberal students.

And just to put a fine point on this, conservative students are in the severe ideological minority. They make up about 19% of college students nationwide, compared to 48% of college students which identify as liberal. And these data are from the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression that keep tabs on about 300 colleges and universities across the country consistently.

And perhaps because of this, conservatives are much more likely to self censor than liberal students in a variety of settings, in classroom discussion, with other students, with professors. It's not the majority of conservative students. It's about 14 to 16% who say they do this regularly. But it is much higher than liberal students at about 4 to 6%.

And what's also interesting is conservative students appear to be more open to opposing points of view. View to their own. So here fire asked college students, which of the speakers with the following extreme views would you be okay with having on campus? And so you can see that for speakers with left leaning extreme views, both liberal and conservative undergraduates support having those speakers on campus.

But for speakers with right leaning extreme views, it's really only the conservative students who are open to hearing those liberal students are not. And my books, the first in depth ethnography of conservative students detailing these sort of silver linings of hostile environments and elite liberal spaces, one of which is this open mindedness that we seem to see in national surveys.

To be clear, this idea that university campuses have left wing bias is not new. For example, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt say in their book Coddling of the American Mind, something's been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they're walking on eggshells and they're afraid to speak honestly.

Keith Whittington similarly says and speak freely. Free speech is under attack at colleges and universities today. Conservative students and professors often find themselves beleaguered. And Fox News even has an entire streaming series dedicated to the decline of Ivy League universities put censorship of conservative thought at the center of that.

But these accounts of universities as hostile to conservatism are incomplete. They don't include the firsthand experiences of conservative students. And part of that is conservative students are really guarded about sharing those. And they also don't explore this possibility that the adverse experiences of conservative students teach them to be more resilient and critical thinkers.

And there's lots of reason to believe that this is what's going on. For one, there's decades of psychology research that show facing and overcoming challenges promotes well being and cognitive growth helps build resilience. And that's exactly what the conservative students in the interviews I conduct describe. They face adversely, constantly, intellectually and socially.

When they're asking questions in class, professors might dismiss or even demean them, other students assume the worst or attack them, and they describe becoming socially radioactive. But in order to deal with those obstacles, conservative students become more calculating and self aware. They over prepare for class discussion, they become excellent at alternative perspective taking, and they ultimately express gratitude for the college experience and what they call real friendships.

So I don't have time to go through the detailed plan for the book with you today. We could save some for the Q and A, but basically I'm planning for surveys with more of these descriptive statistics establishing the experiences of conservatives and liberals on Campuses are different and planning for over 200 interviews with liberal and conservative students at the following institutions so far.

And the reason that group of schools is good is they vary different positions both on fires, free speech rankings and overall college rankings. And I also include some conservative schools where conservatives are in the majority in my sample. And there's a really interesting evidence of an opposite trend.

I hope we can talk about a little bit where the liberal students are getting more out of their college education in those environments. And I've completed almost 70 interviews so far, pretty evenly split among conservative and liberal students. Again, I'm going to rush through the interview sample and protocol because I want to get to some quick examples of findings.

But what I'd really like you to focus on here is that in these interviews with liberal and conservative students, when I ask, ask them what they think about policy and politics, it's on their turf. So I'm asking them what are your most important issues that you care about?

What's your position on that issue? What's the best argument on the other side? What are the obstacles to your preferred policy passing? So it's really politically involved students being asked about their politics. And one of the most interesting findings is I see these gaps in knowledge on the students self reported most important issues with conservative students excelling at counter arguments and liberal students really, really struggling in this regard.

So let's take an issue that a lot of conservative and liberal students say is their number one most important issue, Israel, Palestine. Here's an example of a conversation with a conservative student on this issue. He said, if I were a single issue voter, it would be Israel. I asked, so you're pro Israel.

You think Israel has a moral high ground in the conflict? He says, yes, I think the way Israel has conducted itself in the course of the conflict actually demonstrates a commitment to protecting civilian life that's unmatched by any military conflict. If you look at the ratio of targeted strikes to casualties, it's better than the US operations in Fallujah or Msul against Isis for instance.

I ask, well, what are the downsides to Israel's military operations? What's the best argument the pro Palestine side has? And he says it's one I don't hear that often, which is that Israel's campaign in Gaza is just going to get more antipathy and more hostility toward Israel in the long run and breed more terrorism and it's not going to set the population up in such a way that a two state solution is viable.

So you can see he has examples and evidence. And he's thought about both sides of the issue a lot. Here's how a conversation went with a senior that's pro Palestine at Princeton, a liberal Princeton senior. He says, my roommates really know their stuff. We talk about issues, sometimes for hours.

I asked what are the issues you're really informed on that you talk about the most? He says, the war stuff in Ukraine or in Israel, we talk a lot about that. I ask him what his views on the issue are and he says, I think Israel is an apartheid state.

Clearly they treat Palestinians as second class citizens and there's no defending this callous medieval style siege on Gaza where people are in an open air prison and they bomb and tell them to leave. It's insane. I asked what do you think Israel should have done instead? In response to October 7th?

And he says, that's where it gets tough. Obviously they can't do nothing that would show weakness, but I can tell you they should not have indiscriminately bombed. So this student in contrast, says this is his number one most important issue, but he hasn't really thought much about the other side.

And this trend is really widespread across different political issues. Just looking at the interviews I've conducted at Princeton so far. 22 liberals, 24 conservatives. It's really common for liberal students to fail to articulate a counter argument on their self reported most important issue. It's extraordinarily rare for conservatives to fail to articulate a counter argument.

And again, part of the reason I think is they're in the ideological minority. Some other differences gleaned from interviews Conservatives are more likely. Likely to attend events with speakers they disagree with. When they do speak up in class, they're much more likely to be challenged. They're more likely to have been excluded from a social group because of political beliefs, and they're more likely to experience attacks on social media as a result of their political views.

And so to summarize here, conservative students in elite college settings constantly are exposed to different points of view and they're made to defend theirs. Liberal students are not. Interviews with liberal students point to many downside, one of which is that, they're unfamiliar with and sometimes caught off guard by counter arguments.

And interviews with count, conservative students point to many strengths and this sort of silver lining of an adversarial experiences, for example, resilience and intellectual development. And again, at the conservative majority schools I look at, liberals are the ones experiencing this. I think these findings have really important implications for life after college and hope we can talk about that more, but particularly for students that want to go into politics and government.

Thank you so much, I'll stop sharing my slides.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Lauren, thanks so much for that terrific overview. So I'm going to ask a few questions and this is a great time for those of you who haven't yet written in to the Q and A or chat to start writing in and share your own questions for Lauren over the next period.

Lauren, so your findings on the one hand, as you say, have the silver lining, right? That conservative students get more out of their education because they're challenged. It seems like a fairly straightforward implication would be that all students, whatever your political beliefs or background, should receive some sort of challenge to those beliefs.

So that sounds sort of, seems like there's a particular group of students who aren't particularly experiencing that. What should universities and colleges do to make that happen? You know, I think actually one of the easier fixes Brandice, is in the classroom. There are many well meaning professors who just really struggle not to wear their personal politics on their sleeve.

But when that happens, when you share your personal political views with students, it's easy for them to assume there's a privileged point of view or a preferred point of view. And it really stifles the ability ability or openness of students to sharing their own views. And actually something like this just happened in my master's level class earlier this week.

I'm teaching women in politics this semester and one of my students said, you know, one of the biggest problems is we have a patriarchal society and that it might sound like a given to some people. But you know, I Asked her, what do you mean by that? What are the hallmarks of a patriarchal society?

How do you know we're in one? Can we measure those attributes? And if professors, I think, could try actively to make sure there's an environment where the students know, no matter where you're coming from, your premises, your beliefs, your assumptions will be challenged no matter where you are on the political spectrum, then I.

It's easier for them to stop assuming that there's a preferred point of view. And that's just something we can all do in the classroom and try to be more careful of. Yeah, no, I'll certainly agree there, that faculty should be doing that and maybe there should be more.

I mean, it's sort of a question. At some business schools, for instance, faculty, you know, the way, you know, because of the kind of biases from teaching evaluations, what some business schools do is the faculty actually sit in and evaluate other faculty. Of course, we'd need to make sure the evaluators agreed with the sister I proposed.

Sure, but some sort of incentives to take this on., kay, so an interesting part of your study is this kind of counterpoint at universities or colleges such as Hillsdale or universities such as BYU, right, that liberal students get out, get more there. So as a social scientist, right, I sort of wonder, okay, there's some element of selection here.

No one's really forcing, whether it's the liberal students to go to Hillsdale or the conservative students to go to, you know, Princeton or Harvard. So how might that affect the sort of silver lining aspect of your results? Or are you concerned about that? Or have you done things, you know, how should we interpret the kind of selection issues?

>> Lauren Wright: That's a really good question. Well, I think with this type of research, there's pros and cons to an ethnographic study. On the one hand, I get really in depth accounts during these interviews. I can switch on a dime. If I do want to dig into something a student said, I can reframe the question or ask an additional question.

But I do want to do a nationwide representative survey to combat some of these selection issues. The second part is, yes, the worst fear of the selection issue you're talking about is that, I happen to be getting really smart, really special types of conservative students. For instance, at a school like Princeton and at Hillsdale, a really special, more intellectually elite student that's liberal at Hillsdale.

And so I really try to focus on within school, differences between liberals and conservatives, making sure within schools, those conservatives are Comparable, and the liberals are comparable. And actually, within schools, I do have data on things like grades and SAT scores, and they're very, very consistent within schools.

I also have relative gender balance within schools, for instance, so there's. There's some protection there. But I do want to do a wider study to combat some of those and hopefully make the conclusions more generalizable. But where I am in the research right now is I think the ethnography is really helpful for theory building.

And then if hopefully, I do this larger survey, I can ask more questions and the interviews can inform what should be on that questionnaire.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yeah, that sounds great. That sounds great. Yeah. I mean, obviously, one of the concerns you hear from the. From the right is sort of the indoctrination concern, right?

Yeah, I mean, so you find it seems a lot of resilience. And I would think that if all colleges were like Hillsdale, you might not picking on, but if all colleges had a conservative plan, I would assume liberals might have similar concerns about whether. So it's sort of interesting that in your case, you know, it seems that you find resilience, though I realize the purpose of the study isn't to kind of tease that out, it's to.

>> Lauren Wright: Yes, but again, I mean, it is helpful, I think, that, you know, that I do believe it's something about being in the experience of the minority, and I don't. To get into the exercise of comparing the Princeton and Hillsdale students, for instance, but the fact That the liberal students at a school like Hillsdale are having a similar experience to the conservatives at Princeton, I think, is interesting, yeah.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Definitely, okay, so you presented some data that was a lot more heartening than a lot of the data I've seen about censoring their views. So that, as we both know, this can be a survey question, kind of what are you prompting? So FIRE, which you cited in some of the slides, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

I mean, they ask about whether you're censoring yourselves once or twice a month, maybe that's not in many people's minds, a regular censorship. But they find that over half of those at Harvard, which ranks low in their rankings, so this is half, in terms of free speech, are censoring themselves once or twice a month.

And at Harvard, the ratio of liberals to conservatives is pretty high, right? So the censorship isn't only coming from conservatives in this case, it's also coming from liberals, from liberal students. I mean, what do you think universities should do to encourage an atmosphere that would make students more comfortable expressing their views?

You mentioned something earlier inside the classroom where it wouldn't even have to be their views. It could even be just an intellectual argument, right, and trying something out. But outside the classroom, do you think there are things universities can do to foster that atmosphere? Is that just sort of beyond the purview of what you can do?

If you've got an eight to one, nationally, it may be four to one, but if the ratio on some of these campuses is eight to one is just kind of, well, that's the way it goes.
>> Lauren Wright: Even worse. Not that I wanna qualify it in a normative way, but actually, the most recent stats I saw from Harvard's Crimson newspaper were 6.5% of the undergrads identified as conservative.

Yeah. Over 70% identify as liberal. And then there is this 25% chunk who identify as moderate. And I think, as you so aptly state, those are probably some of the students that are also self-censoring. Well, it's over 50%, so I agree, Brits are definitely doing it. It's every group for sure.

And I think a lot, you know, a lot of these reforms at the university level vary in ease and feasibility. Something else I think would help tremendously is if more universities adopted institutional neutrality. I think it really sends A message to students that there's not a campus orthodoxy.

And it's really important to see that from the start. We also know from surveys like Pew that the public really feels that students are not being fairly admitted to universities, faculty are not being fairly hired at universities. And maybe faculty should take more of an interest in these orientation programs like the ones I mentioned at the very beginning that might be administered by staff members, perhaps not based in rigorous research about what best acclimates you to the campus or to the university environment.

And so there are university policies and programs. I think it's very fair for faculty to look at, even if it's not something they see as part of their day-to-day job, like being in the classroom is.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yeah, certainly agree. We've got a lot going on in DC right now.

Sure you've noticed and many of our audience. I'm sure our audience has noticed. Well, in general, but regarding higher education as well. Given your findings, how would you try to defend what universities do, well, to those who basically are saying, hey, they're just too politicized? We shouldn't be funding them in the way we're funding them, or are there things you might do to change?

You just mentioned some to kind of address the underlying critique because I think you never know, politicians can say things and then they get fixated on another priority, even if they mean it. But these seem like pretty big statements and so universities may be in for a big political fight.

What are your thoughts there?
>> Lauren Wright: Yeah, I do understand a lot of the public mistrust of universities. I understand where that's coming from. But it's such a shame that there's this view that what's happening on universities is primarily indoctrination, because really the purpose of a university is to teach students how to reason so they can resist indoctrination and so they can question the environment around them.

And there's no better institution to teach students how to problem solve. And that's what universities should be trying to convince the public that they're still good at doing, is building knowledge. And the way you do that is by teaching the scientific method, by teaching students how to build and evaluate evidence, and how questioning your own beliefs is part of that.

And so I think if universities could get back to communicating both their value from an empirical research and knowledge creation stance, but also for the liberal arts universities that maybe aren't the R1 institutions to talk about how they're teaching students how to think and how to evaluate other thinkers.

That's an extremely valuable life skill, no matter what industry you're in, even if you're not going to be an empirical researcher as part of your career.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Excellent, so we have a lot of questions coming in. This is such a great topic and fascinating research. So I want to start to ask so that the audience can get these questions in.

So one question that's come in is whether universities might require debate classes at the university level. And that question refers as well to the fact that high school students are now coming in from high school. Often with your research is about universities. But some students have had maybe a lack of debate in high school as well.

And so universities are sort of encountering students who already might think that what a university education is is, say, parroting to bath the teacher's views. I guess, sort of two parts to it. Would requiring some sort of debate, maybe if not a class within the class, you know, some sort of taking the other side in the classroom be helpful?

And how do we think about what's going on in high schools? Or have you encountered in your interviews any kind of evidence or thoughts about that?
>> Lauren Wright: That's a great question. That could be a great exercise if it's administered fairly. And there are Aren't certain questions that are off limits.

What happens with debate clubs, especially on elite university campuses like Princeton or Yale, for instance, is there's only a small group of students that really want to engage in that exercise, that participate in those clubs. But if it's something every student has to do in a. In a classroom, I think that's a great skill.

One of the fears students have, and I didn't have as much time to talk about this during the presentation, but they often worry about getting engaged in some sort of debate, even if it's in a formalized setting, because they worry about the social repercussions. And so I think what's helpful about requiring some sort of debate setting style seminar or an exercise in class is the professor assigned it to you and you must participate.

And that might protect students from being embarrassed by holding a certain viewpoint, especially if they're being assigned to take a certain side. I could, I could definitely see the value of that high schools, I don't have as much research on the students I interview come from a variety of high school backgrounds.

But there are many of the same issues at play, especially for seniors and juniors at high school, where students are scared to speak their mind, their teachers make a point of view that they have clear. And so it's entirely possible this is getting started before students arrive at college.

But for a lot of students, particularly that come from religious schools, they come to orientation. And the progressive orthodoxy, as they describe it, is very shocking to them, and that's the first time they encounter it.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Interesting. We have a question about whether there were kind of different types.

There are students who might sort of hear the other side, and maybe they, you know, I don't know if moderate's the right word. That's actually not the questioner, but compromise is the word used by the. The audience member. We have a lot of polarization in this count And there's some evidence in political science, the polarizations has increased over time.

So, you know, sometimes you think, well, hearing the other side might make you compromise in some way. Are there kind of Is your evidence that basically the students come in with pretty fixed views and hearing the other side doesn't really change their views at all, they just learn to argue?

Or is there variation across students? And that would be both at universities in your set like Princeton? I'm trying to remember the set now, but Northwestern was in there, but also at the BYU's from the other side.
>> Lauren Wright: So the students that have the most opportunity to change their views, I think, are the students that are in the intellectual minority and are hearing the other side.

One common fear, sort of about this research design that's related, that I'll mention quickly, is that, well, if you're silenced and you're self censoring, how are you getting the benefit of anything? And I'm certainly sensitive to that sort of argument. But even if one group of students is secretly conservative, or maybe they're secretly conservative liberal at BYU or Hillsdale, for instance, and they're just hearing the other side through osmosis, they go through this mental process they describe in the interviews where they might be embarrassed to speak out.

But on their own time they're thinking through, why don't I agree with what I heard and what do I think the best argument is on the other side? And so even if there is a culture of indoctrination, at the most extreme level, the students in the ideological minority are getting the benefit of hearing what the other argument is.

And cognitively on their own time, they're getting stronger. The problem is at these elite universities in particular, there's so few conservative students and so few conservative views that for most students, they're surrounded by people they agree with. And so if their views change and you're progressive at a progressive institution, for instance, your views might be getting hardened because you don't even hear the other side.

And so you might end up in a place where you came in thinking, I basically feel this way on this issue, but I'm not quite sure. And then you come out thinking, actually this issue is the questions being posed are so dangerous I shouldn't even consider them. And you come out even more in favor of censorship and that certain questions shouldn't be asked.

And that's what I see with a lot of the liberal students at Princeton. And actually, after I wrote an op ed in the Atlantic summarizing my research, one of the students at Princeton wrote an op ed in our campus paper and her argument was that certain conservative beliefs are so harmful that we should take them very seriously and we should not engage with them at all.

And that's how a lot of the progressive students feel. And they're surrounded by people that they agree with. That was a little bit of a roundabout answer.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Okay, mo, terrific, thanks. No, that's okay. That's okay. I want to ask, this is. Well, first let me, let me shift gears and I, then I want to come back to this because I think there's some follow up questions from the guests and then, and I want to focus on the audience rather than my own.

But someone's asked something about sort of how to think about the organization of universities and whether the board of trustees plays an important role there. This is the quote. The administration and faculty are hopelessly lost in their liberal orthodoxy. This is not specific to any university. But they're saying, I mean, sp should the board of trustees take a more active role on this issue at campuses?

Do you think that the faculty. Are you more hopeful than the audience member that the faculty and administration might reform from within? What are your thoughts?
>> Lauren Wright: Yeah, I mean, the delicate balances between the academic freedom faculty have to do and say and teach what they want and protecting the reputation of the school and the culture of the school.

And that's exactly the argument William F. Buckley made in God A Man at Yale, if you remember that book going way back when, is he argued that it's really for the trustees and the donors to protect the reputation of the school. Many of them went, they're alumni, they care.

And there's nothing wrong with the people that go to a school. Sharing the particular culture of that school and its traditions and standing up for western institutions and standing up for capitalism. And so he saw a very active role for the board of trustees. So, you know, that's, that's definitely an argument that's been espoused before.

But I think there are other things faculty can do, if administrators can do that can start to fight this mistrust that the public has of universities. I was looking at a Pew survey of the other day, for instance, and the public views on what should be important when you're admitted to college are completely different from faculty views on what, what should be important when you're admitted to college.

The public thinks SAT scores, grades and community service should count. Faculty really believe that identity based factors should count essays letters of recommendation, they put more emphasis on those things. And so I think there's some compromise to be made there. But any active, vibrant university has a role for the trustees to play and for alumni to play.

That's an argument I've heard for.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: And we have a question. Just noting the audience member notes that this may be outside the scope of what you've studied.
>> Lauren Wright: Okay,
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Do you think the more extreme views of the majority political views on campus have led people to identify as moderate and so they shift how they would have identified before entering college?

And the audience member doesn't specify. But you could see this going in two ways. I could think of. One is simply that they thought they were liberal, and then they see what these extremes are. Whoa. I guess I'm really moderate because relative to them, I'm actually moderate. So these are actually liberal from the national point of view.

Another would be I'm almost afraid to identify as a conservative. Because now I'm in this beleaguered minority, and I'm gonna face possibly social ostracism of some sort or some sort of social exclusion. And so being moderate is more acceptable. So do you think that kind of either of those could inflate the moderate estimates?

In some ways, yeah.
>> Lauren Wright: It's very interesting because it's almost always, at least at the elite schools I'm looking at that a much larger percentage of students identify as liberal than do moderate. And so you would think like this moderate percentage would be growing and most students would just fall flock to that category.

But that's not really what's happening. Most of them are progressive or liberal self identifying. I do find anecdotal evidence of both. There are students that see what's going on on campus and moderate their views. And there are a lot of students that are afraid to say they're conservative.

And you know, we just had the, the eating club process and you know, recruitment and initiation that's called bicker at Princeton take place over the last few weeks. And the students were telling me that they really try to hide their political views because socially it has such severe repercussions.

But once you get out of college in the real world, I do still think, you know, I, I don't think being socially ostracized is a good thing. I'm completely on board with, you know, the sentiment that these are terrible things that are happening to conservative students. But they do excel at communicating with other students, at seeing the other side and they do get more real world skills it seems on average in that regard from these bad experiences.

So anecdotal evidence of both of those possibilities you mentioned, not widespread enough for me to say that it's overwhelming in one direction or the other.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Related to students views there's a question about how much of the liberal undergraduate perspective is just the fact that undergraduates don't have a lot of real life experience in terms of having to earn a living.

And so that actually some of the, I mean doesn't negate any of your findings, but that some of the, these liberals are actually going to become conservative or moderate in the not too distant future or I realize that maybe outside the scope, but have you read anything that comments on that?

>> Lauren Wright: I mean it's just a common, I mean it's a common theme in our political culture that as you get older you get more conservative. And the Wall Street Journal just had an analysis that says more people are Republican now than ever before and they have the slight edge on party ID this last election cycle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are the implications of that? So I do think there are interesting trends society wide. I'll also just mention, I think for a lot of these students and you know it's, I think it's a strength of the research design and it speaks to the applicability of it that most of the students I'm interviewing are interested in going into politics or government.

So actually there are pretty severe implications for these differences and I think a lot of them are unfolding on the Democratic side. If you look at Harris's campaign for instance, it was staffed by a lot of these Ivy plus graduates. She had certainly professors from Ivy universities advising her.

And there's an argument to be made that universities are part of the reason that campaign wasn't very in touch with the views of the public. I also just think, you know, elite universities are still really important because we know almost 25% of Congress is made up by Ivy plus graduates.

It's 75% of the Supreme Court. It's a little less than 11% of Fortune 500 companies are led by IV plus graduates. And so if you have this experience where the liberal students are coming out so under prepared and unaware of the other side, I think there actually are real implications.

And I'll just tell one quick anecdote from one of my interviews with a liberal student that graduated from Princeton and now she works trying to get Democrats elected. And she said during our interview, I've cut off all contact with Trump voters in my life. It's just a values difference.

I can't communicate with those people and there's no value in doing so. Well, it was very striking to me because again, she works in politics and it is her job to defeat Republicans. And it's really hard to defeat Republicans if you don't know the Republican arguments and you don't talk to Trump voters.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yeah, that's certainly seems sensible in the case. Okay, we have a question about kinda putting aside the religious schools for the moment. Have you found that any of the elite colleges do a better job of respecting students views who have conservative points of view? And if so, is this because of the faculty, the administration, the alumni, something about the student body, something else?

Have you found some variation?
>> Lauren Wright: I mean, I think there are bright lights at every campus. I mean, there are campus Republican clubs that are getting more popular than ever by some measures at schools like Harvard, because students sort of see that as their opportunity to look out for the other side and learn more about people that disagree with them.

Campuses do have active pro life clubs. They do have active religious organizations. You know, Princeton has both an undergraduate wing of the Federalist Society, and we have programs like the James Madison program and certainly Stanford has its own version of these sorts of clubs and associations. And so I would say at every school there are opportunities to combat this, but students have to be very active in seeking those out.

And that would just be my advice for any undergraduate looking to sharpen their views to make sure they're getting the most out of their education. Is the responsibility is really on them to go to the groups that they disagree with to hear the other side, because it might not happen right away in the classroom.

It's really hard to change university policy. But if students take the responsibility on their own shoulders and really try to be open and really try to go to speakers they disagree with, for instance, then that's something they can immediately do that doesn't require any institutional change.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Yeah, your comment reminded me.

I know Robbie told me George, who runs the James Madison program, told me it was a few years ago, where either a liberal publication or in a publication, even if it was a general one, liberal students said, don't join the James Madison program because that's what people do just to get great jobs after- How terrible.

It was as if he had planted it. They never had so many students want to join the James Madison program. He had not planted it. It was here, they were saying, you're a sellout. And that was a great recruitment mechanism. So if only people could plant these, these comments.

>> Lauren Wright: Actually, you know, it is an important point. There's a lot of. And I've encountered so much of this in my interviews. There's a lot of judgment that students cast on one another for what they do after graduation. And one of the problems the students tell me at Princeton is if you do pursue a career in business or consulting or you want to go to medical or law school, there's a judgment that happens by your progressive peers where they think you're profit seeking and there's a social judgment associated with that.

And there is a cost to joining the James Madison program socially at Princeton that some of the conservative students have told me about. And one of my most talented liberal students joined the program to try to hear some arguments on the other side and to meet more conservative students.

And he said he was immediately judged. And people said, but you're just doing that as an exercise, right? You're not actually conservative. And it was very concerning. And it's unfortunate because if you're not a student that can withstand that kind of social pressure, obviously those are obstacles that are really hard to combat.

And college students have a lot going on in their personal lives too. So yes, there's, there's a lot of judgment across students for sure, in a. Lot of these ways, unfortunately, related to these postgraduate plans. There's a question about whether your research points to students postgraduate plans being altered by their undergraduate experience and whether they're now more interested in careers related to their views on political or policy issues because they're being challenged or crystallize.

But maybe, you know, they started as a STEM major, but they're now heading to law school would be an example because they were compelled by their experience. Do you see any of that? I haven't seen many examples of that, but I'm really interested in tracking the political career paths of the conservative and liberal undergraduates.

And if you just look at it from, again, kind of the, the backwards direction, if you look at the college anti Semitism and free speech hearings that brought down three university presidents, you know, back in December 2023. And Elise Stefanik, a Republican Harvard graduate that had many of the same experiences as an undergraduate that I'm learning about while writing this book, I don't think it's very difficult to make the jump that a lot of the conservatives coming out of elite institutions are really well trained for careers in politics.

And a lot of the liberal students who go to work in politics either are sort of met with a rude awakening that there's those really sharply trained conservatives and have to adjust for that. Or, you know, if you, if you looked in an over simplistic way, maybe that's the reason Democrats aren't winning a lot of elections lately.

They're, you know, our institutions are feeding staffers and advisors into mostly Democratic campaigns, but the Republican politicians trained at these schools are doing really well. And so it's an overgeneralization I'm sure. But it is a question I'm really interested in, just to see how their political careers shape up.

>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Great. We have, I think, time for one more question. We have a question from an attendee whose son attends what's been described as a slightly more conservative public university. Okay. And by the audience member's description, not an elite school like those you are studying. He's a liberal arts major and has on many occasions experienced verbal hostility to his counterpoints from professors.

In this case, due to the professor's negative reactions combined with his personality, the son is developing more entrenched views, which is, of course, what I think a lot of social psychology research would expect, although apparently the professors are not reading that or can't help themselves. But the audience member says that they would describe.

Describe this as kind of entrenchment rather than resilience, although I guess you could say the views are not changing. Instead, what the sun is learning is how to play the game of publicly disowning. And the audience member wonders what your thoughts are. And I assume this is both about kind of what's resilience versus entrenchment.

And then I think given the focus on the news of elite universities and kind of some of the policies that are targeting them particularly, it makes sense to focus on them. But, you know, the question does bring out, you know, are some of the problems even bigger? You know, you could be at a conservative, a slightly conservative public university that's not as elite.

You could be experiencing maybe less on the social side, but in the classroom, some of these same dimensions.
>> Lauren Wright: Well, it's a really bad dynamic for professors, and I wish I could have talked about this a little bit more, but this is somewhat rampant among faculty, too. If they're not routinely challenged, they don't have very good answers.

Some of the times my students tell me on questions, they should really have much better answers, too. And that makes students doubtful of academia. There's students who are turned away from that profession because they think it's intellectually dishonest and they think it's not serious. And, you know, that that's very sad, too.

But for this other student, you know, learning how to sort of hide your political views or not wearing them on your sleeve, it's really unfortunate that that's happening. But that is, you know, I don't, I don't expect someone who's college age to go out in the world and shout from the rooftops their political views.

And so they're kind of learning a lesson in a way that's disappointing for the institution that they're learning it at. And if you don't have a professor who is routinely challenged and thinks about their own beliefs critically, then, yes, that possibility exists. You're not opening a student's mind, they come in with exactly what they had, but they think you're not a serious person, and their views haven't changed at all.

So, I mean, it's a point that's entirely, possibly more widespread.
>> Brandice Canes-Wrone: Lauren, thanks so much. This has been terrific. Really appreciate it. I think we'll all look forward to your upcoming book. I'm going to turn things back to Erin, who I hope will remind us that we have several exciting webinars coming up during the spring which relate broadly to these topics of free speech and higher education.

We'll have Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh, who will be doing a webinar related to free speech, and then senior fellow Lt Gen. H.R. mcMaster, who will be talking about developments in the field of history, specifically on campuses. Thanks again, Lauren and Erin, over to you.
>> Eryn Tillman: Absolutely, thank you, Brandice.

Thank you, Lauren. What a great discussion. We appreciate the audience for your great questions and thank you for the events team for all your assistance. I want to remind you that this recording will be available on Hoover.org event webpage in the next three to four days and we encourage you to join the next event here at Hoover, the National Forum of Civic Learning Week, which is an RAI co hosting with iCivics on March 3rd 13th.

We're gonna put a link in the chat, but you can also find that@hoover.org eventsciviclearningweek/nationalforum. That'll be a great event. And then to what Brandice was speaking to on Wednesday, April 30, from 10 to 11am we will have a discussion with Senior Fellow Eugene Volk and Jacob Machenga, the founder and Executive Director on the future of free speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University.

They will be discussing how foreign speech restrictions affect American free expression. We're going to also put a link into the chat about our next webinar series, Imagining American Institutions, where you'll find it, and I hope you will sign up so you receive all of these emails regularly. Have a wonderful rest of the day and thank you for joining.