Some Conservatives Have Gotten Louder. We Think Most Stay Quiet.

For some of Harvard’s most vocal conservatives, there’s never been a better time to be Republican on campus.

Observing Harvard’s emboldened conservative groups in the wake of Trump’s victory, it makes sense why a former president of the Harvard Republican Club would agree. Conservative student organizations — bolstered by election trends and support from high-profile donors like Kenneth C. Griffin ’89 — have grown in strength and number.

In previous years, the Harvard Conservative and Republican Student Conference was held at the Sheraton Commander — a less central venue — and protested by students. This year’s iteration was held at The Charles Hotel, a swanky venue that once welcomed Obama and the Clintons, and seemingly went off without so much as a sneeze from protesters.

HRC membership has surged, and the Salient — a magazine known to feature conservative ideas often under pseudonyms — has seen an increased number of authors opt out of anonymity. After complaining to Harvard about door-to-door distribution issues, the Salient (alongside other publications) will be able to make use of dormitory door inboxes.

All the while, a robust pipeline into government and media jobs offers conservative graduates a clear pathway to national influence.

There is symbolism here, to be sure. But for the everyday Harvard student who finds themselves just right-of-center, has all that much really changed?

For starters, there’s the unavoidable numbers problem. The Salient’s more conservative authors can abandon pseudonyms altogether if they would like, but you might start seeing the same, familiar names begin to reappear: Conservative students remain a minority on campus, comprising just 13 percent of the most recently graduated class according to a Crimson survey.

These numbers matter. According to the University’s 2024 senior survey, less than a quarter of conservative students feel comfortable discussing controversial topics. Our peers primarily cited fears of being labeled offensive by their peers when reflecting on their decision to stay mum.

For politically engaged, hardline conservative students, organizations like the HRC and the John Adams Society may indeed offer safe havens. But for what must be a sizable number of Harvard’s moderates and conservatives who find themselves just right-of-center, the options are less clear.

Never Trumpers may be out of luck after the HRC emphatically endorsed Trump’s 2024 platform. Those who support Trump’s policies but not claims of white supremacy or stolen elections may find themselves at odds with the 2024 conference’s ultra-conservative lineup, which includes Amy L. Wax and Steve Bannon.

For those of you who find yourselves somewhere in between the far-right and the left, we urge you to come to the table of discourse to help fix Harvard’s broken speech culture. Talk to your friends, your classmates, and those with whom you disagree.

If we fail, the consequences are clear: a campus where polarization worsens, echo chambers deepen, and swaths of students become alienated from Harvard’s daily discourse.

In the ensuing silence, we all lose.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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