On a recent trip home, a family friend asked me how I maintain my conservative beliefs in an aggressively progressive environment. In that moment, I gave him the boilerplate answer. But on further reflection, I realized that I owed it to him – and myself – to dig deeper. I hope he will allow this article to function as an answer of sorts.
What do I do in college? To answer that, I think we must first consider a more important question: what ought I be doing in classrooms and in my extracurriculars?
Well, for one, I ought to be learning. In college, I ought to be engaging with texts and ideas that I know – or thought I knew – and exposing myself to new ones. In the liberal model of education, I am to challenge my most cherished beliefs and reexamine even those practices that define my identity. As Max Weber in “Science as a Vocation” would have it: “the primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize ‘inconvenient facts’ – I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party option.” Under this model, no belief should be left unscathed, no view can be left triumphant. Fair enough. But to what end? Should there be a limit to this questioning?
I argue yes. College, in my experience at Princeton, will push you to check your beliefs at the door and endorse a radical skepticism. As I have seen it, only lip service is paid towards true and open inquiry. With exceptions made for fashionable truths, belief itself is degraded as archaic or unenlightened. Belief in God? How could you be so silly?! Belief in the greatness of the American civilization? Well, that is a supremacist and hateful proposal. As I was told just this month, if I trust in America’s moral legitimacy, then I haven’t thought for myself.
How could the detractors of these ideas – the ideas that those of us who read the Tory care about – be so certain that I am wrong if they are radical skeptics themselves? I think it is because they have their own epistemological position: yes, question your beliefs if they are your beliefs, but no, don’t question – in fact, you are forbidden to question – beliefs tied to your identity. Your skin color, for instance, will bestow upon you knowledge of certain sacred truth. So, there are those beliefs drawn from your tradition or reason – say, support of Israel – and then there are those beliefs that are inherent in your assigned identity – say, your oppression by Israel. Where is the line between the two? Which ideas get categorized as reasonable versus identity-determined? You’ll have to ask Twitter, and it will probably depend on the hour.
Back to our question, what do I do in classes and extracurriculars? Moreover, can one navigate the challenges of college while still maintaining thought integrity?
Yes and no.
No: certain professors will grade based on your beliefs. There are political clubs – as I have experienced – that will let you take part in certain discussions only if you meet particular identity categories. Most recently, I was forbidden to join a conversation about the American criminal justice system because of my light skin. That’s the no. But there’s also a cheery yes.
In 1921, Franz Rosenzweig wrote to Gershom Shalem on the nascent Wissenschaft des Judentums, academic Jewish studies: “In a sense, we are ourselves guests at our own table, we ourselves, I myself. So long as we speak German, we cannot avoid this detour that again and again leads us the hard way from what is alien back to our own.”
Rosenzweig, I think, offers a model for the confident conservative in college today: recognize that we are not sitting at our own table. We are guests, and that means that we must come bearing a gift. Instead of undermining what our parents have bequeathed us upon matriculation, we can take that inheritance and share it with others. In my own case as a Jew, when possible, offer the unappreciated Jewish perspective during in-class discussions. In a recent seminar on global justice, I pushed back on suggestions for the same treatment of Americans and foreigners, family and strangers. As I know from my Jewish tradition, we can only learn to love the foreigner if we have a particular love for America, only love the stranger if we love our family. Do the same with your own tradition.
College can be an occasion to upend your life, or it can be an occasion to celebrate the life you have been gifted. With the guidance of parents, college students can contribute to their communities for the benefit of all.
What do I do in college? At the least, I try to learn from others and allow others to learn from my tradition.
The above is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
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