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Twelve years ago, the Princeton Tory published an opinion piece by Toni Alimi ’13 entitled “Princeton, Religion, and Politics — The Politics of Catholics and Protestants on Campus.” Alimi’s piece centered on the observation that Catholics were seriously overrepresented in Princeton’s conservative organizations in comparison to other non-Catholic Christians. That is no longer true – the Tory, like other right-leaning campus organizations, no longer has a pronounced Catholic influence.
Catholicism is the single largest religious denomination in the world, in America, and at Princeton. Here, Catholics make up roughly one of every six undergraduates, according to recent surveys. By my own estimate, I’d say that Catholics make up about a quarter to a third of political conservatives at Princeton. Yet, in the last two years, only one Tory opinion piece was written by a Catholic other than myself – only one of over 70 opinion articles.* Catholics are well represented at Princeton and even better represented among conservative-leaning students, but they are strangely uninvolved with the Tory, the most established conservative group on campus. This differs starkly from just four or five years ago, when Catholics were in the majority on the Tory masthead. Granted, the constant flux of students at a university can engender demographic volatility, but a change this drastic should raise eyebrows, especially when it concerns Princeton’s largest religious demographic. Catholics have stopped writing for the Tory almost entirely. I think this is concerning and worth analyzing.
What has caused this general Catholic apathy toward the Tory? I believe it stems from indifference to the two issues on which the Tory’s content overwhelmingly focuses: free speech and Israel. These two issues are unimportant to Princeton’s conservative Catholics. While it’s true that the Tory doesn’t assign topics or have an institutional focus on these two issues, there are plenty of good reasons why one would perceive the Tory as centered on these topics. In the last two years, Israel has been the topic of roughly 25 percent of Tory articles, with free speech coming in at roughly 20 percent – far outpacing any other topics. The two biggest Tory-sponsored events in the past year were a panel discussion on academic free speech and a talk given by Abigail Shrier on, unsurprisingly, free speech and cancel culture. This January, the Tory will be leading its first group trip since the Covid-19 pandemic began. The group, organized and funded by the Tory, will go to Israel with the goal of building connections and encouraging mutual support between conservative Princetonians and Israeli institutions.
Moreover, the coverage of free speech- and Israel-related issues in the Tory has been exclusively pro-Israel and pro-free speech, even though opposing views are not uncommon among conservatives. This is especially interesting given the prevailing penchant for “viewpoint diversity” among many Tory authors and speakers. Although, again, the Tory doesn’t have an official institutional focus or stance on these two issues, it makes sense that students might perceive the Tory as being not Princeton’s outlet for conservative thought but rather something like the media arm of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition and Tigers for Israel. The prominent free speech- and Israel-focused events, the sheer number of articles on free speech and Israel, and the one-sided nature of the articles could easily engender such a reputation.
The Tory’s perceived focus on free speech and Israel can be clearly shown, but that doesn’t fully explain why Catholics are uninterested in writing about these issues or why Catholic participation in the Tory would drop so precipitously. Nevertheless, when I asked various Catholic undergraduates why so few of them write for the Tory, they stressed these same two issues, saying that it’s “obvious” that Catholics wouldn’t be excited to write for a “two-issue paper” whose issues are unimportant to Catholics. Traditional Catholic belief and practice provide helpful context for this phenomenon. Despite volumes of papal encyclicals and similar documents on many topics of modern political importance (economics, sexual ethics, the environment, etc.), the Catholic Church has never promulgated writings directly concerned with free speech or Israel. Free speech and Israel are two things the Catholic Church has historically opposed or, at the very least, refused explicit requests to support. And while the Catholic magisterium has never issued an unequivocal condemnation of free speech or Israel, the historic practice of the Catholic Church has strongly disfavored Israeli statehood and favored severe restrictions on speech, as evidenced by repeated papal condemnations of Enlightenment liberalism, the various Catholic Inquisitions, and repeated papal refusals to endorse Zionism. Israel and free speech have never been particularly important in the Catholic tradition, so it makes sense that Catholics would be unenthusiastic about writing on these topics or contributing to a publication with a reputation of being centered on them.
This Catholic apathy cannot be explained away as general Catholic political apathy. Catholic undergraduates remain heavily involved in other groups at Princeton with conservative reputations, such as Princeton Pro-Life and the Anscombe Society. In addition to these formal settings, informal discussions of political and social issues are a popular pastime among Catholic conservatives on Princeton’s campus. Nor can the lack of Tory participation be explained by changes in the Catholic Church; Church doctrine and practice are no different than they were five years ago, when Catholics were the majority at the Tory. And while I can’t say whether a free speech and Israel focus originally caused the disaffiliation of Catholics from the Tory, or vice versa, the bottom line is that Catholics don’t write for the Tory anymore and are generally uninterested in doing so as long as the Tory maintains its current reputation as the “Israel and free speech” publication. This should be of concern to those who love the Tory, because Catholics could contribute a lot to the Tory and have done so in the past. Conservative Catholics at Princeton (I include myself among them) tend to hold unorthodox conservative viewpoints. This encourages debate and discussion, which Tory authors value but which are often lacking in the Tory itself. Conservative groups, the Tory being no exception, run the risk of becoming political echo chambers, though they officially welcome or even encourage differences of opinion. There is no reason Princeton’s “journal of conservative and moderate political thought” should contain only articles that express essentially the same generic conservative viewpoints. Nothing looks more silly than a room full of people with identical opinions on free speech, Israel, COVID-19, China, the Daily Princetonian, and other popular Tory article topics but who claim to support viewpoint diversity and urging people to think deeply, think critically, and think for themselves. True political diversity and debate at the Tory is all but dead. Maybe Catholic conservatives are the ones who can bring it back to life.
*Catholic-identifying Tories have written several News pieces in that period
The above is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
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