PROF. JENKINS: Campus conservatives are cool again, and the left is lashing out
If you thought being a campus conservative was suddenly going to become easy just because Donald Trump was elected, you should probably think again.
Rob Jenkins is a Higher Education Fellow with Campus Reform and a tenured associate professor of English at Georgia State University - Perimeter College. The opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his employer.
The months following Donald Trump’s election in November 2024 were a heady time for conservatives, especially young people. After years of mostly keeping silent about their beliefs in things like traditional marriage and the sanctity of life for fear of being shunned or worse, college conservatives felt like they could finally come out into the open.
In short, for the first time since the 1980s, it was cool to be a conservative.
The mainstream media certainly noticed this trend and attempted early on to quash it. You may recall the infamous New York Magazine article about a fancy Inauguration night party featuring attractive young conservative men and women, dressed to kill and having a great time.
The article was intentionally misleading, cropping black people from photos to imply that these new “cool kids” were actually a bunch of racist “cruel kids.” Then it was revealed that there were actually quite a few black conservatives at the black-tie event, including its organizer, conservative influencer C. J. Pearson.
In addition, campus leftists, initially on their heels (they really thought Kamala was going to win), have recovered their footing and redoubled their efforts to shame and marginalize conservatives.
For example, according to a recent report from Campus Reform, Brown University has accused its right-leaning campus newspaper, The Brown Spectator, of trademark infringement for using the university’s name while allowing a left-leaning rival, The Brown Daily Herald, to do so with impunity. The charges just happened to come after the Spectator published an article detailing how much Brown spends on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI).
Meanwhile, administrators like UNC Charlotte’s Janique Sanders continue to let the cat out of the bag: Despite being unpopular with the public, not to mention violating President Trump’s executive order and in some cases state law, DEI programs are not going away.
An undercover journalist from Accuracy in Media recorded Sanders telling a group, “We’ve renamed, we’ve reorganized, we’ve recalibrated, so to speak. The word of the year is finesse.” She was later fired.
Conservative students on some campuses have even been verbally and physically attacked while attending events. According to Campus Reform, during a recent TPUSA rally at the University of Washington featuring Riley Gaines, students dressed all in black hurled insults at attendees and pelted them with human feces.
If you thought being a campus conservative was suddenly going to become easy just because Donald Trump was elected, you should probably think again. Conservatives may have retaken political power, but societal forces are still aligned against us.
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What can you do about it? The first and most important thing is not to back down. Do not allow either the smug administrators or the screeching feces throwers to silence you. Conservatives are right on all the important issues, and we have every right to voice our beliefs. If we continue speaking out, if we’re not scared off by a little adversity, we can ultimately override the hecklers’ veto.
Second, keep in mind that some important things have changed. There is indeed a new sheriff in town, and universities can no longer discriminate against conservative students, in admissions or discipline or any other area, without potential consequences.
You can file a complaint for discrimination or retaliation with the Department of Education, and under the new administration, there’s a good chance you will be heard. In some cases, merely threatening to file a complaint might be enough to get the campus totalitarians off your back.
Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter whether or not the legacy media or leftists on campus think you’re cool. By standing your ground, you have an unprecedented opportunity to help usher in a new era of conservatism while changing the world for the better—and nothing could be cooler than that.
Editorials and op-eds reflect the opinion of the authors and not necessarily that of Campus Reform or the Leadership Institute.
