Trumpers Spotted At Harvard!

That's according to the Harvard Crimson: A Look into the Lives of Conservative Students on Campus. Follow the link if you want a vicarious look into the lives of conservative students on the Harvard campus. However, what interests me is the more speculative notion that, small as the conservative minority at Harvard may be, doesn't that make you wonder about what was going on across the Fruited Plain--and especially in those disputed "swing" portions of it? 

The Crimson discovered--to its shock and dismay--that 7.1% of incoming students this year were willing to state that they intended to vote for Trump. Moreover, they acknowledged that the "shy Trump supporter" factor may have been in play. We are talking about a bastion of Left liberalism--the prestige educational belly of that particular beast, if you will. To me, this is one more suggestion of just how very improbable a supposed Biden victory is. Chalk it up alongside outdrawing Obama, doing worse than Hillary in all metro areas--except, so very conveniently, in Philly, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Phoenix.

Despite nearly half of the country voting for President Donald J. Trump, 90 percent of incoming students in the class of 2024 reported they would vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr., compared to just 7.1 percent for Trump, according to a fall 2020 Crimson survey. In 2012, meanwhile, a Crimson straw poll of students found a higher percentage — 17 percent — supported Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Additionally, in The Crimson's freshman survey, only 7.4 percent of the current freshman class identified as somewhat to very conservative, a marked drop even from the 12.4 percent of incoming students for the class of 2023.

Yet the ever-shrinking coalition of conservative students on campus are not backing down. In 2020, the Harvard Republicans endorsed Trump for president, citing his commitment to protecting “American traditions” and preserving the country’s “moral order.” That marked a departure from 2016, when the group gained national attention for rejecting then-candidate Trump, the first time in the Harvard Republicans' 128-year history that it had declined to endorse the party’s nominee.

Despite that shift, multiple members of the club in interviews for this piece quickly grew hesitant to divulge their views on the president, even after speaking at length about their political positions. For many, that hesitance reflects what they believe is a culture on campus among students and faculty to silence and marginalize conservatives.

Life on campus? A brief excerpt from the much longer article:

“It's kind of treated as, if you're conservative, then that means you've been tricked into doing something and you're just ignorant and don't understand how the world works,” she said. “It's not treated rather as something that you've deliberated about and come to decide on your own terms.”

Benjamin R. Paris ’21 similarly said he feels there has been a tendency to disregard more conservative viewpoints as illegitimate.

...

“The idea is not, anymore, ‘You are wrong,’ but instead, ‘You are not actually worthy of talking,’” he added.

Paris said he specifically resents what he perceives as an unfair stigma against religious beliefs influencing political decision-making.

“It’s that the progressives or the left-of-center in general are allowed to bring their own kind of secular fit into the room,” he added. “But we are being asked to leave our beliefs at the door.”

Sadl, it probably won't get better in the real world after graduation, judging by Dems' open plans to cancel all but themselves in public--and even increasingly private--life.