Sweet Victory:Taking Back the Campuses

Sweet Victory:Taking Back the Campuses

Sweet Victory:Taking Back the Campuses

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For all the talk of left-wing bias in academia, little notice has been given to the right’s growing influence on America’s college campuses. As part of the conservative message machine’s decades-long project to spread its ideology, the right currently pumps over $35 million a year into college campuses, funding speakers, backing conservative papers, and pampering young leaders with internships and job opportunities.

In the past month, however, two promising organizations have emerged to aggressively counter the right’s operations and promote progressive values on campuses and beyond.

The Center for American Progress officially launched its Campus Progress initiative in February, and has already created significant media buzz with its “Name Ann Coulter’s Next Book” contest (the winning submission was “Roosevelt: Wheelchair-Riding, America-Hating Terrorist”). Campus Progress currently provides funding to fourteen progressive college papers nationwide, sponsors film screenings and lectures by CAP fellows and progressive leaders, and in July, will host a national student conference in Washington. (In addition to providing speakers to the lecture circuit, The Nation will be co-sponsoring the student conference.)

The Roosevelt Institution, America’s first national student-run think thank, also emerged this February. Independently launched by students at Stanford University, the Roosevelt Institution hopes to counter the far-reaching impact of right-wing think tanks– such as Stanford’s own Hoover Institution–with fresh progressive ideas and policy suggestions. Instead of seeing student papers such as Jenny Tolan’s thesis on AIDS in Africa filed away, the Roosevelt Institution is ensuring that these findings are brought to the attention of the public.

“Progressive students are already generating smart, bold ideas in their classes everyday,” Kai Stinchcombe, president of the think tank, told the Stanford Daily. “The Roosevelt Institution fills a huge, but relatively simple, need by providing an infrastructure to forward those ideas to the public, to influence the decision makers.” The institution has grown rapidly since its inception, opening branches at Yale, Columbia, Middlebury; dozens of other schools have chapters underway.

The campus left looks more organized and unified than it has been in decades.

We also want to hear from you. Please let us know if you have a sweet victory you think we should cover by emailing to: [email protected]. This week, we’re particularly interested in any creative antiwar protests that take place this weekend.

Co-written by Sam Graham-Felsen, a freelance journalist, documentary filmmaker, and blogger (www.boldprint.net) living in Brooklyn.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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