In a recent feature in The Atlantic, Princeton Lecturer Lauren Wright charges that conservative students on elite liberal college campuses like Princeton’s are constantly challenged and thus better prepared for real-world discourse, while liberal students are coddled and unwilling to engage. She backs this up with interviews from 43 college students — 28 conservatives and 15 liberals at “competitive schools.” But her framing reflects a misunderstanding of what truly constitutes meaningful intellectual and community dialogue on campus.
I should know — I was one of her interviewees.
Wright misunderstands a critical aspect of campus dialogue. Liberals do interact with opinions that challenge their own, but they do so on issues that are typically grounded in productive, forward-looking dialogue, like criminal legal system reform, geo-engineered climate solutions, diplomatic engagement between the United States and China, and the morality of consulting jobs. These are debates that are intended to further understanding and make a change in peoples’ thoughts and actions, rather than simply debate for the sake of debate. “How can you have a good argument against an argument you’ve never heard before?” Wright quotes Princeton conservative Danielle Shapiro as saying. But why should the end point of dialogue be producing arguments for your side?
Because it typically explores issues without trying to tally these kinds of points, Princeton’s most robust discourse is within the left. For example, indigenous botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer’s lecture at Princeton challenged hundreds of attendees to think critically of Western scientific approaches as a reductionist, mechanistic view of nature and to question anthropocentric worldviews. The Alliance for Jewish Progressives screened the film Israelism and hosted a conversation with its producer, providing a space for complex discussions about how American Jews learn about and process what many human rights groups have found to be Israeli apartheid.
But many conservatives still say that liberals and progressives don’t engage with challenging ideas — and that’s because they’re demanding that we fight on their turf. Here are a few examples of events that Wright and others would count as “engaging with other opinions”: a panel about “The Transgender Movement and Its Assault on Biology,” hosted by Princeton’s chapter of the Federalist Society. An event with famous anti-trans activist Riley Gaines about “Protecting Women’s Sports,” hosted by the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, a group that promotes conservative ideology under the guise of free speech. A discussion on whether “a strict ‘separation of church and state’ [is] necessary in a liberal state,” hosted by the Veritas Forum.
But to insist on the importance of liberals engaging with these debates is insisting on an ideological project that launders harmful, fringe opinions back into mainstream society.
And this isn’t limited to the debates that are most obviously fought directly about the human rights of some group. The conservative strategy often involves seizing on “wedge issues” like late-term abortion — specific, emotionally charged scenarios that seem straightforward enough to ignite debate, but that serve as entry points for broader, more damaging efforts to undermine reproductive rights entirely. For instance, on abortion, although the CDC reports that late-term abortions almost never happen (less than one percent of abortions), focusing on them is a right-wing tactical maneuver to turn a widely popular pro-choice position (88 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal in some circumstances) into a “contested” one.
These debates were a gateway to more aggressive restrictions, dragging us back into battles to turn back the clock on individual rights and bodily autonomy.
Another popular conservative “wedge issue,” and one that is more visible at Princeton, is trans women in sports, which serves as an entry point for broad insidious attacks on the rights and dignity of all trans people. It’s a tactical sleight of hand, where what appears to some to be a conversation about fairness in athletics quickly becomes a vehicle for amplifying fear of and discrimination against the entire trans community. And this is the crux of the problem: it’s not inherently wrong to have a thoughtful, compassionate discussion about how to include trans athletes in elite sports. But in a landscape already rife with overwhelming hatred and systemic discrimination against trans people, the debates over trans participation are set up so that they do not remain contained nor respectful, but instead stoke fear.
When conservatives relentlessly invoke the necessity of “viewpoint diversity” on college campuses, they are often looking for more debates that engage with regressive, generally discredited, and often dehumanizing perspectives. But this misses the real importance of viewpoint diversity, which really should be focused on serving a well-known goal of the University: truth-seeking.
Rather than getting bogged down in debates over outdated, intellectually small questions — debates that often serve to recycle outdated and harmful perspectives under the guise of intellectual rigor — we should spend our time and energy on campus dialogue that aims higher, focusing on the pressing, complex issues of our time that genuinely push our understanding forward.
The essential point is that viewpoint diversity is not about ensuring that every fringe idea has a platform; it’s about cultivating an environment where meaningful, respectful exchanges can occur across a spectrum of perspectives. Robert George, the famous conservative politics professor at Princeton, wrote that in order to facilitate truth-seeking, institutions should be neutral about “matters on which reasonable people of goodwill in our community disagree.” I agree with him that there are matters that qualify for this.
I have no quarrel with debating important matters. But Wright and others’ argument falls short because it demands that liberals and progressives engage on conservatives’ terms, a ploy to launder harmful, fringe opinions back into polite society. Wright’s article supports this broader effort to normalize reactionary opinions, regardless of whether this was her intention.
True dialogue on campus should not require marginalized students to validate attacks on their existence or justify their rights. Instead, it should encourage meaningful exchanges. The question isn’t whether we’re willing to debate — it’s whether we’re willing to move forward.
Eleanor Clemans-Cope (she/her) is a junior from Rockville, Md. studying economics. She can be reached on Twitter at [at]eleanorjcc or by email at eleanor.cc[at]princeton.edu. Her column, “Eyes on the Tiger,” runs every two weeks on Tuesday. All of her columns can be read here.
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