The Roosevelt Institution

The Nation - The New Face of the Campus Left

The New Face of the Campus Left
January 26th, 2006

When a group called Campus Progress launched its effort to promote progressive values on college campuses in the fall of 2004, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wondered: "Isn't that a bit like pumping sand into the Mojave Desert?"...

The assumption that America's campuses are impenetrable bastions of liberalism--where left-leaning faculty predominate, progressive student activism flourishes and conservatism is fiercely marginalized--still rules the day. But in reality, since the 1970s the conservative movement has become the dominant political force on many American campuses. This sea change is not simply a reflection of some students' increasingly right-wing views. Each year, conservative groups pour more than $35 million into hundreds of college campuses...

But help has arrived. After three decades of unanswered advances by the right, the progressive movement is no longer leaving students to fend for themselves... A handful of organizations...have emerged in the past year to counter the right's campus operations. These groups are offering resources, ideas and training designed to patch up many of the holes that have long deflated the student left...

The Roosevelt Institution...is billed as the nation's first progressive student think tank. [Their] message--that progressive students can and should be fighting in the war of ideas--is resonating with thousands of students across the country; the Roosevelt Institution already boasts chapters at 120 campuses.

Read the rest of The Nation's excellent cover story detailing progressive organization on campuses across the country, including an extensive section on Roosevelt, at the Nation's website.