Conservative Women Take a Stand at Harvard

In fact, four of them have started Conservative Women's Caucus, which meets periodically to share their experiences of being such a tiny minority at the liberal school.

Svetlana Meyerzon was raised until age 10 in what used to be the Soviet Union. She had heard of an idea called "freedom" but she and her family experienced none of it. "The government was involved in every aspect of our lives, from food to toilet paper," she tells MassNews. "We couldn't travel freely because our passports said 'Jew' on them." Now an undergraduate at Harvard University, she got involved in the Caucus because she is keenly aware of the importance of "upholding the Constitutional rights that have been granted to us."
		Left to right: Svetlana Meyerzon and Stephanie Kendall

It is not easy to be right-of-center at Harvard, one is so at odds with the prevailing ethos. Svetlana is one of the handful of young men and women who have the courage to share their conservative convictions. Walking into any gathering on this venerable campus, one expects to find brilliant scholars who take life with a deadly seriousness. However, those involved in the Caucus - all four of them - share one fundamentally conservative trait: The realization that human beings were not meant to be humorless and ideological.

In fact, the members are disarming in their girlishness. At a recent meeting, the agenda included not only lining up speakers such as Lynne Cheney, Starr Parker, Phyllis Schlafly, Elizabeth Dole, Christina Hoff Sommers and Kerry Healey, but planning events such as ice skating at the Frog Pond and bowling against the Democrats. They plan to make their presence known with, among other items, personalized canvas bags adorned with pink (yes, pink) GOP elephants.

Growing up in Chesterton, Indiana, Stephanie Kendall lived in the kind of world that Svetlana and her family could only dream about. "I just explained to a prominent Democrat on campus that I am a conservative because I was raised that way. But when I got older, I decided that I actually believed in conservative principles," Stephanie tells MassNews. "Politics is a big passion of mine. As a junior in high school, I attended Girls State, a program sponsored by the American Legion. [It was at a Boys' State gathering in 1963 that the famous picture was taken of high school student Bill Clinton shaking hands with President Kennedy.] At Girls' State, I learned at the state and local level about government."

Later, she went to Girls' Nation in Washington D.C. "There, I met with Senators and Representatives. I was especially taken with Senator [Richard] Lugar [R-Ind.]. He took the Girls' Nation delegates to lunch in the Senate Dining Hall, and spent three hours with us. That experience solidified my beliefs. I got my feet wet as an intern in his office."

Stephanie is majoring in government. "I believe in small government, family values and in individuals taking responsibility for themselves," she tells MassNews. "I come from a small town, and I'm happy I was raised that way."

Although she says it is no secret that most Harvard professors are liberal, most are not openly hostile to everything in which conservative students believe.

"Most of my professors do a very good job of keeping their personal views out of the curriculum. Some, however, do not. I had a women's studies professor who was very hostile." (At the mention of women's studies, a chorus of groans went up from the group.) Stephanie noted that Harvey Mansfield and Bill Kristol, two well-known conservatives, are teaching a course at Harvard this term. She does not expect it to be "overwhelmingly biased."

Amanda Sharp, a physics major whose ambition is to work for NASA, came by her conservative convictions through a combination of love for Americana and admiration for the novels of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy she encountered at Trinity High School in New York City.

"I was brought up traditionally American in New York City and in Athens, Georgia. I was imbued with a love for American heritage, for our Founding Fathers and their principles, and with the idea that our government is not an enemy in itself - it is a creation of the people.

"New York, like Harvard, is extraordinarily liberal, but my teachers made me read Ayn Rand. From her I learned the value of productivity, technology and progress, and that it's not fair for others to stop you in that goal [of realizing your potential]."

		Since the inception of the post-World War II conservative movement, there has been a creative tension between libertarians, many of whom endorse Ayn Rand's view that enlightened self-interest ultimately best serves the common good, and traditionalists, for whom political activity is often an outgrowth of religious commitment. The attempt to reconcile the two, led first by William F. Buckley, Jr. in the 1950s, is called "fusionism."
Left to right: Lauren Truesdell and Amanda Sharp

How does Amanda, a sophomore, respond to the charge that Ayn Rand's philosophy glorifies selfishness?

"I'd say that was true, and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. She states the truth that you can't process information without it being subjective. She's just recognizing a truth."

Lauren Truesdell, a freshman, grew up in Buffalo, New York, where her family "was very apolitical. My parents do not tell me, or each other, who they vote for."

Lauren realizes that she has always been a conservative. "In middle school, I would call myself a conservative Democrat, because you get indoctrinated with the idea that Republicans are evil." Lauren tells MassNews that she got this idea from television and "because my teachers were liberal."

Lauren registered as a Republican when it became clear to her that she thought like a Republican. "It made sense," she says.

"I believe in the principles of hard work and rugged individualism," Lauren says. She is majoring in government, to study "the politics of poverty and the welfare system."

The young woman with perhaps the clearest idea of what it means to be an American is the one born in Kishinev, Moldova, when it was still part of the Soviet Union.

Svetlana Meyerzon came with her family to Kings Highway, Brooklyn, when she was 10, and she does not speak with any trace of a Russian - or Brooklyn - accent.

"My parents knew that we would have a better opportunity here if we worked hard," Svetlana says. "Even though my brothers were good students, they couldn't get into a university in the Soviet Union, because there were quotas for Jews."

One of Svetlana's older brothers served in the Soviet Army, and her father died while still in Russia. Her mother's sister had emigrated to the United States, and was able to help Svetlana's family to come later. "In the Soviet Union, we were stigmatized for being Jewish," she says.

Svetlana is majoring in history and Slavic studies. Along with Josh Mendelsohn, president of the Harvard Republican Club, she is active in a campus group called Jews for Conservative Politics. "The Republican Party is doing an amazing job about Israel," she says. "Much better than the Democrats."

Svetlana Meyerzon's background is very different from that of her classmates from Indiana, New York City and Buffalo, but like them, she knows the value of "small government, and people deciding for themselves."

When Harvard University was founded in the 17th century, it was called "the first fruits of New England faith." The members of the Caucus believe that if faith in the founding principles of the United States is kept alive at Harvard, it will be due in large part to young people who refuse to cave in to the pressure of the fashionable elite surrounding them.