A Conservative Course at Harvard

	LIBEL by New York Times by J. Edward Pawlick Order Yours Now!

by J. Edward Pawlick

By Michael J. New
February 28, 2003

Harvard students have the rare opportunity this spring to enroll in a course taught by two of the most articulate defenders of the conservative tradition: Professor Harvey Mansfield and Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol.

They will be a team teaching a course entitled: Government 1090: Issues and Theories.

The purpose of the course is to consider four issues debated today and the theories behind them. In short, this course will connect the timely to the timeless.

The issues are business and virtue, war and peace, men and women, and science and democracy. Each issue will be studied in conjunction with current policy debates and with a view to pertinent theories of such philosophers as Bacon, Machiavelli, Aristotle, Tocqueville and Kant.

The course will ask students to examine whether political theory can provide us a coherent picture of all of these issues. Furthermore, it will examine how theory and practice work together.

This course is not directly about conservatism per se. However, some of the issues, including business-and-virtue and war-and-peace, highlight some of the conservative govement's most important ongoing debates. Furthermore, the presence of Mansfield and Kristol will ensure that issues of interest to conservatives will be taken seriously and not be treated in a marginalized or tokenized way. Indeed, the two professors should complement each other exceptionally well. Mansfield's superior knowledge of political theory coupled with Kristol's experience with current policy issues should make this class a rich and exciting experience for all students.

Of secondary interest will be the reaction of the campus left to this class. Eight years ago, a similar course that Mansfield taught with syndicated columnist George F. Will met with a great deal of controversy. While no one in the Harvard Government Department openly criticized Will, there were reports in both The Boston Globe and The Harvard Crimson that some faculty members opposed his appointment. This is despite the fact that Will received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Princeton and has taught courses elsewhere.

Furthermore, several leftists even proceeded to disrupt the first meeting of the course. Demonstrators from the newborn Strategic Offense Society, posing as the reactionary "Harvard Heritage Society," marched across the Lowell Lecture Hall classroom sarcastically chanting "Keep Harvard White! Keep Harvard Male! Keep Harvard Straight!" The demonstrators proceeded to present Professor Mansfield with a "David Duke Award for Teaching Excellence" and George F. Will with the "Heinrich Himmler Award for Social Vision." The actions of these students met with widespread disapproval on campus. Even the liberal editorial page of The Crimson chastised the protestors for their foolishness.

However, if something similar happens this year, the conservative community at Harvard should be especially well prepared to respond. Indeed, conservatives everywhere should be heartened to know that counting both the undergraduate college and the graduate schools, Harvard hosts a total of twelve different conservative organizations. There are three Republican clubs, two conservative women's groups, two pro-life groups, a Jewish group, a gun rights organization, a libertarian group, a chapter of the Federalist Society, and a conservative newspaper, The Salient. Furthermore, these organizations do not merely exist on paper. Indeed, each of these groups sponsored or arranged at least one event during the fall term.

Because of the high profile of the faculty members and the course material that is being taught, Government 1090 has been one of the Government Department's most eagerly anticipated course offerings. In fact, at the first meeting of the course, one student asked whether similar courses would be offered in the future. While Professor Mansfield was somewhat guarded in his response, he mentioned that at Harvard the students are more ideologically diverse than the faculty. Furthermore, he said that some Harvard administrators were sympathetic to courses that reflected this diversity. Perhaps in the future, conservative professors at Harvard will not be such an uncommon occurrence.

Michael J. New is a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard-MIT Data Center.

HOME

Make MassNews Your Home Page