Conservatives ‘flex’ might on campuses

Students more vocal

BOSTON, May 24, (Agencies): US universities are often bastions of progressive Democrats, but Donald Trump’s election has spurred a growing number of conservative students to step out of the shadows and become increasingly vocal.

Even though both right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and conservative firebrand Ann Coulter cancelled planned appearances at the University of California, Berkeley in the face of threats and violent protests, Democrats don’t always have a stranglehold on campus.

“Conservative students are becoming less hesitant to speak out,” says Sterling Beard, editor-in-chief of Campus Reform, which supports young conservatives in denouncing progressive bias on campus.

The recent violence at Berkeley, he says, makes the job easier “because so many of their liberal peers have become hysterical.”

Two of these new conservative voices are Nick Fuentes at Boston University and William Long at Harvard, who are finishing the school year happy to go into battle to defend their ideas to peers in the majority

Coulter

opposing camp. Both voted for Trump, if for different reasons. Long, the 20-year-old son of Chinese immigrants from Oklahoma pursuing a double major in computer science and government, is a Republican in the traditional sense of the word -- anti-abortion, socially and fiscally conservative, and determined, as he tells it, to “conserve the good things.”

Long says his reasons for voting Trump are “complex” and admits he was uncomfortable broadcasting that fact right after the election, when the torrent of antiTrump sentiment led some to suggest the Republican’s supporters were “fascists.”

But the keen debater says even though “actively involved” conservatives account for less than five percent of the student body at Harvard, Trump’s win has given them more of a platform to air their ideas.

“Lots of people were wondering, ‘How did this happen? Who was it that voted for him?’” Long says. The election “did give us a voice, in the sense that people were more willing to listen to us.”

Fuentes, an 18-year-old studying international relations and political science, is more radical. He identifies himself with the “new right” or “alt-right,” wants to halt immigration and denounces the political correctness he sees “everywhere.”

Vice-President Mike Pence similarly spoke out against political correctness Sunday in a commencement speech at Notre Dame University, calling it “nothing less than suppression of the freedom of speech.”

Dozens of students walked out in protest as Pence started to speak at the university in his home state of Indiana.

Fuentes is an ardent Trump supporter and with a taste for the provocative, walks around Boston in “Make America Great Again” Trump campaign hats, even if it makes him a “pariah” by his own admission.

The often-combative Texas Board of Education would expand its ability to reject textbooks it doesn’t like, rolling back limits that have been in place for more than two decades, under a proposal on the verge of clearing the state Legislature.

Some fear the bill’s benign language would, intentionally or not, return broad influence to a veteran bloc of social conservatives on the 15-member, elected board. That same group previously has attempted to deemphasize lessons on evolution and climate change, and insist that publishers edit classroom materials to better conform to Republican ideology.

How impactful is the textbook market in Texas? Large enough that changes made for the state can affect what’s taught nationwide, though modern, electronic classroom materials have made it easier to tailor lessons to individual states and school districts — thus diluting Texas’ national influence some in recent years.

The board’s ability to influence what gets published in textbooks — even sometimes line-editing materials to remove things its members opposed — was far greater before 1995. That year, the Texas Legislature passed an omnibus education bill that included limits allowing the board only to reject textbooks when discovering factual errors or material that didn’t conform to Texas curriculum standards, which mandate what gets taught its about 5.3 million students.

Texas’ more than 1,000 school districts don’t have to use board-approved textbooks, but most do.

Some say a bill approved late Tuesday in the Texas House and previously passed by the Senate would return sweeping influence to the board. The proposal would require that all materials on the Board of Education’s instructional list be “suitable for the subject and grade level” for which it was submitted. That seems relatively tame, but classroom advocates say it is subjective enough to force wholesale textbook rewrites.

“Board members will take this bill as an open invitation to return to the days of almost unrestrained bullying of publishers to change or censor textbook content for purely political reasons,” said Dan Quinn, a spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network, a board watchdog group and frequent critic. “The board will become an even bigger political circus than it has been.”

The proposal’s sponsor, Sen Kel Seliger, doesn’t see it as a major expansion of power.

“There’s been a lot of weirdness, but as it’s described in the bill, it’s about age and grade appropriateness and things like that,” said Seliger, a Republican from Amarillo. “The culture wars won’t be played out in legislation.”

But Seliger also acknowledged that the proposed changes could have unintended consequences: “Absolutely there will be factions that try to stretch and look for things like ideological purity.”

Both the Texas House and Senate are Republicancontrolled, but state lawmakers have long been wary of increasing board influence. In 2011, the Texas Senate voted to expand the board’s veto power over classroom electronic materials. After the media called attention to the move, the Senate took the unusual step of returning hours later and amending its already passed legislation to remove that expansion.

There was no debate on the House floor Tuesday night, as lawmakers passed it. But one late modification was inserted by Houston Democratic Rep Alma Allen and is meant to ensure that instructional materials comply with “contemporary scholarship” while empowering outside academic experts to be part of the process. That amendment may not survive on the final bill, but it ensures it’ll have to head back to the Senate.