ONE GREAT BIG TENT . . . ON THE LEFT

Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune notes a rising problem at Minnesota’s prestigious St. Olaf College, a Lutheran school. Normally “problem” and “Lutheran school” means a Birkenstock shortage, or the cafeteria served Swedish pancakes on Syttende Mai, but in this case, the problem is a little more serious, if a bit more common. Conservative students are complaining that the campus doesn’t feel like a safe environment for them:

They shook their heads over the antiwar signs on the college president’s lawn. They rolled their eyes at a professor’s long e-mail message to students lambasting President Bush. But the final straw for some conservative students at St. Olaf College came when organizers for this weekend’s Nobel Peace Prize Forum rejected a speaker who wanted to talk about peace through strength.

There’s a lack of diversity at the Northfield, Minn., college, they say. Intellectual diversity.

So the conservative students are staging a shadow forum today to protest what they call the overwhelmingly pacifistic, left-wing tilt of the annual Peace Prize conference. They also want to draw attention to a virus they say infects St. Olaf and other campuses: liberal proselytizing by professors and administrators.

Those familiar with the culture of upper-Midwestern liberal arts colleges are permitted to snicker a bit, as St. Olaf has long been known as one of the most conservative colleges in this part of the country. (More than 10% of the student body belongs to the College Republicans, for example; that’s remarkably high for any liberal-arts college around these parts.) For cryin’ out loud, St. Olaf is all of half a mile from Carleton College, which is essentially Berkeley with snowdrifts.

But the Nobel Peace Prize Forum does bring a little bit of liberal flavor (and, frankly, a lot of cultural diversity) to several argyle-infected colleges in the region. It’s a pretty big deal; I remember it from Augustana College, during the brief period I was a student there in the early 1990s.

The article notes the standard conservative-student complaints–fears of reprisals and indoctrination of impressionable minds–and asserts that St. Olaf has an academic bill of rights designed to enhance freedom of thought.

I would say that the college is making a mistake by not presenting Churchill’s point of view as part of an examination of peace, but that’s got nothing to do with my opinion of Churchill’s political views, and a lot to do with Churchill’s historical significance. However, I do think the conservative students are expecting too much of the Nobel Peace Prize Forum. Any reasonable person would have to conclude that there’s not going to be much admiration of strong militaries at such an event.

Their complaints go further than this one event, I know. Still, I think they’re overreacting. Just do what I did on Peace Forum weekend: Drive home and beg your mom to do your laundry.