Liberal media figures and professors mocked and attacked the New York Times Wednesday for publishing a guest essay from a conservative Ivy League student criticizing his campus' progressive attitude.
The essay "My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right" came from Princeton University senior Adam S. Hoffman who described his fellow campus conservatives as growing increasingly more right-wing in backlash to their college’s more leftist stances.
"Today’s campus conservatives embrace a less moderate, complacent and institutional approach to politics. Instead of belief in the status quo, many tend toward scorched-earth politics. But these changes aren’t solely the consequence of a fractured national politics," Hoffman wrote.
He continued, "They’re also the result of puritanically progressive campuses that alienate conservative students from their liberal peers and college as a whole. The distrust of authority, the protest and the disobedience that have characterized the left’s activism over the past half-century or so have arrived on the right. The American universities that once served as moderating finishing schools have become breeding grounds for conservative firebrands."
Left-leaning media members were critical of Hoffman’s claim and slammed the New York Times for promoting it and other conservative perspectives.
"March is National New York Times Commissions a College Student to Write About Campus Censorship Month, how are you celebrating?" Vice News reporter Paul Blest tweeted.
Substack writer Phil Plait wrote, "Dear @nytimes and @nytopinion: Can you please get science fiction writers to make your OpEds so they can be at least a *little* plausible?"
"Find you someone who loves you as much as the New York Times loves conservative students at Ivy League colleges," journalism professor A.J. Bauer commented.
The New Republic staff writer Alex Shephard said, "lots of issues with the ‘college liberals are forcing me to be reactionary’ op-ed (including that this exact piece has been written dozens of times over the last 50 years) but this has straight up never been true."
Talking Points memo founder Josh Marshall said, "some campus inanities, which have bled into mainstream life, probably do push some people to the right. but the posture is what's notable. the author is clearly on the right, so wldn't he be happy if all these students are purportedly being pushed right?"
"This narrative that it's the left's fault that right-wing people have reprehensible and evermore extreme opinions has been tried again and again and I'm just not buying it." Moment Magazine’s Europe editor Liam Hoare tweeted.
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The New York Times published a similar opinion piece in Mar. 2022 by University of Virginia senior Emma Camp who decried her campus experience as stifling due to "strict ideological conformity" against "unpopular" and more conservative ideas. Within her piece, Camp wrote that students largely stopped sharing their opinions in class while conservative students sometimes "straight-up lied" about their beliefs.
Likewise, liberal media pundits attacked the essay and the New York Times for platforming the student.
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The Nation’s justice correspondent and frequent MSNBC guest Elie Mystal tweeted at the Times, "The college woman complaining about being canceled in the New York Times has now gotten more of a platform in the New York Times to complain about people's reactions to unpopular views *than I have,* to put things in a bit of perspective."
