By February of this year, my frustration with the biased coverage of the Daily Pennsylvanian, the University of Pennsylvania’s legacy student publication, had become irreconcilable. The paper’s leadership had consistently employed an ideological tilt to shape campus discourse, with their reporting of the protests following the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel and their strongly discouraging or outright censoring my probes into Penn’s draconian Covid-19 regulations being two prime examples. So a group of fellow students and I launched a new campus publication, the Pennsylvania Post. We are not alone in our efforts, however. In recent years, the Yale Free Press, Harvard Salient, and Columbia Sundial have emerged to fulfill similar needs at their respective schools. Heterodox and conservative journalism is undergoing a revival in the Ivy League.
That the Ivy League, even with its progressive intellectual conformity, should periodically give rise to new conservative voices shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has engaged with young conservatives attending one of these schools. Recently in The Atlantic, Princeton professor Lauren Wright highlighted what many of us have known for years—that intellectually heterodox students tend to come out of top schools sharper than their progressive peers. With their ideas under greater scrutiny, they must develop strong critical thinking skills to defend their viewpoints. Yet, they are underrepresented in legacy campus publications.
Jonas Du, editor-in-chief of the Sundial and a rising senior at Columbia University, explained how this phenomenon often plays out at the school’s legacy newspaper, the Daily Spectator: “[W]hen you have an environment where liberals outnumber conservatives six to one, you’re going to have lots of suppression of ideas . . . and especially in circles like the Daily Spectator, you can see how that would manifest.” Bias against conservative voices and perspectives is particularly strong in the opinion sections of campus papers, Du explained, which are “arguably more liberal than the student body in general.” The bias also affects news coverage.
After seeing how the Daily Spectator staff and readership treated criticism of the university’s Covid-19 policies during his freshman year, Du saw a need for a paper “dedicated to publishing that kind of well written but provocative commentary that challenges students and brings new ideas to ultimately improve the campus culture of discourse.” The reemergence of the Sundial earlier this year has delivered on this promise. (This is the second version of a paper with this name at the school; the first ceased publication in the 1980s.)
The paper’s mission is to avoid an “ideological line” and instead challenge its readers and writers to “become intellectually vigorous, emotionally resilient, and morally stronger.” Publishing a range of opinion and reporting, the Sundial has prioritized controversial issues. The paper played a key role in covering the anti-Israel protests that disrupted Columbia this spring, showing the university community that reasonable people can have fundamental disagreements while still doing quality journalism.
The lock-step orthodoxy enforced by many elite-school papers should come as no surprise, given their staffs’ typical ideological makeup. In its 2023 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) report, the Daily Princetonian found that 90.2 percent of its editors identified as “left-wing.” This tracks closely with figures from professional journalism. A 2022 study conducted by the Syracuse Newhouse School of Journalism found that only 3.4 percent of journalists identified as Republican, compared with 25 percent in 1971.
The imbalance has motivated many, like Harvard Salient editor-in-chief and rising senior Alex Hughes, to start or revive explicitly conservative publications. Hughes explained, “While I appreciate those who try to promote heterodox ideas through left-leaning publications, I think our editorial independence allows us to make arguments and discuss issues that other papers wouldn’t address. . . . A conservative community of the strength, size, or closeness of the one we’ve been able to build simply couldn’t exist under the auspices of a publication like the Crimson.”
Hughes also pointed out that the Salient’s openly conservative editorial stance allows it to platform and normalize right-of-center ideas in the broader campus environment. “I think the Salient exposes our classmates to questions and ways of thinking—in other words, a worldview—with which they are familiar only through unflattering portraits painted by liberal media and professors,” he said.
Hughes explained that, during the period in which the Salient was out of print—from 2014 until its revival last year—“conservative groups on campus had become increasingly inward-focused.” With its explicitly conservative voice, the Salient can be both an advocate and a haven for the likeminded. As a result, it has focused on producing commentary (via print, online, and podcasts) on larger national issues, in addition to those affecting Harvard’s campus.
A few longstanding center-right outlets have been crucial to sustaining and cultivating intellectual vitality at Ivy League schools. These publications have become particularly important, given that youth-mobilization efforts on campus have frequently focused on cultivating populist or reactionary voices. The Dartmouth Review and the Princeton Tory are two of the best-known and most vibrant of these publications. Dartmouth Review editor-in-chief and rising senior Zoe Dominguez said that she found this center-right tradition attractive. “The ‘conservative’ club on campus at the time essentially functioned as an unaffiliated chapter of Turning Point USA, which wasn’t the sort of outlet I was looking for. I sought out a group with a more intellectual, or at least discursive, ethos, and I found that in the Dartmouth Review.” The Review, she explained, is an independent publication “governed by an ideology that transcends the staunch left-or-right stance society often takes.”
Editor-in-chief and rising senior Benjamin Woodard explains that the Princeton Tory’s goals have slowly come to fruition since its founding in 1986. The Tory has provided Woodard with the “opportunity to test out ideas and arguments in writing,” particularly on political and legal topics. This is an opportunity that many conservative students lack at schools where their ideas are taboo. Woodard adds: “the Tory today serves as a connecting hub for many other Princeton conservative organizations,” fostering the type of environment that can help students grow intellectually.
These papers rely for support on groups like the Fund for American Studies’ Student Journalism Association and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Collegiate Network, as well as strong alumni networks. These organizations provide training, funding, and community backing for up-and-coming journalists, ensuring that knowledge gets passed down within and between these publications.
As concerns mount about the quality of intellectual life in American higher education, some public universities are receiving aid in the form of state legislature-funded civics institutes. Students at the Ivies are making their own efforts to improve the campus climate. America’s future leaders should be exposed to robust, diverse intellectual environments to prepare them to engage constructively with their fellow citizens. Thanks to these student journalists, the Ivies have a better shot at doing just that.
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