The Harvard Conservative: A Noble Loser No More

By Jackson Barr

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Harvard’s ideological bias should worry all conservative students during their time at the College. To enter an institution where about 10% of faculty and an only slightly larger percentage of students share your beliefs can be, and is, daunting. This feeling, however, has the capacity to transform into a sense of hopelessness that only harms the conservative cause. In fact, for conservatives at Harvard in recent years, that transformation has happened. This dangerous and ascendant attitude is that of the noble loser.

The noble loser’s core principle is an extreme pessimism. Facing an environment in which he is outnumbered, the noble loser says it is impossible to convince or even be understood by his interlocutors. So, says the noble loser, if he must go down, he ought to go down swinging, not giving an inch on his beliefs — in a word, “nobly.”

Yet, the noble loser’s stunning dearth of hope inevitably leads to his own failure. If the point is losing, if the possibility of victory (that is, of productive discourse, improving mutual understanding, and changing minds) is presumed to be impossible, then why try at all? Thus, a self-congratulatory approach to conservative life in the academy predominates, and thereby, conservatives surrender any opportunity to meaningfully influence campus. This loss manifests in two ways: the conservative either excises himself from political debate or treats debate as performance art rather than discourse.

By the first manifestation of the noble loser attitude, conservatives collapse into themselves. This approach was typified in a Crimson editorial from two years ago written by the former President of the Harvard Republican Club, which posited that Harvard conservatives owe broader campus “nothing.” Yet, it is also reflected more subtly in the number of conservatives who decline to speak up in class, for instance. A recent study showed that 63.2% of self-described “conservative” students in Harvard’s graduating class “frequently” avoided saying their views in public. In comparison, only 7.3% of “progressive” students said the same. Of course, some of this self-censorship owes to a real potential of exclusion. Still, if in an environment teleologically committed to truth, conservatives are electing not to contribute, then they must be, at some level, devoid of hope, so that the only option is silence.

While conservative hermitage should be avoided, it is the latter form of the noble loser attitude — the view that debate is a form of strange performance art — that is especially pernicious. Because, as much as noble losers may wish to retreat from campus, interacting with those outside their carefully vetted bubble is inevitable. In fact, there are students — at Harvard and beyond — who are interested in considering conservative convictions. Nevertheless, the noble loser, viewing communication as useless, necessarily regards all interlocutors outside of his circle as liars, invested in dialogue only as a means of boosting their Intellectual Vitality social credit score. After all, if they were sincerely interested in conservatism, the noble loser would have to reconsider his pessimism, which would be fatal. The only productive avenue left for the noble loser, then, is his nobility, his self-righteousness, which he affirms by resorting to those arguments that will put the greatest distance between his own beliefs and those of the intolerant liar before him. Thus, the noble loser turns to extreme positions, often ones that go far beyond conservatism.

To demonstrate, see the recent policy change from the John Adams Society to exclude women. This was a decision made not on any intellectual basis, which would be appropriate for a debate society, but on that of sex alone. As such, it lays bare the debate-as-a-performance manifestation of noble loserdom, whereby whole groups (here, women) are deemed beyond the pale of engagement and cut off, owing not to any substantive evidence, but because of how the noble loser feels about them in relation to his sanctimoniousness, and thus acts so as to put as much distance — ideological, and in this case, physical — between himself and them. The natural terminus of this approach is, at first, mere intolerance, eventually blindness, and finally, further disaffection, as the definition of who and what is “conservative” at Harvard ever-narrows.

In short, the noble loser succeeds only in estranging himself from the rest of society, whether by his silence or his warped participation. In that way, the attitude is a dangerously self-fulfilling prophecy: if its only achievement is to alienate the conservative from his community, its very success is the failure of all the loser’s other ideological objectives. But perhaps this is what the loser wants. After all, when the loser has proven his failure, he can turn around and proclaim his own superiority. Having alienated himself from the rest of the world, he can proclaim, “See? I knew there was no hope! I said I would lose, and look at that, I did!” For the loser, this loss proves his purity. It is exactly what he wants, no matter what it destroys.

More important than its moral failings, though, is that the noble loser attitude is false.

To be sure, Harvard is demonstrably liberal, and it has progressive elements that are hostile and prejudiced, just as conservatives describe them. That this environment could deflate conservative optimism is fair.

What is more, while certain administrative efforts have been made in recent years to bolster conservative representation within the university (most notably, a proposed “conservative center”), these actions may seem to be a result of the Trump Administration’s pressure on Harvard, not political debate. Simply put, it may seem that force is the only way forward, not discourse.

This view, though, understates what discourse has done for Harvard.

For one, Harvard’s actions, many of which predate Trump Administration pressure, to draw in conservative perspectives and create a more robust environment for intellectual exchange in and outside of class could not have happened if not for the work that outward-facing conservative students and organizations, like The Harvard Salient, have done to criticize and eventually convince our school of our views. For instance, The Harvard Salient’s former president, Sarah Steele, successfully led a movement to install mailboxes on every dormitory door in response to administrative suppression, ensuring conservative groups could successfully circulate our ideas.

Further, a persuasion-first approach among students has been demonstrably successful on a cultural level as well. A recent poll of graduating seniors showed that students were more likely to consider themselves conservative and 5% less likely to consider themselves progressive after Harvard than before. Conservatives at Harvard convincing fellow students is not just possible — it is already happening. In fact, if the conservative tries, he can do a great deal to change Harvard.

To reject the noble loser mindset is not to delude oneself. Of course, being a conservative at Harvard is difficult. Fighting the good fight will often open one up to ostracization and rejection. And certainly, rejecting the mindset does not mean one must “moderate” or change his values or his deeply held political views.

Rather, rejecting the noble loser is a call to reclaim hope and to accept the incredible responsibility to effect change that hope demands of us. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the best men this institution has produced, was right: the credit does belong to the Man in the Arena, even if he fails, but only the Man in the Arena “who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions.” In other words, “the credit belongs” to the man, the conservative, who hopes.