College advice for young libertarians -- addendum

Re-posted comment of mine from Roger Simon's blog, which makes a nice addendum to this post.

Not a Yalie, though I am a recent alum (’04) of one of its rivals, and I was taken aback by Rabbi Hausman’s statement that he would never send his child there. From everything that I’ve been able to discern about Yale in particular, there’s a thriving conservative and libertarian intellectual subculture. Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason magazine is a fairly recent Yale grad; Helen Rittelmeyer of the Cigarette Smoking blog and Nicola Karras have gotten link love from high places; and Dara Lind is a recent Yale grad whose stuff I’ve seen at the highbrow blog American Scene. See also this profile of four hotshot Bush White House speechwriters— three of whom are Yale grads.

I’m not denying that Yale and schools like it lean left far more than right. I’m also not denying that more intellectual and ideological balance would be good for these places. The point is that there are plenty of talented conservatives and libertarians who make it through the ideological hazing and come out stronger and more interesting because of it. I’d therefore encourage Rabbi Hausman’s children, and applicants like them, not to flee these institutions so quickly.