Conservatives Respond to Gao, Part II

The newest issue of The Stanford Review is now distributed across campus and launched on the website.  Among the highlights are

• Rubi Ancajas’s news story explaining the OSA’s rebranding as SAL and moving the execution of parties to the Row Office;
• Kyle Huwa’s profile of a group of students who study conservative classics outside of the university curriculum; and
• Matt Sprague’s column taking an overview of university policy and my column on what the role of the ASSU ought to be.

In addition, because of the fast moving debate, we also uploaded columnist Charlie Capps’s response to Shelley Gao’s column in the Daily now, even though it won’t be published in print until Issue 3.

For those of you keeping track at home, *Daily *columnist Shelley Gao published a column last Friday that accused conservatives at Stanford of not accepting people with different opinions and for not promoting the intellectual side of conservatism, and attacked the Review for focusing on campus news.  Yesterday, Alex Katz blogged Stanford Conservative Society President Tommy Schultz’s response, which the Daily refused to publish.

Below the fold, check out some excerpts from Capps’s column.

I think Review staff writer Yishai Kabaker put it best: “[It’s] funny, the Review has had a wide variety of opinions from libertarians to social conservatives to liberals.  My freshman year, we were the gayest publication on campus with four gay staff members…. I have never felt ostracized from the Review for being gay.  The same cannot be said about being conservative in the gay community.”

If our Stanford-centrism is indeed the reason Ms. Gao declined to write for the Review, then we respect that decision and wish her the best wherever she does choose to write.  However we feel obligated to point out that focusing on campus news and producing work of intellectual substance are not mutually exclusive.

If you don’t believe me, pick up this year’s issues of the Review.  Read Alex Katz’s article in Issue 1 on the acceptance of Frank Fukuyama as a senior fellow at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, in which he discusses the evolving neoconservative movement, the nature of soft power, and a Hegelian view of history.

Furthermore, I should point out the Review focuses on Stanford news because we are a Stanford newspaper.  Reporting campus events through a conservative lens is our niche; conservatism broadly defined might represent our perspective, but Stanford events comprise our comparative advantage.  If students wish to read exclusively national news through a conservative lens, then we presume (and hope) they will turn to Fox News or the Wall Street Journal before the Review.  We have neither the intention nor the resources to launch a competitive alternative.