The History of Conservatism at Harvard College

Conservatism has a long history at one of America’s oldest, most prestigious colleges.

Based on what is currently perceived about the Ivy Leagues being bastions of progressivism, most people would probably expect this to be a very short article about 17 frightened undergraduates cowering in a basement somewhere, but in fact conservatism at Harvard has an illustrious history of more than 350 years.

“Conservatism” today usually denotes movement conservatism, the phenomenon dating from the 1950s and involving such prominent figures as William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, Russell Kirk and Ronald Reagan. I cannot give Harvard much credit for precipitating this movement; indeed, history puts me in the awkward position of being forced to acknowledge that Yale graduates have played a greater role in the galvanization of conservatives after the Second World War. However, the conservative intellectual disposition existed in America for centuries before Yale ever got around to it, and we can most clearly trace it to one of the linchpins of American independence.

John Adams, Harvard class of 1755, is probably the most underappreciated Founding Father—notwithstanding those odd people whose favorite Framer is Roger Sherman—and certainly exerted an immense, conservative influence on the Revolution. While he was among the earliest supporters of independence, he was opposed to the intemperate, rabid and destructive impulses that afflicted other members of that faction. He found Common Sense naïve and condemned the poor grasp of history and political philosophy that led Thomas Paine to propose a unicameral legislature, not to mention the utter foolishness of Paine’s suggestion that the Patriots would easily win a war against Great Britain. Adams instead wrote his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America, in which he professed admiration for the English constitution and advocated a separation of powers that profited from the natural hierarchy of men. He wrote: “Was there, or will there ever be a nation whose individuals were all equal, in natural and acquired qualities, in virtues, talents, and riches? The answer in all mankind must be in the negative.” This was no communist usurper, no Jacobin revolutionary; John Adams defended liberty from the oppression of both the one and the many, from the tyrant and the mob.