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Buckley remembered on campus
February 29, 2008
by Jessica Marsden '08
Yale students on the political right are mourning the loss of an alumnus who was an icon of American conservatism. William F. Buckley Jr. '50 died Wednesday at the age of 82.
Buckley began his public career at Yale, where he chaired the Yale Daily News and became a leader of the Yale Political Union and a member of Skull and Bones. In 1955, he founded the National Review as an organ for conservative thought. His public persona grew with the inauguration of a syndicated newspaper column and the television debate program Firing Line, which he hosted from 1966 to 1999.
In 1951, just a year after graduating from college, Buckley published God and Man at Yale, skewering the dogmatic liberal ideology he said prevailed at Yale. A chapter on alumni accused the university of soaking its old students for money and otherwise ignoring their opinions.
But his criticisms of the university did not stop him from making countless return trips to New Haven long after his student days.
Buckley was a frequent guest at the Yale Political Union and a popular figure there, especially among those on the right. In November 2006, he chose a Political Union debate as the venue for his final speech on public affairs. Speaking a week before Election Day, he defended the resolution "Resolved: The Democratic Candidates for November 7 Should Withdraw."
On a campus that now has a decidedly liberal bent, Yale conservatives have always been eager to claim a connection to an alumnus with such sterling conservative credentials. Although Buckley was a member of the Conservative Party as a student, the Party of the Right says that Buckley was inducted as a member of their party 10 to 15 years after he graduated.
"He's venerated for . . . embodying the conservative aesthetic and reinvigorating conservatism in America," says Matthew Shaffer '10, who currently chairs the Party of the Right.
Buckley's policies, which Shaffer described as "neo-conservative," may have less traction on campus than his famous rhetorical flourishes. But Buckley roused the Political Union crowd to laughter and applause in that final speech, in which he condemned Democrats as "greedy" and "hypocritical."
The Yale Daily News devoted the top half of this Thursday's front page to coverage of Buckley's legacy. In an editorial, the paper described him as "the last-standing quintessential Yale man."
"I think there are a few people in American history of the 20th century who compare to him in any way," said Andrew Mangino, the current editor-in-chief of the News.
The on-campus adulation heaped on Buckley in the days since his death largely overlooked some of his more controversial positions, including his opposition to desegregation in the 1950s. In 1957, he wrote a National Review editorial positing that whites were "for the time being . . . the advanced race." He added, "It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists." Buckley later repudiated such positions.
Over the past few days, Yale's mourning for Buckley has taken a decidedly modern turn. Several students chose to leave tributes to Buckley as their Facebook.com "status updates." Conservative Party president Matthew Klein '09 wrote that he "mourns for a great man. Rest in peace, WFB."  |
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