by Kayla Rogers
Chalk paints the sidewalk with bible verses, anti-abortion groups come to campus spreading disinformation, Brocks hanging up MAGA signs, creating a Pro-Life student organization, students walking around with the infamous red hats… Centre is starting to change. Since Trump was elected President, conservative and far-right students and organizations on campus have been galvanized. A shift is in process: liberal arts student bodies are becoming more openly conservative.
While this is absolutely occurring on Centre’s campus, this is certainly not a concentrated event. Universities and colleges that trend towards liberal arts across the country have experienced heightened conservative visibility since the election of Presiden Trump.
From institutions like Williams and Amherst to Pomona and Swarthmore, liberal arts colleges are renowned for their intimate learning environments and massive endowments. As Johns-Hopkins Magazine recentlypublished in an article, these schools are often the playgrounds of America’s wealthy elite. Despite their smaller size, their resources are staggering. Williams College, for instance, boasts an endowment of over $3.5 billion for a student body of just over 2,000. Advocates of these schools argue that such wealth allows for personalized attention, unmatched undergraduate focus, and a holistic education that emphasizes intellectual development over job preparation. This is largely the same reason that many of us chose Centre (in addition to a large group that was granted high financial aid and scholarships).
However, critics raise important questions: Are these institutions serving broader society, or merely reinforcing existing hierarchies? Liberal arts colleges, the Hopkins piece argues, rarely engage in the kind of large-scale research or public service that elite research universities like Harvard or Johns Hopkins do. There are no sprawling medical centers, no groundbreaking physics labs churning out global advancements. Instead, these institutions pour their resources into undergraduate education and primarily for a student body that skews white, wealthy, and geographically isolated in small-town settings.
In this insular environment, conservative students often find themselves at odds with prevailing campus culture. NPR’s reporting on the experiences of conservative students at places like UC Berkeley–another progressive stronghold–reveals how fraught campus life can become for those holding right-leaning views. Miguel Muniz and Martin Bertao, leaders of Berkeley’s College Republicans, recount a litany of verbal abuse, harassment, and institutional pushback whenever they table or hold events. While their school leadership claims to defend a “full diversity of student perspectives,” these students argue that real protections often hinge on an ideological basis.
It’s a pattern that echoes, albeit less visibly, across liberal arts colleges. The small size of these campuses, combined with their confined cultures, can amplify tensions. While conservative students may not face the same scale of protests seen at larger universities, the ideological uniformity of liberal arts colleges can foster an atmosphere where dissenting views are marginalized or silenced altogether.
Interestingly, national politics have only sharpened these divides. The Trump administration, through measures like withholding federal funding from universities with DEI initiatives and cracking down on left-based campus protests, turned the spotlight back onto higher education’s ideological battles. Conservative students report feeling emboldened yet also more embattled, their voices louder but their presence more contentious. Meanwhile, progressive faculty and students worry about threats to free speech and academic freedom–not just from within, but now from government interference and surveillance.
This clash raises deeper questions about the purpose and future of liberal arts colleges. Can these institutions (including Centre) so rooted in a tradition of critical inquiry and debate, truly make room for a wider spectrum of political beliefs? Or does their very structure–elite, secluded, and singularly focused on undergraduate education–inevitably limit the diversity of thought?
As the John-Hopkins article points out, there’s an irony in how these schools are celebrated by leftists for their academic purity, even as they embody extreme economic inequality.
In the end, the rise of conservatism at liberal arts colleges isn’t just a story of political friction, it’s a mirror reflecting deeper tensions about privilege, purpose, and the role of education in a divided nation. As these institutions look to the future, they face a pivotal challenge: how to uphold their commitment to intellectual rigor and inclusivity while confronting the very real inequities and ideological battles that define modern campus life. This is infiltrating our small, liberal campus: Centre is experiencing a fundamental shift in ideology… whether this is a manifestation of the broader societal shifts and polarization in America or if this is a reflection of the specific environment of liberal arts remains a question.