Last week, the Secretary of Transportation received plenty of praise for telling his daughter that he would not allow her to attend Harvard for college. His concern was that Ivy League universities, alongside other liberal institutions, have “professionalized figuring out how they can take good young girls and corrupt their minds.” He argued that he had raised his daughter with strong conservative and religious values, and did not want to place those values in jeopardy out of fear that four years at a liberal university could undo the work he had done raising her.
Last week, I explained that I attended what is widely considered one of the most liberal universities in the United States and emerged a better and stronger conservative. It turns out that even the data supports the idea that conservative students leave these universities better at critical thinking, more secure and strengthened in their beliefs, and, in many ways, having received the very education critics say such institutions no longer provide.
Sean Duffy tells his daughter she cannot go to Harvard because they have "professionalized figuring out how they can take good young girls and corrupt their minds" pic.twitter.com/opCB02jPEv
— FactPost (@factpostnews) August 19, 2026
According to Lauren Wright, a lecturer in politics and public affairs at Princeton University, and one of the relatively few conservative professors teaching at an Ivy League school, “conservative students are flourishing and liberal students are getting” the short end of the stick at liberal universities.
In an article for The Atlantic, Wright argued that conservative students often receive a better education precisely because they cannot coast through campus life surrounded by people who agree with them. After interviewing dozens of students at elite universities, she found that conservative students are more likely to attend talks by speakers they disagree with, expect challenges from professors and classmates, and learn to articulate their own arguments under pressure. They learn to anticipate what their opponents will say, think through the weaknesses in their own position, and respond without simply assuming the room is on their side.
That hostile environment can build the qualities a real education is supposed to develop: resilience, argumentative discipline, reasoning, stronger public-speaking abilities, and genuine critical-thinking skills.
I’m one of the few out conservatives teaching at an Ivy League university. Here’s some insight for all conservative parents like @RCamposDuffy @SecDuffy who are understandably apprehensive about sending their kids to overwhelmingly progressive institutions.
— Lauren A. Wright (@drlaurenawright) August 23, 2026
First, the fact that… https://t.co/3crDCxESNe
In other words, the very education conservatives say they want, may be found at the same universities they accuse of no longer providing a real education.
That does not mean that real concerns are imaginary. Professorial retaliation remains a legitimate fear, as does the possibility that students will encounter ideologically slanted material presented as objective fact. But neither concern requires conservatives to surrender these institutions altogether.
First, the answer to retaliation remains exposure. A professor who punishes a student for a viewpoint should be challenged through administrative and even legal means. Publicizing clear examples of discrimination can force universities to respond, and students today have access to a range of free-speech and civil liberties organizations that can help defend them when a school will not.
As for the fear that students will not receive the “right” information: no serious education should be confined to assigned readings or classroom lectures. Some of the most important things I learned in college came from the books, articles, podcasts, conversations, and debates I sought out on my own time. A university can shape the environment, but it cannot prevent a serious student from reading, thinking, questioning, and learning for themselves.
Our goal as a movement has always been to challenge those we believe are wrong, not retreat from them. The conservative tradition has always been one of the happy warrior, defined by figures including Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and William F. Buckley Jr., who jumpstarted their careers by challenging political orthodoxy in their respective fields rather than hiding from it.
Our approach today should be no different. We should arm the next generation with the values, confidence, and intellectual skills necessary to meet that challenge, not teach them that the proper response to disagreement is to run away.
