Though we may be both a bastion and a stalwart of Progressive America, Brown and Brown students will always have their conservative moments, elements and attributes. That should be obvious, but what parts of us do reflect conservatism? That is far from obvious because two of our most Brunonian attributes, our sexual values and open curriculum, appear to be our most liberal but are, in fact, reflective of some conservative doctrines that are easy to ignore.
First, let’s talk about sex. We have FemSex, the Naked Donut Run, Sex Power God and naked parties that easily outnumber our frat parties. We are, on the surface, perfect examples of carnal freedom in the decades after the sexual revolution. But things like nudity and personal sexual knowledge are sideshows to the real issues of the decades that have followed the sexual revolution, those issues being gender roles and family structure. Rethinking gender roles is critical and, all things considered, I think the Brown community does a pretty good job of doing just that. Still, when you start looking at the other disputes, Brown shows itself to be built on some real conservatism.
In his landmark treatise on class in America, Coming Apart, Charles Murray demonstrates that the new upper class, a class overwhelmingly represented at Brown, acts according to a bourgeois social conservatism despite its seemingly bohemian impulses. A majority of the Brown student body, for all of its sexual liberation, is a product of a social ethic that loves and lives out a conservative two-parent family structure. Frankly, our existence and success at this school is a result of that fundamentally conservative unit. Decades of research have shown that children of two parent families are “more likely to attend college” than other children, in addition to receiving a host of other benefits.
Post-sexual-revolution liberalism has been reluctant to encourage or advocate two-parent homes, despite this data. Modern progressivism and the Brown student body, I think, shy away from asserting the importance of two-parent families because it smacks of the “family values” agenda of the religious right that we love to hate. Still, regardless of our feminist or progressive credentials, most of us have benefitted from a two-parent family structure. Why wouldn’t we advocate this structure if it has helped us so much? At best, this political posturing is willfully ignorant. At worst, it is hypocritical. Either way, if we mean to be consistent in our political positions, we need to do a better job of acknowledging that many of us have benefitted from a social structure that is conservative at heart.
Similarly, consider the New Curriculum. It would appear that prioritizing intellectual freedom would be a great indication of our progressivism. The American academy is liberal turf, and advocacy of scholastic freedom goes hand in hand with American Civil Liberties Union-esque freedom of speech. So where’s the conservatism?
By eliminating the core and keeping most concentration requirements to a minimum, Brown has defined academic freedom as important and evensacrosanct. Furthermore, it has provided a framework of advisers and limited rules within which that freedom can thrive. In sum, by instituting the New Curriculum, Brown has allowed a spontaneous order to come about, an order that efficiently and desirably allocates education.
To explain, a spontaneous order occurs when conditions like these are met, when a certain liberty is enshrined and a structure is built to assist the life of that liberty. In this situation, a group of people — using their own knowledge, following their own self-interest, and acting individually — can come to unconsciously create an orderly social system. In a market economy, economic freedom and the rule of law result in the spontaneous order of the price system and its efficient movement of resources. At Brown, academic freedom and a small set of advisers and regulations result in a spontaneous academic order. In this Brunonian system, students and professors both use their own interests and knowledge to produce a set of classes that is vibrant, full, interesting, and eventually results in a valuable education for all who are enrolled and engaged. Without the central planning of a core curriculum or a dean who knows the passions of each and every student, Brown somehow manages to cater individually to each student without demeaning the quality of a Brown education as a whole. That is a result of spontaneous order, a concept that is above almost all else deeply conservative in its history, its assumptions and its aspirations.
The fact that these two things are built on seriously conservative ideas should not be cause for alarm but rather be cause for reconsideration. The concepts of spontaneous order and bourgeois sexual conservatism, whose respective successes are exemplified by our own spirited university community, have more merit than first meets the liberal eye. If we Brown students, so many of us full-throated in our progressivism, were to reconcile that success or even incorporate it into our own ideology, we would be better students, better thinkers and better citizens.
Kevin Carty ’15 is a sophomore political science concentrator from Washington D.C. He can be reached at kevin_carty@brown.edu or followed @PolitiCarty.
ADVERTISEMENT
