Northwestern students perfectly encapsulate a significant element of the parasite eating away at the credibility of the progressive movement we are trying to advance in American politics.
Too often, our generation of college students bites its tongue instead of speaking its mind. Too often, we walk on eggshells while rephrasing and parroting or “piggybacking off of,” the comments our classmates make before us. Too often, we hesitate to ask the questions at the forefront of our minds.
Prestigious universities like NU appeal to curious young people because their classrooms are supposedly forums for productive disagreement and critical thinking. Why, then, do some of the most inquisitive and intellectually capable undergraduate students in the country feel the need to conform to the views of their peers, even though they may not necessarily agree with them?
Because they’re scared – and rightfully so.
A noxious pattern has developed within many of the communities we belong to on campus. I first noticed the trend when I joined The Daily Northwestern as a freshman. I routinely heard fellow reporters and editors in The Daily newsroom badmouthing other contributors who had left just hours or minutes before. On multiple occasions, loyal friends on The Daily informed me directly that specific staff members were spreading rumors about me and my character each evening. I left The Daily Northwestern for The Evanston RoundTable one year ago, but a friend approached me just last week to tell me a staffer who I had never individually spoken to spontaneously began defaming my character, based on something they had heard about me and my beliefs. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is hardly unique to The Daily.
Increasingly, the most influential students in NU student groups and organizations leverage any social or structural influence they have within the system to suppress ideological dissent and coerce submission to their preferred paradigm. Many NU students find solace in ostracizing their peers and turning communities against those who refuse to fall in line. This allows lost students to construct a shell of an identity without making meaningful contributions to the community. And, by doing so, they lend credibility to the ridiculous arguments made by prominent right-wing lunatics like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, who claim that the American left wing is simply a bunch of “woke” college students who want to “cancel” people for slipping up or saying the “wrong” thing.
It is important to note that, based on my record of work, I am arguably the most credentialed progressive student at NU. I spent my sophomore year in Washington, D.C., engaging in dozens of one-on-one policy discussions with leading figures in the American progressive movement, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). At times, they even sought my counsel in certain specialized areas, like the intersection of money and politics. In June, former President Trump attacked me on his Truth Social account, incoherently spewing his usual verbal diarrhea and claiming that the article I wrote with my colleague for The Washington Post, titled “In Trump’s orbit, some muse about mandatory military service,” was “fake news.” And, instead of coming back to Evanston for my senior year, I plan on taking a job drafting progressive policy on Capitol Hill after finishing all of my undergraduate credits.
Needless to say, I am hardly a MAGA Republican. I’m not sure I’d qualify as a leftist at NU, though, because I haven’t marched in any protests, created any catchy chants or designed any aesthetically pleasing signs for an Instagram story photo op. That said, I’d call myself a New Deal-era progressive — and have found I’m unique in this sense.
Medicare for All, antitrust policy, labor unionization, legislation to counteract the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, increased public investment in welfare programs and equitable tax policy are topics that politically involved NU students on the left rarely discuss. Modern Monetary Theory? Forget about it. Instead, my peers consistently lean into culture war traps set by imbecile Republican politicians and dishonest right-wing media pundits. They attempt to determine who among them is sexist, racist, or any other -ist. They spend hours pondering which words are acceptable versus which ones are offensive and must therefore be banned from the collective vocabulary. Which signs on campus are ableist? Which professors dish out microaggressions?
While it may sound ridiculous to some of the older readers of The Daily, a significant portion of college students unironically have these conversations each day. While Republicans draft Project 2025 and attempt to overthrow the entire web of democratic systems that upholds our constitutional republic, we college liberals are worried about socially exiling members of a club on campus for distributing an offensive flyer.
NU students, and those who socially ostracize their peers at parallel institutions, do not only harm the campus communities they deliberately seek to divide from within. They also undermine the American progressive movement more broadly, arming the right wing with ammunition to delegitimize our factually substantial policy stances and portray us as unserious culture warriors in the process.
They sacrifice shared intellectual curiosity and a comfortable learning environment to feed their self-righteousness and moral superiority complexes. They sacrifice the effectiveness of a vital political movement to bolster their self-imagined statuses as internet activists.
So, if you’re an NU student who feels a particularly insatiable thirst to gossip and bully a peer because they disagree with you, I would implore you to please reconsider your approach. For the sake of our campus environment. For the sake of progress. For the sake of American democracy and the progressive movement. Otherwise, you will ruin the chance we have to make actual change.
Julian Andreone is a Medill junior and former Daily staffer. He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
