When Hillary Clinton lost the election nearly four weeks ago, one of my graduate school professors ran her concession speech live during my international law class (the United Nations is supreme; universal healthcare is a right; George W. Bush is bad; etc.). His choice didn’t bother me particularly. What made me smirk—and I feel horrible even admitting this—was the number of my classmates openly weeping during HRC’s big speech.
Weeping? About a free and fair election?
I was a big Mitt Romney fan. I collected signatures for his candidate for lieutenant governor, way back in the day, as one of the three or four under-twenty Republicans registered in the state of Massachusetts. When he lost, I was sad. And I was really irritated and disappointed that President Obama was most Americans’ choice. But did I cry publicly? No.
When I arrived at school on Wednesday morning after the big Clinton crash, it was like I was entering a funeral home. People were huddled in groups, whispering, comforting each other, crying. (There was even a cuddly dog to pat.) Others were angrily plotting revenge: How do we start community organizing so that Trump racism, Trump sexism, and overall Trump badness does not permeate our rosy lives? Quick! Attach a safety pin to your shirt; this will signal your righteousness. If you wear a safety pin, you, personally, are a “safe space.” Or you believe in safe spaces. Or you will harbor other people in your safe space.
What I would like to know, is where is my safe space?
At my university, I am very wary of admitting my political party. I don’t particularly feel comfortable discussing my Catholicism (not liberation-theology Catholicism, but the normal kind). When I tell classmates that I used to work for Paul Wolfowitz (and I loved every minute of that job), their eyes grow wide and I see them surreptitiously looking at my hairline for the nubs of my devil horns.
As most of my classmates meet to draft “the next steps” and raise money for the right kinds of places—Planned Parenthood, the Southern Poverty Law Center, EMILY’s List—I have found my own, personal “safe space.” My small group of conservative friends and I send surreptitious text messages to each other, forward some of the most obnoxious anti-Trump e-mails from our classmates to each other, and hold muted conversations about the potential picks for SecDef and SecState (without the requisite sigh of disdain that one is supposed to have).
It raises my hackles that I am actually nervous to voice my conservative views. Though Trump was not my first choice for a Republican nominee, I am tired of shocking people by saying that I did not vote for Hillary. I am tired of staying silent while my classmates moan or rave about the future under “Hitler.” The problem is, in my free, open, and liberal academic environment, I am afraid to voice my views. I am afraid of people labeling me racist, sexist, anti-gay, anti-transgender, or anti-immigrant just because I am a Republican. It is an exhausting prospect to even think about beating back the tide of my classmates’ emotional response to this election, which is exactly why I share my views with a tiny, select group of friends who whisper in the corner about how the Trump presidency might not be so bad. At least the Court will be safe for a few more years.
But take a step back and think: Is this the future of the American educational experience? Where the idiocy of the Hampshire College leadership (the ones who took down the American flag last week because it was conjuring up “bad feelings” for students) is the norm? I was taught, once upon a time, that a liberal education meant exposure to many views, many traditions, and many kinds of people.
Now, in a “post-Hillary world,” my liberal educational experience has turned into a furtive nudge to my one conservative friend during class, because I am too daunted to stand up to the institutional narrative which blatantly privileges one political party’s “safe space” and entirely rejects the other.
Frances Tilney Burke is a graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, focusing on international security studies and the history of U.S. foreign relations. She was formerly a special assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense during the George W. Bush administration.
