Princeton Tory
 |
|
| Editor-in-Chief | Jay Sourbeer '18 |
|---|---|
| Executive Editor | Allison Berger ’18 |
| Categories | Conservative political thought |
| Publisher | James Haynes '18 |
| Founder | Yoram Hazony |
| Year founded | 5 October 1984 |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Princeton University |
| Website | theprincetontory |
| OCLC number | 15710131 |
The Princeton Tory is a magazine of conservative political thought written and published by Princeton University students. Founded in 1984 by Yoram Hazony, the magazine has played a role in various controversies, including a national debate about white privilege. Notable alumni include United States Senator Ted Cruz and Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America. Four editors have gone on to be Rhodes scholars.
In the early 1980s, there were several failed efforts to create a magazine with a conservative viewpoint at Princeton University, including the Madison Report, which folded due to financial difficulties. In October 1984, a group of students including Yoram Hazony of the Princeton class of 1986, and Dan Polisar, Evie Gordon, and Amy Bix, all of the class of 1987, created the Princeton Tory, planning for six issues in the initial year. They felt there was a need for a "thinking journal" to provide a forum for moderate and conservative viewpoints on a campus that was in their view dominated by left-wing politics. Hazony attributed the failure of the previous attempts at conservative publications to their tendency for sensationalism and mud-slinging. In contrast, the Tory was founded to highlight cogent argumentation with early issues addressing topics such as religion in politics, the composition of the Supreme Court, and the university's endorsement of a nuclear freeze.
In 1986, the Tory found itself in disagreement with future noted conservative Dinesh D'Souza. At Dartmouth College, student staff members of the conservative Dartmouth Review had taken sledgehammers to a shanty town set up by protesters calling for divestment from South Africa over its Apartheid policies. D'Souza, a Dartmouth alumnus, in arguing that Princeton would not see similar political violence, was quoted in the Daily Princetonian as saying, "At Dartmouth there is a healthy activism on both the left and the right. At Princeton, politics masquerades as fashion. There are more conservatives who are more confident in their actions at Dartmouth. At Princeton, you only have the Tory, which is too cerebral to be considered." This critique promoted a response from Tory publisher Dan Polisar: "D'Souza criticized the Tory for being 'too cerebral.' If that means that we do not favor using sledgehammers as a tool for political debate, then we do not object. We would rather demonstrate that the problems symbolized by shanties are exacerbated by divestment, as we did in our October issue, than to stage an attack on the symbols themselves... Campus conservatives are proud of this restraint, and should receive credit, not blame, for choosing the pen over the sledgehammer."
...
Wikipedia