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This book examines how universities, in tandem with the broader political culture, cultivate distinctive styles of conservatism. Focusing on Eastern Elite University and Western Flagship University (both pseudonyms), it explores the organizational structures and cultures that shape conservative students' thinking and action, and particularly their political activism. The book shows that conservative students on any given campus share unique, local repertoires of conservative ideas and styles that differ from those available on other campuses. The argument is that colleges nurture and enhance particular forms of student conservatism that have important implications for American politics in general. This introduction explains the book's research methodology and provides a background on Eastern Elite University and the Western Flagship University. It also gives an overview of the chapters that follow.

This chapter examines in more abstract terms how universities, in combination with the broader political culture, cultivate distinctive styles of conservatism among students. It reviews research in the fields of higher education studies, cultural sociology, political theory, and organization studies to capture some of the more general processes observed at Eastern Elite University and Western Flagship University. In particular, it considers how social and cultural capital gives rise to the particular dominant conservative styles of civilized discourse at Eastern Elite, provocation in the Western Public university system, and the submerged styles seen at these different campuses. The chapter concludes by arguing that the model developed for studying student conservatism on both campuses is general enough to be useful to scholars studying other aspects of students' lives other than politics.

This chapter examines the institutional dynamics—that is, the organizational arrangements, cultural ideas, and practices in place at Eastern Elite University and Western Flagship University—to see how they affect student conservatism at both campuses. More specifically, it explores what conservative students say they find when they arrive on the Western Public and Eastern Elite campuses—and the degree to which students comment on their university's politics. The chapter first considers each university's reputation in the higher education sector and how a school's standing in the larger field of universities might influence students' perceptions of their experiences as conservatives in college. It then discusses extracurricular aspects of college life, focusing on the social and residential scene at each school, as well as academics. In particular, it analyzes how several aspects of scholastic life work on the two campuses and how they affect students' experiences as conservatives.