Resistance from the Right

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280 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 7 halftones, 1 graph

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-7449-0
Published: August 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-7448-3
Published: August 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4696-7450-6
Published: August 2023

Justice, Power, and Politics

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Pivoting from studies that emphasize the dominance of progressivism on American college campuses during the late sixties and early seventies, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd positions conservative critiques of, and agendas in, American colleges and universities as an essential dimension of a broader conversation of conservative backlash against liberal education.

This book explores the story of how stakeholders in American higher education organized and reacted to challenges to their power from the New Left and Black Power student resistance movements of the late 1960s. By examining the range of conservative student organizations and coalition building, Shepherd shows how wealthy donors and conservative intellectuals trained future GOP leaders such as Karl Rove, Bill Barr, Jeff Sessions, Pat Buchanan, and others in conservative politics, providing them with tactics to consciously drive American politics and culture further to the authoritarian right and to "reclaim" American higher education.

About the Author

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd is instructor of higher education at the University of New Orleans.
For more information about Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"A thoroughly researched, revelatory political history with abundant relevance for today. . . . Shepherd presents compelling evidence for the ways that these groups, although a minority on campus, have exerted long-lasting influence."—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED review)

"Any organization founded by William F. Buckley and M. Stanton Evans is not going to be supportive of free speech. As historian Lauren Lassabe Shepherd documents in Resistance from the Right, Young Americans for Freedom has been characterized from the start as a group of extremely pampered establishment scions who are prone to both self-pity and deploying their social and legal power to silence their political enemies."—Jeet Heer, The Nation

“A sobering and rigorous work of history, one with significant ramifications for the present. . . . Shepherd’s account is a powerful corrective, a compelling narrative, and a frankly frightening parable.”—Jacobin

"Resistance from the Right confidently places conservative thinkers and sponsors in conversation with students in an effort to reveal the expanse of the cultural battlefield of higher education. Shepherd’s meticulous and timely book highlights the right in the history of student activism."—Stefan M. Bradley, Amherst College

"Strong, unique, and well researched, this book addresses a major gap in the studies of American higher education in the protest era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Digging deeply into a range of conservative organizations and actors, Shepherd offers a refreshing conversation about student activism in the late 1960s."—Linda Eisenmann, Wheaton College

"Resistance from the Right places the campus conservatives of the late 1960s where they belong: not as a mere footnote, not as a mere quirk, but as a central formative part of American conservatism in the late twentieth century. This book is an absolute must read for anyone hoping to understand either American conservatism or American higher education."—Adam Laats, author of Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education