What conservatives don’t get about the protests roiling college campuses

In May 2001 President George W. Bush spoke at my graduation from Yale. He knew that few of the students and faculty in the audience had voted for him. But Bush still expressed “gratitude” for the liberal professors who modeled “dedication and high standards of learning.” “They’re the ones who keep Yale going,” the president — an alumnus from a family full of alumni — admitted. He proudly called himself a “Yale man.”

Many prominent figures in the Republican Party have the same elite university pedigree as Bush, but few show the respect for campus life that the president expressed in 2001. To the contrary, some Republican leaders have spent the last two decades condemning everything about the universities that boosted their careers — the expertise on subjects like climate change, the values around diversity and inclusion, and even the commitment to teach a full history of our country.