These papers examine the site of higher education as a location that influences the formation of religious identity and perspectives on religion. It focuses on the formation of religious-political identities among students, spanning conservative and progressive views. One paper examines a conservative student newspaper, shaping campus discourse and the rhetoric around the intersection of religious and political issues. Another paper examines educating students about the history of campus activism, grounding their university identity in relation to an intersection of religion and politics. The third paper considers the legacy of a prominent Christian nationalist figure on a university, which includes a chapel, art, and events on campus, thus framing the university as a defender of the faith
In 2021, Harvard University undergraduates revived The Salient, a self-proclaimed “free speech” publication that has since become a vehicle for conservative and white Christian nationalist discourse. Originally founded in 1981, the magazine has a history of controversy, including past critiques for homophobic and Islamophobic content. The 2021 revival coincided with right-wing mobilization in the Trump era, reinforcing narratives of conservative victimhood, religious nationalism, and reactionary resistance to progressive campus politics. This paper analyzes how The Salient constructs itself through religious and political claims, drawing on an archive of Salient issues I have collected over time during my experience as a Harvard residential staff member (2021–2025). By tracing The Salient’s evolving rhetoric—from free speech claims to explicit anti-queer, anti-immigrant, and Christian nationalist messaging—this paper situates the publication within broader right-wing efforts to reshape campus discourse, challenge academic freedom, and frame elite universities as battlegrounds for ideological control.
According to scholars of higher education, campus protest is one of the foundational ways in which students exercise “student voice” whether the protest be self-advocacy for activism on behalf of others (Jerusha Conner, 2023). Protests have changed on college campuses from the 1960s protests over Vietnam to the 2015 protests over Black Lives Matter. This paper will seek to address the proposed topic of “Campus politics, activism, and practices of engaged scholarship.” I argue that schools with religious backgrounds or formerly religious backgrounds have a unique platform to teach their campuses’ history to demonstrate the dynamism of religion and its relationship to campus activism. These platforms offer the opportunity for student to participate in engaged scholarship through archival research that can shape their understanding of student voice and sense of place on campus.
George Benson’s legacy looms large on the campus of Harding University. Students are required to attend a daily chapel in an auditorium named for him, and his legacy is seen in his statues, paintings, and programs that exist around campus. This paper will use primary documents from the Ann Cowan Dixon Archives & Special Collections at Harding University’s Brackett Library in Searcy, AR, and historical sources on the rise of conservatism and “new evangelicalism” after the second World War to argue that the conservative social and political values that characterize Harding today are the direct result of Benson’s careful positioning of the University as a defender of the faith—a faith that was deeply influenced by a white, free enterprise, Christian nationalist supremacy. George Benson’s innovative use of mass media, student engagement, and eschatological framing made Benson’s understanding of “American principles” in the 1950s and 60s precursors to and representative of the values of today’s modern Religious Right.