THE CONSERVATIVE party
The Conservative Party, Yale’s foremost philosophical debating society and the oldest party in Union, is a haven for those who believe that ideas have consequences, and that the best of what has been thought and said by man deserves rigorous exploration. The members of the Conservative Party are not united by a single strand of the conventional political spectrum, but by a devotion to the production of principled and profound leaders, developed through critical inquiry and loyalty to Truth that so characterize our Western inheritance.
An organization of determined students and dedicated alumni brought the Conservative Party out of abeyance in 1996, restoring the Conservative Party to its current place as the largest of the Union's seven Parties and the home for some of the highest discussions of ideas on Yale's campus. Party members host The Allan Bloom Forum, a lecture series with leading scholars, publish Light & Truth magazine, a journal of student opinion, and founded the William F. Buckley Program at Yale, inspired by one of the Party’s most famous alumni, which sponsors guest speakers, seminars and summer internships. Most recently, Party members co-founded the John Adams Debating Society, a sister organization at Harvard College, to share Yale’s rich heritage of debate with our brothers in Cambridge.
Founded in 1890, the Conservative Party's early decades were characterized by frequent engagement with the left-wing Radical Party in various iterations of the Yale Union. With eminent members such as future TIME Magazine founder Henry Robinson Luce, the Party played a prominent role in intellectually sharpening a generation of American leaders. Chief among them was Robert Alphonso Taft, who spent his time at Yale "scoring the Radicals for their ‘fanaticism.’" Taft would go on to be a Senator from Ohio and Republican candidate for President.
In the postwar years, the Party claimed men like George Herbert Walker Bush, George Elmer Pataki, and of course, William Frank Buckley, Jr. Buckley and his close friend, Leo Brent Bozell, Jr. oversaw a period of intellectual rigor, capable rhetoric, and campus prominence within the Pary. The CP was generally, with a few exceptions, the largest Party in Union through the 1960s. In the late 1970s, a group of young moderates came to Party leadership, reorganizing the Party into a centrist group focused on contemporary policy issues.
Recently, the Conservative Party has debated the following resolutions:
Resolved, That Success Satisfies
Resolved, That Morality Can Only Come From God
Resolved, That One Should Love Rome More Than Caesar
Resolved, That There Is No Such Thing As a Just War
Resolved, That Truth Is The Child Of Reason
Resolved, That Nationalism Is Not Conservative
To learn more about the Conservative Party, visit their website.
To attend a Conservative Party debate, reach out to Chief Whip Gil Braslow Altman (gil.altman@yale.edu)
