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Yale administrators tried to show similar restraint, but they now face court action after having enacted rules that could disenfranchise the staunchly anti-Soviet Yale Literary Magazine. In palmier days, the Lit, though run by undergraduates, drew contributions from such men of letters as Rudyard Kipling and Ezra Pound. But it was moribund in July 1978, when Andrei Navrozov, a June graduate, purchased the rights to the name for $1. The revived Lit published highbrow but often right-wing articles, many by its publisher's father, Soviet Exile Lev Navrozov. Critics contended that undergraduate editors held fancy titles but exerted little control; indeed, Navrozov called the Lit "an independent national quarterly." The magazine was financed with $640,000 in grants obtained from many of the same benefactors that Yale taps for its general treasury.
After prolonged internal debate, Yale ruled that to qualify to use the university's name, a college publication must give undergraduates editorial control. Navrozov sued to forestall enforcement of the rule. Taking his side was another, even more conservative Yale journal, the Free Press (circ. 10,000), a newspaper that was launched Oct. 4.
Whatever the merits of the Lit's case, Navrozov is unusual among the new campus crusaders. Hardly any come from families of even modest literary celebrity or deep political involvements. (One notable exception: Yale Free Press Publisher Charles Bork is the son of U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert Bork, who, as President Nixon's acting Attorney General, fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Saturday Night Massacre.) Most of the right-wing student editors are white, male, middle-class products of suburbia; some receive financial aid, although their papers generally oppose federal loan programs.
So far, the campus impact of the conservative publications is hard to measure. They have not usually competed with established student papers for paid circulation; instead, most of the conservative journals are given away free to undergraduates. Despite selling ads, the papers rely on donations and on subscriptions from conservative alumni, who seek a vehicle to challenge university policies that they deem liberal.
The conservatives' victories to date have been modest. When a group of antiabortion students were refused the auspices of Princeton's women's center, the Madison Report helped lead a successful protest on their behalf. At Dartmouth, Editor Cattan cites having persuaded the college to keep the school's post office open on Saturdays. In its 13th anniversary issue in September, Wisconsin's Badger Herald self-effacingly noted its achievements in getting the university to install more pencil sharpeners and a more accessible supply of toilet paper.