By Clare McKinney, Chairwoman of Notre Dame Young Americans for Freedom
On the way to class Thursday at Saint Mary’s College I came across flyers titled, “Ethics, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Age of Trump.” As chairwoman of the Notre Dame Young Americans for Freedom and a student activist I decided I’d take a closer look.
What I discovered is that according to the Center for Women’s Intercultural Leadership, the Department of Global Studies, Department of Gender & Women’s Studies, Department of Political Science, Programs of Intercultural Studies, Environmental Studies, and the Straight and Gay Alliance, there is only one type of activism: progressive activism.
The event description explains that the “talk will provide a space for discussing teaching and activism strategies for engaging with a presidency that activates numerous challenges including normalizing the abnormal; when dominant power structures that foment hatred and fear; attack on truth and our own feelings and positionally when trying to cope with these events.”
The hypocrisy is obvious: When President Obama was in office, there were no flyers calling students to consider or critique our Obama’s unprecedented big government invasion in Americans’ everyday lives.
The flyer then posed a question, “What can we all do to be more informed and active citizens in today’s political climate?”
The answer is clear. Get active with Young Americans for Freedom. We stress the power to the individual, and have been engaging students in meaningful activism for years. YAF works to educate students on conservative principles, instead of hosting “spaces” to coddle students who feel as though conservative ideas pose an existential threat to them.
Young Americans for Freedom activists from the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College will be participating in numerous activism events this month to actually educate students and create opportunities to share ideas. They will be sending students to Young America’s Foundation conferences, setting up the 9/11 Never Forget Project, tabling for Constitution Day, and hosting a lecture with FOX News Contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy. As the Left attempts to grow more active in South Bend, the students of YAF are ready to counter with conservative answers to the Left’s debunked ideas.
As the academic year is getting underway, the conservative students at Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College will not be silent. Conservative ideas are in demand, and our YAF chapter’s activism will overshadow any effort by campus Leftists who grow to resist our ever growing and increasingly influential conservative presence.
