WASHINGTON, DC – Harvard University’s only conservative student publication has just regained the rights to distribute on campus after a nearly year-long battle between student journalists and school administration, Breitbart News has learned.
The Harvard Salient, which publishes in print as well as online, was originally launched in the 1980s before falling dormant during the Obama administration and eventually rebooting in Fall 2021 — but their comeback has been far from easy.
“While it seemed that it was an incredibly hostile time when the Salient was revived in 2021, it was also like our political movement was ready to say, ‘Conservatives on campus cannot be treated as pariahs anymore,'” president of the Salient, Sarah Steele, told Breitbart News.
The student paper has been fighting to deliver its publication to Harvard dormitories since February 2024, she said.
Steele, a senior at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, institution, said that the Ivy League school is in need of an “intellectual conservative perspective” after some faculty on campus shut down the paper’s distribution to the dorms — a move that was officially reversed Wednesday morning.
Among the pushback from school staff were claims that placing print copies under student’s dorm doors was a “fire hazard” and not “environmentally friendly” for using paper, though other campus publications did not receive the same complaints, Steele said.
The Salient was even placed on probation for a short time, which was lifted after the students pushed back against the school’s administration.
“We were put on probation in examination week. It was lifted 36 hours later, and then we basically spent most of winter break appealing to the highest levels of administration about what a liberal speech policy at Harvard should look like,” the president, who is a senior studying government, said Wednesday. “And just today, they let us know that we’re going to be able to distribute freely without interference.”
Despite the good news, Steele said the situation remains “delicate,” and editor-in-chief Caleb Chung said they can only “hope” to retain those distribution rights on campus.
“So, we hope so, and we’re optimistic about the future. One thing we know is that all it takes is one student complaint or one upset DEI officer to bring administration back onto us,” Chung, a sophomore studying economics, told Breitbart News.
Despite the backlash — including a death threat sent by a fellow student via email — he said the paper’s approximately two dozen undergraduates will remain “vigilant” in the face of censorship.
“We’ve built a flourishing conservative community at Harvard. Even though there are few of us, we’re very active, and I think we’re better for it… Whether we like it or not, for the foreseeable future, Harvard exists to produce leaders. Even if they’re predominately leaders on the left, I think it’s important they be exposed to conservative viewpoints,” Chung said, when asked about how Ivy League graduates have garnered a reputation for being overwhelmingly left-wing.
“We started four years ago unsure of what is going to happen, [but] our organization has grown quickly,” he added.
The paper’s board includes some high-profile people, including former U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who served in the previous Trump administration.
