Fall, 1980
Vol. 2 No. 2
Foundation Girds Students To Resist Campus Radicals This autumn over 3 million teenagers will enter college as freshmen. In most cases they will be greeted by professors and other students who are hostile to all the decent sentiments their parents have for years tried to nurture in them. This will be the beginning of a fouryear battle for the hearts and minds of these young people—a battle that is almost always one-sided. Young America's Foundation for the past 10 years has been working to make this battle a little less one-sided by providing alternative programs and literature to students who wish to defend their country and its beliefs. This August just passed the Foundation conducted its second annual orientation seminar; the centerpiece of its counter-offensive against liberal and radical indoctrination on campus. Foundation Program Director Jim Taylor said that while the first orientation conference on international relations in 1979 was most successful, this year's program outstripped it in every category. He said, "the 1980 program surpassed the first in the number of students attending, in the quality of students, and in the depth and breadth of the program itself." The orientation seminars seek to find good students who will be academic leaders and instruct them in the subjects they will study in school. Most decent American students enter college with strong loyalty to their country and deeplyheld belief in its principles. But they usually have never been taught how to defend those beliefs with facts and arguments. Most importantly, they
D r . A l a n S a b r o s k y l e c t u r i n g t o I n t e r n a t i o n a l R e l a t i o n s students at t h e F o u n d a t i o n ' s s e c o n d a n n u a l Orientation Seminar.
have never been prepared for the kind of rhetorical and philosophic attacks on our system with which college radicals will confront them.
'The seminar gave me a clearer rationale for my views/'— Harvard Universitij.
The Foundation seminars prepare them for these attacks and teach them how to fight back. This year 68 students from 32 states and 58 schools were instructed in economics and international relations. The students came to American University in Washington, D . C . from as far away as C a l i f o r n i a , Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Wisconsin, and Vermont—a clear indication that students all over the country feel a need for such programs. E a c h student was sent a questionnaire immediately following the seminar to assess student reaction.
Without exception the returning comments have been most laudatory. The Foundation will again survey the students in late April to discover whether they have had the opportunity to use what they learned in the Foundation's program in their classes at school. Last April the Foundation surveyed the 1979 participants and learned that their attendance in that program had been very valuable in counteracting leftist arguments.
'7 would like to thank the Foundation. . .and all those involved for having given me the possibiliti; of expanding my knowledge of conservative ideals and theories.'' — Georgetown Universiti;
These students are also asked for suggestions on improving the FOUNDATION GIRDS STUDENTS continued on page 7