Conservatives are back in the Ivy League. Yale College Republicans is making a revival after being defunct for six years. While leftist students make noise on the surface, the tides beneath may be shifting to the right.
In 2016, Donald Trump’s nomination divided Yale College Republicans into two factions. The students who supported him kept the organization’s name, while those who didn’t called themselves Yale New Republicans. Divided, they were weak. In 2018, both organizations died off.
This past January, a small group of students vowed to disrupt Yale College Democrats’ unchallenged grip on campaign politics.
“There was a void politically for conservative thought,” Yale College Republicans President Manuneethy Anpalagan tells me in an interview. YCR allows students to “take a stance — without the fear of going too far.”
This spring, when incoming students toured Yale, more than 40 pre-freshman attended an event hosted by the newly formed YCR. That’s more than attended the Yale Democrats event, according to Anpalagan. This month, another 40 signed up to join the group at an extracurricular fair, and approximately 25 attended YCR’s first event, a presidential debate watch party. There are now 100 students on the group’s mailing list.
Yale has over 6,700 undergraduates. Anpalagan sees that as a lot of untapped potential. “We are still working on publicity, trying to get email lists,” he says. But 100 students with little advertising marks a strong start.
The success of the Buckley Institute at Yale also bodes well for YCR. The Buckley Institute is a non-profit dedicated to free speech and intellectual diversity, engaging students through a speaker series, firing-line debates and dinner seminars with renowned guests. Since its inception in 2011, Buckley has grown each year to 783 student fellows, or 11 percent of the undergraduate population. It has propelled Yale’s free speech ranking from 234th out of 248 colleges to 155th out of 257 colleges, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Yale College Republicans will distinguish itself by taking stances on issues and engaging with political campaigns, which the Buckley Institute cannot do as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. “We want to say, ‘hey, this is what we believe and we’re unapologetic about it,’” says Anpalagan.
The core beliefs of YCR are “personal responsibility, economic freedom, and the unwavering conviction that everyone can achieve the American Dream,” Anpalagan wrote in an email announcing the organization’s revival. “We are a community that stands united by a shared belief in the promise of America.”
Anpalagan is trying to host barbecues with Yale Democrats. “My goal is to dispel myths about Republicans, that we’re not evil monsters like the media portray,” he says “We’re not these authoritarian monsters. We’re regular people that just have views that are different from yours.”
The Buckley Institute has been growing for the past 13 years. Yale jumped 79 spots in its free speech ranking in one year. College Republicans of America was created in 2023 and has chapters on 155 campuses across 24 states. Anpalagan is considering adding Yale College Republicans to that list, which would make it the first chapter in deep blue Connecticut. Is a conservative awakening happening on college campuses?
Gabriel Diamond is a fellow at the Yorktown Institute.
