by Sara Russo

A record enrollment of over one-hundred students converged on Washington, DC, July 18 to attend Accuracy in Academia's most successful Conservative University to date. The students from such schools as Harvard, Stanford, and UCLA were joined by dozens of interns from the Washington, DC- area, who gladly gave up their weekend to hear eminent conservative speakers such as Burt Folsom and John Lott cover topics that are absent from their campus curriculums.

Thousands more were able to participate in the four-day event through nationally televised coverage from C-SPAN, which aired lectures by Conservative Caucus chairman Howard Phillips, Accuracy in Academia conference director Sara Russo, National Republican Senatorial Committee research editor Shamed Dogan, and Accuracy in Media prize-winning film producer Roger Aronoff.

Conservative University featured a number of special interactive programs, including a program on Friedrich Hayek's classic book, The Road to Serfdom, and a student panel on the campus reaction to 9/11. During the book program, students were first treated to a speech by Elizabethtown College humanities professor, Paul Gottfried, and then split into small groups to discuss the book's implications. The student panel led to an excited discussion about the proper role of activism on campus, as students eagerly commented on strategies for dealing with hostile campus administrations.

The conference began on a high note, with a dinner lecture by Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who discussed the effect that September 11 has had on our freedoms.

"For me the role of government should be very limited," Paul told the students. "It should be there to protect liberty….And no more complicated than that."

John Lott, the widely acclaimed author of More Guns, Less Crime, engaged the students by discussing how gun deaths are widely reported, but instances where guns are used defensively to prevent crime seldom make headlines.

"I think the question that concerns everyone is do guns save lives or cost lives, and what impact do they have on the crimes that threaten so many people in this country," Lott noted. Joseph Farah, editor and founder of WorldNetDaily, one of the most widely read online news sources, spoke to the students about the profession of journalism, and how to resuscitate the tradition of a vibrant press.

"I don't know how many of you know this," Farah remarked, "Did you know that the New York Times started as a Christian newspaper?"

Conservative Caucus chairman Howard Phillips addressed the conference on Saturday morning to kick-off a special full-day program devoted to examining American history. For students at Conservative University, the program was a welcome change from their college campuses where American history is seldom a required subject and is often taught with an extreme left-wing bias.

Immediately following Phillips, was one of the highlights of the conference: a debate between noted scholars and authors Dinesh D'Souza and Joseph Sobran over the constitutional legality of the South's secession from the Union during the Civil War.

"The debate over the ratification of the Constitution, the principle of which would come back in a big way during the Civil War, was whether this union was to be confederated or consolidated," argued Sobran. "Everybody professed to believe it should be confederated, that is, a voluntary union of sovereign states. The defenders of the Constitution went to great lengths to argue that it couldn't be consolidated, that is, monolithic, a single giant state usurping the sovereignty of the individual states."

"Lincoln was the man who held the Union together," countered D'Souza . "Without Lincoln, America would not be the great country it is. I think on balance, America has been a great force for liberty in the world. Without Lincoln we would not be that. Lincoln was the man second only to Washington who helped make that possible."

Conservative University students became actively engaged in the debate, and applauded enthusiastically at the points made by each side. Many ranked the debate as one of the most exciting and illuminating events of the conference.

Conservative University's history program wrapped up Saturday evening with an event featuring Dinesh D'Souza, who spoke about the multitude of reasons why America is a great nation.

"There's nothing Western about slavery. Slavery existed in every culture," D'Souza told the listening students. "What is uniquely Western is not slavery but abolition. The movement to end slavery is a Western idea."

Other speakers at the conference included James Davis, Michelle Easton, Reed Irvine, Stan Evans, and Ron Robinson.

With leftists so dominant on the campuses, several students remarked that the conference filled a much-needed role of fostering conservative fellowship among college students. Friendships among students formed quickly, and many vowed to return for next year's conference. Armed with new knowledge from Conservative University, they will return to the campuses better able to challenge their professors and peers.

One student reflected, "I find this kind of instruction of extreme value and importance to all our young adults, our next generation, if America is to remain free."