C O L L E G I A T E    N E T W O R K ' S    H I S T O R Y

An IEA internal memo from Irving Kristol to Phillip Marcus considering the Counterpoint's financial request.

In 1979, two students at the University of Chicago asked a think-tank for help to counter the one-sided reporting that dominated the principal student publication on their campus. Then freshmen, Tod Lindberg and John Podhoretz founded a newspaper that presented alternative views, and they received a grant to defray publishing costs. They wrote, like hundreds of publications have since then, the following: "You have ensured the financial survival of Counterpoint, for which we and, we daresay, the University of Chicago itself are most grateful."

Although nobody realized it at the time, this was the start of a grassroots movement that has since grown into the Collegiate Network. This movement seeks to call higher education back to its touchstones of academic freedom, intellectual integrity, unfettered debate, and an understanding of the values of Western civilization. Lindberg is now the editor of the Hoover Institution's Policy Review and Podhoretz is a columnist for the New York Post.

The Institute for Educational Affairs (IEA), an organization that provided grants to intellectual projects, began offering seed money to alternative student publications—which soon became publicly known as the Collegiate Network—in 1980. The Network continued to flourish under IEA's administration, which, by 1983, had added summer and year-long internships, and was distributing regular operating grants to student newspapers. In 1990, the Madison Center for Educational Affairs, an organization then headed by William Bennett, Harvey Mansfield, and Alan Bloom, merged with IEA to sustain the growing number of conservative student publications which, at the time numbered 57. The Madison Center administered the Network until 1995, when the Collegiate Network moved from Washington, DC to Wilmington, Delaware. Since then the Intercollegiate Studies Institute has administered the CN.

Today, this voluntary association of nearly 100 independent publications operates at the nation's foremost colleges and universities. Free from reliance on student government approval and unconstrained by faculty "oversight boards," they are often the only truly independent student voices on campus. The Columbia Journalism Review noted that the “Collegiate Network papers make a significant contribution to the journalism of their day.” The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times have also cited the Collegiate Network as the leader in assisting student alternative publications to go from an idea to an influential campus publication.

During the last quarter century, this influential group of student publications has been the most consistent and enduring opponent of political correctness. In so doing, Collegiate Network publications have chronicled the many startling changes taking place in the academy.

By documenting questionable uses of mandatory student fees, the proliferation of politicized academic departments, and the stifling of debate through constitutionally dubious speech codes, the student reporters and editors of the Collegiate Network have helped set the terms of debate surrounding modern higher education.

Graduates of Collegiate Network newspapers have become professional journalists and authors in every region of the country. From the Wall Street Journal to the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit News to the Washington Post, Investor's Business Daily to the Weekly Standard, CNN, Fox News, Newsweek, and National Review, alumni have proven themselves to be some of the brightest and most promising members of the rising generation. Collegiate Network writers and editors have been awarded Rhodes Scholarships, and some have also received Marshall and Fulbright Scholarships, with many gaining recognition as Phi Beta Kappa inductees.