Out of Ivy: How a Liberal Ivy Created a Committed Conservative
by Travis James Rowley
Category: Education

Like his opinions or not, Travis Rowley's memoir of life as a conservative undergraduate (and football player) at Brown University, perhaps the most predictably liberal major university in the country, is immensely entertaining. With great vividness, his story presents America's culture wars with youthful outrage, humor, disillusionment, and hope-all informed by intense observation and high energy. Mr. Rowley's description of incidents on Brown's politically correct campus are by turns hilarious, infuriating, and intriguing as he provides one of the sharpest and most detailed inside looks at elite higher education seen in a long time, Tom Wolfe's "I am Charlotte Simmons" included. There are few powerful college interest groups-sexual, ethnic, political or otherwise-that Mr. Rowley won't take on with glee. This guy is a gladiator against PC, and his show would fill the Roman Coliseum, or at least make some parents wonder whether to pay so much to send their kids to fancy colleges. William F. Buckley Jr. launched his career with "God and Man at Yale." Travis Rowley, though a regular guy and no would-be Mandarin, may have done the same with his adventures at Brown.-Robert Whitcomb, editorial-pages editor, Providence Journal.