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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.
Chapter 2: What historical trends have shaped Irish universities' political landscape?
Now, Irish universities, indeed, I think a lot of universities across the world, have long been bastions of progressive ideas, leaning generally left politically and liberal across the board. But data now shows that traditional values and more right-wing views are on the rise among young people. So what's behind this revival and what is it like to be a conservative on campus?
Well, Newstalk's Sarah Madden joins us in studio now. Sarah, good morning to you.
Good morning Ciara.
It's pretty fascinating isn't it?
I know I think so too because yeah as you said in the past we've kind of accepted this notion that well if we look at Ireland that we're generally becoming more progressive, more secular, more liberal with each generation but there does appear to be somewhat of a reversal of course happening or at least a questioning of those progressive ideas that we had once accepted you know as the common undergraduate diet along with
cheap beer and wherever you can get a slice of toast. So I took a wander down to Trinity to speak to students myself and find out even anecdotally if they're feeling a shift rightwards from left.
As a queer person myself, I certainly see myself holding back and trying to, I suppose, be a bit more covert in general, just in an effort to protect myself, basically. And I think people of all different sorts of minorities and identities generally would agree in terms of the vibe. I do think that Ireland is becoming quite nationalistic. That, of course, falls into anti-immigration.
There's definitely a lot of misogyny now in young men with the rise of a red pill sort of society, Andrew Tate in particular. There's a lot of podcasters like Joe Rogan, influencers like Clavicular. It's becoming so normalised.
yeah yeah yeah but i think that's good as well though you know men being the providers and stuff like that i actually think that's a good thing there's a fire in your house you're going to send a fireman in rather than a fire woman into the house to save and that's nothing against like women i'm just saying men physically are just stronger a lot of boys
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Chapter 3: What evidence supports the rise of conservative views among young people?
So a certain vibe coming from some Trinity College students there. I find it actually kind of shocking to hear some of those conservative views back in the conversations that students have. Is there any, though, actual hard data to back this up, Sarah?
So there isn't much data when it comes to Irish university students specifically, but we can look to Europe and there is a growing body of evidence there supporting the idea.
And even just our neighbours in the UK, there was a recent study, this will be shocking to you now, it showed that almost half of Britain's university students support bringing back capital punishment for the most serious of crimes. While at Cambridge, a women's society was set up last year to much media fanfare in a pushback against the university's trans-inclusive policies.
Now, that said, young men are more likely to subscribe to conservatism than young women are. Rory Costolo is an associate professor at the Department of Politics at the University of Limerick.
There does seem to be a pattern going on whereby some young people are becoming more conservative and it does seem to be intersecting with gender.
For a long time, women have been a little bit more left-wing than men, but we're seeing a bigger gap now internationally between men and women in terms of their attitudes with women being more left-leaning and progressive and men being more conservative, particularly at the younger age cohorts. We're seeing this in relation to gender roles.
So we're seeing a reversion to traditional gender roles, some young men favouring traditional gender roles. And so you're seeing a big gap between young men and women on those issues. But it's also more broad in terms of attitudes on issues like immigration or the environment, less so on the economy, but certainly on these more cultural questions.
We are seeing a growing gap between young men and women. So that does seem to be an international pattern. And we're seeing a little bit of that in Ireland too, although we don't have as much data on this as of yet. One of the reasons that people are speculating, maybe driving this, is that young men and women are getting very different types of information online.
If you sign up to a social media platform and it recognizes you as a young man, you're going to be targeted with particular types of information, which will tend to push you in a more conservative direction. Whereas for young women, I mean, we've come through the Me Too era in recent years. There is a lot more progressive content, I think, being directed at young women.
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Chapter 4: How do students at Trinity College perceive the shift towards conservatism?
There's less stigma around it, probably. They would find communities online. They might get into people like Father Mike Schmitz or Bishop Barron, and they start to learn from people online and then it comes offline. So I think what we're seeing is a ripening of a lot of people that encountered this stuff online and then are trying to bring it offline into actual communities.
And that's why I think people get surprised. Like even my parents' generation are like, why are young people becoming Catholic? That's so weird. It's like the opposite of what they would have expected. But I think because young people are in such different communities online and in the digital world that they can be influenced in very bad ways in terms of bad communities.
But then I think the Catholic one or Christian one can be very positive.
All right. So there's, by all accounts, a widening spectrum of Irish student bodies. But still, I would imagine the vast majority are left leaning when they're in these campuses, when you are a young student. So what is it like then to be that conservative student on an Irish campus?
Well, yeah, I mean, there are some outlets for right-leaning students here in Ireland. So the Birkian, for example, it's an online student journal. They appear to publish work of kind of conservative, maybe libertarian bent, pieces that might not have a place in the University Times or other campus publications.
But Theo MacDonald is a recent graduate of DCU, and he says in general, Irish college campuses can be tricky places for conservative students.
From the outset, I would say I was kind of aware that universities generally are kind of a cold place for people of a more maybe conservative disposition. I think most lecturers' academic material is kind of geared towards a certain viewpoint with, you know, an emphasis on concepts such as, you know, equality of outcome as opposed to
Equality of opportunity, perhaps an emphasis on combating climate change, using other terms that I would regard as slightly subjective, such as misinformation and disinformation, which is kind of mainly, I would say, directed at people on kind of one side of the political spectrum. So I think from the outset, you're perceived as somewhat of an outcast.
I recall this being kind of most evident in political societies in which, you know, members would be castigated and scolded for bringing forward motions or proposals, you know, on certain issues, only to be told by the hierarchies within the party apparatus that they couldn't proceed.
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