Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch valued intellectual diversity and felt strongly about the First Amendment, his writings reveal. | Getty At Columbia, Gorsuch blasted progressive protesters, defended free speech

Columbia University was a hotbed of liberal protests in the late 1980s, as students raged against military recruitment, gentrification in New York and a range of other perceived societal wrongs. These progressive protesters were met with one constant voice of opposition: Neil Gorsuch.

Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s newly minted Supreme Court nominee, was an undergraduate at Columbia at the time and frequently turned to the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, to express his counterview in columns for and interviews with the paper.


“He was the campus's most prominent right-wing activist,” Jordan Kushner, a 1987 Columbia graduate who is now a civil rights lawyer in Minnesota, said. “The political atmosphere was pretty heated at the time, and Neil made a point of staking out, basically, an activist conservative position.”

Although he at times expressed sympathy for some of the protesters’ causes, such as fighting racism in the community, Gorsuch often slammed their methods and motivations, once describing a group as “aimlessly criticizing whatever struck their fancy.”

“Last Saturday's march was more a demand for the overthrow of American society than a forum for the peaceable and rational discussion of these people and events,” Gorsuch wrote as a sophomore in 1987 following a protest against campus racism. “Those who addressed the march argued not for a change within the system, but for a radical change of the system.”

In one column, he argued in favor of gentrification and defense research by professors and against protests calling for divestment from South Africa due to apartheid, as he alleged many of the companies targeted were already taking steps to divest. He argued the protesters claimed to have the moral high ground, even when the facts did not support their positions.

“Our protestors, it seems, have a monopoly on righteousness,” he wrote.

When a long-time tenant was to be evicted for university expansion, Gorsuch argued the protesters were primarily seeking publicity.

"I think the fact that they had the stay of eviction but nonetheless went forward to get themselves arrested in front of Newsday, the Times, and Spectator proves the overwhelming superficiality of both their cause and really the people themselves involved," Gorsuch said.

The future judge did not just focus his writings on the Columbia Daily Spectator, joining a group of students in 1986 to co-found The Federalist Paper, a publication aimed to elevate the level of dialogue on campus.

“The Fed was a response to the echo chamber at Columbia in the mid-80s,” said Stephen F. Later, a 1990 Columbia graduate who worked with Gorsuch on the Federalist and is now a lawyer in North Carolina. “It was a forum for diverse and interesting opinions. Neil was always thinking ahead of the rest of us, he is just remarkably insightful.”

Gorsuch valued intellectual diversity and felt strongly about the First Amendment, his writings reveal, especially arguing for military recruiters being allowed to recruit on campus.

“Wasn't the First Amendment written for the explicit purpose of protecting dissenting voices, allowing them the freedom to ‘recruit’ others to their opinions?” he wrote. “Don't we call this the marketplace of ideas—implying that ideas are bought by converts and sold by believers, thus using the very language of recruitment? Free speech is dangerous to dictators because it promises to recruit opposition; effective free speech is the best recruiting policy.”

Gorsuch also expressed his strong views through his college yearbook in 1988, quoting Henry Kissinger.

“The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little time,” the quote reads.

Kushner described Gorsuch as an “affable, intelligent, witty” person, and said the two occasionally discussed the issues of the day. However, he added he did not agree with many of Gorsuch’s positions.

“I think his positions, especially when you look back on them, were rather extreme,” he said.

He noted the Federalist had to run a correction after accusing him of getting dragged away by campus security after kicking and scratching kegs of Coors beer.

Later, however, said most people on campus respected the Federalist as an open forum for the discussions of ideas, a priority for Gorsuch.

“He is not, and never was, an ideologue,” Later said. “He is a thoughtful person.”

Gorsuch did take a rather hawkish approach to the Iran-Contra scandal in one column, arguing that United States and Reagan administration should be more aggressive in supporting the Contras.

“We need to clarify our policy-making, act with confidence, and decide: will we truly support the liberation of Nicaragua or will we try the ‘hands-off' approach? To futilely condemn more Contras to death, as we did the Cuban freedom fighters at the Bay of Pigs and our own countrymen in Vietnam, to continue in ambivalent, contradictory policy-making, is no longer an acceptable alternative. It is time to step out of the mire of indecision that has frustrated American foreign policy over the last 20 years and that continues today,” he wrote.

Gorsuch and his fellow Federalist editors seemingly anticipated future scrutiny of their collegiate work in a Federalist editorial from November 1987. Following the failed presidential candidacy of Joe Biden after plagiarism allegations and the derailed Supreme Court nomination of Douglas Ginsburg for previously smoking marijuana with his students, the Federalist wrote that many students “are coming to the realization that one’s actions in college and one’s conduct as a young adult will be examined in relentless detail should one chose to enter the public sector.”

“We ought not forget there is something vital and useful in the curious, if imperfect youth - something that shall not be stifled,” the Federalist editors wrote.

