At Yale, we sometimes get the sense that we are more enlightened than the general public and thus better able to discuss such complicated issues as American politics. “The Right is wrong about Yale” by Ariane De Gennaro ’25 is the latest reminder that this isn’t true.

According to De Gennaro, Ron DeSantis’ accusation of “militant leftism” at Yale is misplaced. On this much, we agree. She continues: despite the “maddening homogeneity” of liberal thought on campus, the community of right-wingers on campus “flourishes.” Compared to those on the Left, these rightist free-thinkers “better hone arguments by being forced to defend, [and] they have a smaller, tight-knit community.” Conservatives have thus endeared themselves to self-proclaimed “centrists” like De Gennaro, because, “at Yale, the Right accepts centrists. The Left doesn’t.”

Fascinatingly, De Gennaro’s column features not a single concrete issue with which she diverges from the mainstream Yale opinion. She repeats the common refrain that “both ends of the political spectrum are radical to the extreme,” but fails to identify any stance that would make the average Yale student, or any liberal for that matter, as contemptible as Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. De Gennaro also generalizes to the extreme about liberal circles, liberal spaces and liberals in general –– all without a single specific instance of the close-mindedness De Gennaro claims is endemic and ubiquitous to liberals. All this isn’t even to mention the conflation of the Left to liberalism, which itself reveals exactly how skewed De Gennaro’s definition of “radical” is.

According to De Gennaro, DeSantis’ claims to be a political outcast among Yale’s alumni “contain a fragment of truth.” The same can be said of her own claims. I’ve had my frustrations with champagne socialists on Yale’s campus who repeat provocative soundbites without engaging critically with politics. Also, as a member of the Yale Political Union, I’m inclined to agree with part of De Gennaro’s diagnosis about the Right. There are fewer conservatives on campus, and those that I’ve encountered have largely been gifted debaters willing to engage with other ideas.

The problem with De Gennaro’s column, though, is that it is totalizing to the point of dishonesty. It generalizes without any specifics, painting a tale where the (liberal) Left is categorically unwilling and perhaps unable to engage in debate, pushing the innocent centrist into the welcoming arms of the Right. The former is comprised only of the uninformed, uncritical masses; the latter, home to the only free-thinkers remaining on this campus. This age-old story seems to play out over and over again in the current state of American politics. We should question whether it’s an actual phenomenon or merely a way for the enlightened centrist to gratify themself for bravely standing against the rising tide of progressivism.

Part of the insidious nature of arguments like De Gennaro’s is that they automatically frame anyone who takes issue with them as only proving them further. Aren’t I a part of the “maddening homogeneity,” excoriating De Gennaro for having a different opinion? If De Gennaro had expressed any actual opinion, perhaps. As it stands, the issue I take with her article is that it frames her opinions as radical and the Left’s as bankrupt, without presenting either one. Perhaps this is a result of De Gennaro’s lack of actual engagement with the Left — and those leftists willing to have a conversation with her if she’d only seek them out.

Should De Gennaro, or any other centrist, wish to engage with the flourishing — and not-just-liberal — Left at Yale, she is more than welcome to attend a debate of the Progressive Party, an organization I joined to find those on the Left who are interested in debating and critically examining their and others’ politics. She could also explore one of the many organizing groups on campus, where she could find people interested in both discussing and enacting their ideas. Before doing so, I encourage her to keep her unsubstantiated generalizations about Yale’s Left out of her column.

SEAN PERGOLA is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at sean.pergola@yale.edu.