Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Conservative Woman's Guide. I'm your host Karen Lips. Today I'm joined by Jenna Robinson for an episode on the state of higher education and successful efforts to promote policies that improve higher education.

Jenna is the president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a North

Carolina-based organization that promotes policies to improve higher education in North Carolina

and across the country. She started there as their campus outreach coordinator.

Jenna is here today to speak with me about her work in academia and what conservative college

students can expect on campus in 2026. Before we get into the interview, make sure you're

subscribed to the conservative woman's guide wherever you get your podcast. And if you haven't

already, leave us a five-star review. Welcome, Jenna. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Yes, thanks so much for joining us. One of the most difficult problems to tackle in higher education

is self-censoring that happens as students face backlash from their peers. How can we combat self-censorship?

I think we need to have role models on campus. I think that's the best thing that we can do because this is a culture problem.

It's not actually a policy problem. We see self-censorship, even at universities, that have excellent free speech policies that are getting green lights from the fire,

the foundation for individual rights and expression on their policies. And you'll see this disconnect,

because they have excellent policies and tons of students are still self-censoring. And so this one is,

it's really an issue of culture. And I think that we need to have examples of debates on

campus where students can see constructive disagreement, respectful disagreement, people who have

real differences of opinion. So, you know, a real representative of someone on the right, a real representative of someone on the left who have real opposing positions on something.

Also just have examples of speakers on campus who have, you know, heterodox opinions, things that go counterculture to what's going on universities.

I think we also have to have faculty who model this kind of behavior because students will adapt to the culture around them.

Students want to fit in. That's very typical of young people that they want to fit in with

whatever's going on around them. And so if they see

examples from faculty, from invited speakers, and from other brave students speaking up, I think that

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