The line in front of Penn Museum winds around the block, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. MBA students in full business formal wait next to fluffy–haired undergrads in T–shirts and cargo shorts; there’s button–ups, polos, and lots and lots of baseball caps. Behind me, a tall, blond man is talking on the phone at full volume. To my right, a pair of middle–aged women in lilac and pear–green blazers take walking footage of the crowd, beaming with pride. Across the street, protestors clad in black N–95s, neck garters, and keffiyehs gather at the edge of a small wooded park, carrying a large speaker and a megaphone.
They’re all here for Ben Shapiro’s talk, titled “Why Capitalism Makes America Great.” For the first time since the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University last September, the conservative pundit has agreed to speak at a college campus again.
It’s uncharacteristically warm for mid–April and, even 40 minutes before the event starts, there is a buzz of excitement in the summery air. While they wait in line, students chat about the modern right’s hot–button issues: whether (and how much) Americans ought to value themselves over foreigners, if Jewish and Christian values truly align, and how Donald Trump (W ’68), but also prediction markets, should have handled the decapitation strikes against Iran.
Around the time the protestors start blasting “WAP” from their position on the roadside, I’m ushered through the security check. In the museum lobby, staff members and volunteers—many of them Penn students—mill about, and everywhere there is a sense of camaraderie. Men in Brooks Brothers and women in full Mar–a–Lago makeup exchange pleasantries over tables laden with conservative merchandise. Provided by the event’s co–organizers, the Adam Smith Society and the Young America’s Foundation, they include booklets with titles like “3 Reasons to Be Proud of George Washington” and “Quotes to Inspire Conservative Activists,” as well as laptop stickers of the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. In this case, the rattlesnake is replaced by the silhouette of a late–term fetus.
Over 600 enthusiastic audience members pack into the massive, domed auditorium, which resembles an Art Deco dungeon. I’m told an estimated 500 more are turned away at the door—tickets are sold out, and a quick look around makes it clear the venue is at capacity.
Before the evening begins, I’m joined by the founder of Penn’s relatively small Turning Point USA chapter, Chloe Mastour (C ’26), who, just three weeks prior to Shapiro’s event, won a hard–fought battle to bring far–right blogger and computer scientist Curtis Yarvin on campus. Yarvin, not unlike Chloe, believes that representative democracy is incapable of pulling the United States out of its myriad troubles, mostly to do with the destruction of traditional Western values at the hands of immigrants and the “woke Left.” As the third year history major prepares to graduate early this semester, the event represents something of a crowning achievement for her to look back on.
Indeed, it’s been an astonishingly productive semester for Penn’s conservatives. From March 23 to 27, four separate speaking events were either held or announced, all inviting conservative commentators to the University. Each seemed more astounding than the last. There was the planned debate between Penn professor Jonathan Zimmerman and conservative streamer Steven Crowder; the talks with Ben Shapiro to come on campus; the private address by a Palantir senior counselor about “the Challenge to Save the West”; and finally, the sit–down with Yarvin, whose views often flirt with bald–faced fascism. Those not in the know were bewildered—since when did Penn have such an active right wing?
In reality, the events were hosted by several separate organizations, and while some individuals helped out with multiple talks, there was no elaborate conspiracy to MAGA–fy Penn. On the contrary, the conservatives felt stymied at every turn.
Chloe, for example, had originally planned the Yarvin event for February. It would be a chance for liberal students to expose themselves to new ideas, she thought, and for closet Republicans to come out and feel welcome in the University.
But gaining approval to host Yarvin felt “as difficult as rolling a boulder up Everest,” she says. Despite her consistent follow–ups, both online and in person, she suspects the Penn University Life Space and Events office had tried to sabotage her.
Less than a week before the event was originally supposed to take place, she made one last appeal to the Space and Events administrators.
“I spoke to a manager in that office. And I said, ‘So, in your opinion, how likely is it that my event will take place this week?’” she recalls. “And I was just met with the most like … obnoxious smirk and most childless behavior I've ever encountered.”
According to her, the manager suggested she should look into venues off campus. The Penn University Life Space and Events office did not respond to requests for comment.
Chloe was close to throwing in the towel, and it was only with the help of William Pallan (C ’27), vice president of Penn College Republicans, that the event took place. The pair cooked up the idea this past summer when they interned together at the White House. While Chloe was the driving force behind the event, William delivered the final push to book a venue and set things back on course for late March.
“I’[d] been dragged along in this process for far too long,” Chloe says. “William took it over eventually, and without him, the event wouldn’t have been possible.”
As to whether this treatment was a direct result of her political affiliations, Chloe tells me that “had I hosted Yarvin under the banner of ‘The Progressive Students for Transgender Jihad,’ this event would have taken place no problem.”
Not all four conservative speaker events made it out of the procedural flytrap—Crowder’s team pulled out of his upcoming debate at the last minute, citing Penn’s refusal to let him livestream the event.
When Professor Zimmerman discovered this, the would–be debater expressed his frustration with the University. While Crowder, a manosphere podcaster who has mocked gay and trans people on his platform and insinuated that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, certainly holds some disagreeable opinions, Zimmerman maintained that they “could have learned from each other.” He connected Penn’s cancellation of the event with a larger crackdown on free speech following the Gaza Solidarity Encampment two years prior, and wrote that the University had “lost the plot on open expression.”
Before he introduces Shapiro, Colin Duffy (MBA ’27), president of the Wharton chapter of the Adam Smith Society, brings up a similar grievance. “For months, our team went through bureaucratic delays, shifting requirements, and more roadblocks than should ever stand in the way of a student group trying to host a nationally acclaimed speaker on a college campus,” he says. “At times, it felt like this event was being intentionally slow–walked by Penn administration, rather than supported. But our team stuck with it.”
“Good for him,” mutters Chloe.
Indeed, the batch of Penn students who’ve shown up for Shapiro are ready and eager to see what he has to say. After Colin has said his piece on the administration’s partisan red tape, and thanked their co–sponsor, YAF (pronounced like “gaffe” with a “y”), he asks the audience to “please welcome me in joining” Ben Shapiro. At least half the auditorium rises from their chairs, and before he’s even said a word, the pundit receives a 23–second standing ovation.
Though Penn's preprofessional environment and Wharton–centrism can make the University feel comically libertarian, it's generally understood that the institution and its student body lean left. In a 2024 poll by The Daily Pennsylvanian, almost 80% of surveyed students planned to vote for Kamala Harris. Since 2024, individuals in Penn’s Board of Trustees have given $2.7 million in political donations, 90% of which went to Democratic causes. Since 2023, 99.1% of faculty donations have gone to Democrats.
To Penn’s conservatives, this political bias is stifling. As is the case on many college campuses, they report a baseline level of self–censorship that is necessary to avoid social death at the University, or at least notoriety in classes and online discourse.
But over the past two years, that liberal hegemony has begun to show its cracks. According to William, the campus “vibe shift” began with the re–election of Trump in 2024, which softened taboos around expressing conservative viewpoints and made the recent surge in organizing possible. “I think we’re still kind of riding the coattails of that,” he says.
Beyond the ascendancy of a Republican president, William thinks this shift was hallmarked by a nationwide decline in “woke” ideology and all associated forms of language policing or equity–forward etiquette. To him, this translated into a “general openness to conservative ideas” on campus.
“People don’t feel pressure to put their pronouns in their LinkedIn profile anymore,” he says. “And I think that vibe shift just makes it easier for conservatives to organize events and not face protesters.”
Indeed, while the left–wing activist group Labor Jawn held a noise demonstration to protest Shapiro as an “anti–union, anti–immigrant, bigoted leader of the far–right,” it was not particularly disruptive. Inside the auditorium, the extended question and answer session remained civil, if not deferential.
In addition to serving as vice president of College Republicans, William is currently starting a shooting club at Penn. The multigenerational South Indian Catholic is extremely committed to his faith, taking many political views from his religion—he’s pro–life, believes in traditional marriage, and maintains that “some defining Anglo–Christian American identity” is inherent to the country. As we walk along the lower Quad green, he practices his golf swing with a metal water bottle.
“The conservative infrastructure at Penn is growing quickly,” he tells me. “Especially over the last year.”
In his sophomore year, William explains, the 2024 election ended in a decisive victory for Trump, and spelled bad news for Penn. The following months were marked by several threatened—and realized—funding cuts, stemming from the University’s socially conscious research projects and their past support for transgender swimmer Lia Thomas (C ’22).
The University stripped Thomas of many of her records and scrubbed pro–DEI language from its programming, signaling defeat in what William calls “a just war” on higher education. “If I had to be critical, I don’t think they’re going far enough,” he says.
Then, the shooting of Charlie Kirk altered the course of conservative activism nationwide.
“Charlie Kirk’s assassination had a really big impact on all of us,” says Colin. While introducing Shapiro at the Smith Society’s event, he emphasized that “it’s one thing to argue anonymously in the comments section, and it’s a whole other to put yourself directly in the line of fire.” At this, he had paused for a beat, leaned over his podium, and swiveled his head across the room, gazing pointedly at the audience.
“I’ve been a fan of Charlie and [have been] listening to his work, on campus and outside, with TPUSA for as long as he’s been on the scene,” he tells me.
Kirk’s assassination “really struck a nerve” with the second–year MBA, and encouraged him to redouble his conservative organizing efforts. He believes “the only way that you can overcome that animus is to continue to put yourself in the fray.” Invariably, the conservatives I talked to echoed this sentiment, agreeing that Kirk’s assassination played an undeniable part in the uptick in conservative organizing at Penn.
At the same time that conservatism has gained traction on the ground, moneyed right–wing organizations are continuing their efforts to court young Republicans.
According to political historian and Penn scholar in residence Brian Rosenwald, organizations like Turning Point USA and YAF have made overtures to conservative and conservative–leaning youth for as long as he can remember.
Rosenwald explains that, beginning as a Penn student during the 2004 election, he noticed each new voting cohort of 18 to 22 year olds became more liberal than the last—“until 2024,” he notes, when the youth vote shifted right.
He continues that “there were people on the Right who realized, ‘well, oh shit … if we keep losing every new cohort of young voters, eventually, as old voters die off, our party is screwed.’”
Now, Rosenwald explains, a slew of conservative groups have streamlined the process for student organizers to bring speakers on campus and “helped to raise the issue for donors and others who can pump money” into student organizations across the country.
The professor, who has extensively researched the Republican party and wrote a book on its media tactics, also notes that on college campuses, conservative media holds a strong sway over the handful of students who do identify with their ideologies.
“Even if you only have 20% who are conservatives,” he explains, “if they’re aggrieved, if they feel alienated and isolated, they’re looking for a clubhouse—and somebody like Shapiro and his outlet … give them that sense of community and belonging.”
It’s with the help of this well–oiled conservative machine that Penn students are carving out their campus niche, and obtaining the funds to do so. When the university required Colin’s team to pay for their own event security, including metal detectors and police officers, it was through YAF and the Manhattan Institute, which funds the Smith Society, that the organizers footed a $10,000 security bill on top of the speaker fees (Shapiro’s range from $100,000 to $200,000) and other associated costs.
Colin hopes that, with the success of the Shapiro event, it will be easier to get future right–wing speakers approved. “We’re going to say, ‘last year we brought Ben Shapiro. We had over 600 people in the auditorium, another 500 lined up ready to go, and everyone was respectful … so what is your actual concern about this event?’”
“And that’s what will get to the brass tacks,” he says. The Wharton MBA Student Life office did not respond to requests for comment.
“It’s wonderful to be here at the University of Pennsylvania—a place that now apparently recognizes that calls for genocide against Jews are bad,” Shapiro begins.
He pauses for the subsequent laughter and smattered applause, then continues. “Late last week, the president of the United States ripped into pseudo–conservative commentators Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly, and Alex Jones …”
Speaking in his classic double time cadence, Shapiro spends the first several minutes talking ostensibly about the benefits of American capitalism, while taking potshots at his fellow conservative pundits. Throughout the rest of the speech, he weaves in and out of two modes, one championing free markets and the other bashing the “low IQ,” anti–Zionist corners of his own party—something Chloe likens to a game of “whack–a–mole.”
I meet her again several days after Shapiro’s event, at the Starbucks on 34th and Walnut streets. We sit in a lofted area which, Chloe explains, might “allow us to segregate ourselves from any surrounding rabble.”
The junior history major lies somewhat outside of Penn’s conservative apparatus, and represents the extreme of the university’s organized Right. Among other things, she’s concerned that the country is too “feminized,” that leftists control the major power structures around her, and that fecund, Democrat–voting immigrants are leading America to devolve from its superior Western heritage. On the last point, she notes that “our native birth rate is collapsing, and these people reproduce at a rate just exponentially faster than we do.”
Like her former event guest Yarvin, Chloe is also against lowercase “d” democracy. “Democracy presupposes that we’re all equal in intellect and decision making,” she says. “Which I think is just completely ridiculous.”
Chloe’s own Turning Point chapter never quite took off, perhaps because her politics are too outspoken even for her pro–natalist, anti–Great Replacement peers. While not a regular participant in Penn’s other conservative clubs, however, her familiarity with several organizers offers something of a third–party vantage point to observe their evolution.
“I do think that [the] current generation of College Republicans has become more brazen,” she tells me. “Just having known a few of its members in my freshman year, they struck me as very classically liberal and not necessarily right wing. And even if they were right wing, I don't think they would be confident to say so outwardly.”
Chloe explains that, especially throughout Trump’s second term, the College Republicans’ shifting politics has mirrored those of the national party. “The College Republicans are very explicitly pro–Trump,” she says. “Which is great. That’s really, I think, all that matters.”
On the other hand, this move towards greater partisanship has estranged more moderate members who sought out a capacious, center–right organization. Pro–Life @ Penn president Emma McClure (C ’27), for instance, came upon the College Republicans during New Student Orientation. As a moderate conservative who doesn’t identify as Republican, she was excited to have a place to work out internecine debates within conservative thought.
She explains that, in her freshman year, the discussion topics centered around conflicting values within conservative politics. As she recalls, “we had a debate on abortion; we had a debate on the death penalty; and then subsequently a debate on ‘is it inconsistent to be pro–death penalty and anti–abortion,’ which was really interesting.”
“I really appreciated those debates that were a little bit more timeless,” she says.
In Emma’s sophomore year, her schedule didn’t align with the College Republicans meetings. When she was able to attend again, however, she found the club’s topics of discussion had changed drastically.
“This year, it’s a lot more social stuff, a lot more Trump–oriented things,” she says. “I’m gonna be honest, anytime I show up … I think I know what the major issues are and I don't know a thing about any of the stuff that they’re debating.”
These days, she reports, the College Republicans are interested in discussing everything from Bad Bunny’s superbowl half–time show to rumors of satanism at the Paris Olympics to the Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, who has allied himself with white supremacist podcaster Nick Fuentes and once told a Black protestor that he ought to be “lynched”.
While she doesn’t have a problem with more conservative organizing, or with more acutely right–wing speakers coming to campus, Emma worries that “if there’s very little heterogeneity or diversity within the existing Republican organizations on campus … there is the risk of alienating moderates.”
Beyond pushing out the political center, conservative student Seth Cyr (C ’28) explains that, in the aftermath of Kirk’s shooting, his peers have become increasingly receptive to conspiracy–hawking political commentators.
“Some will say they watch Candace Owens, some will say they watch Tucker Carlson, some will say they watch Ben Shapiro,” he says. And whether they want to or not, Seth and several of his friends have been seeing Fuentes on their timelines. “I’ve been told by people that they’ve seen some of his videos, but I’m not sure that that’s them actually searching,” he explains, or just getting them through the algorithm.
On the subject of the United States’ support for Israel, now one of the most contentious debates in the Republican party, Seth has both Zionist and anti–Zionist friends. In the latter category, he says, there’s Republicans who take an “America first,” isolationist position against aid to the country, and others who “adopt more of a conspiratorial line of thinking” against not just Israel, “but this entire group of [Jewish] people.”
“I have seen both,” Seth admits.
I’m told an essential part of the College Republican’s rightward shift has been its change in leadership.
Mia Antonacci (C ’26), the club’s former president, admits openly that these days, she would be called a “RINO” (Republican in name only) by her ex–constituents.
“It’s fine,” she follows up. “I’m, like, very big on the fact that I don’t think it’s offensive.”
The senior politics, philosophy, and economics major is ambivalent about Trump’s presidency and identifies broadly with Mitt Romney. She explains that when she was president, her primary goal was to “make it explicitly clear that there are very, very right people here, and there are very, very center [people] with, like, one thing that makes them conservative.”
“I did a lot of the coffee chats my junior year, especially for the girls. I would very much emphasize [that] there’s a spot for your type of conservatism, Republicanism, in the club,” she says.
The current president, however, is significantly more right–wing. While he wouldn’t talk to me for this article, Mia tells me “that’s 100%. I’ll admit that, too. He’ll admit that, too.”
While she’s not against the idea of having a more MAGA successor, she notes that “if you start alienating people that are Republican, but feel like you’re too extreme for them, that’s a problem. That’s a really big problem.”
“A few of the more moderate people in CRs have expressed that concern to me too,” she says. “That sometimes the more intense people are a little scary.”
Late into the evening, when the lower Quad green is emptying out and William’s face is just a shadow against the lamplight, he articulates a more ambitious vision for conservative organizing at Penn.
“I spend a lot of time thinking about institutional capture,” he says. “And conservatives control virtually none of the dominant institutions in American public life.” He cites the largely Democratic makeup of Hollywood, Fortune 100 CEOs, and Anthropic employees as evidence for this belief; between 2018 and 2022, 85% of political donation dollars from Fortune 100 CEOs actually went to Republicans.
If conservatives really want to turn back the clock and take back power in America,” he explains, “we’re going to have to cultivate a conservative counter–elite.”
William claims that “compared to other universities, Penn has probably had the least robust conservative institutions.” He contrasts our “very decentralized” collection of student organizations, from College Republicans to Turning Point to the Smith Society, with other prestigious universities’ more unified, well–resourced equivalents—Yale’s Buckley Institute, Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and Princeton’s James Madison Program come to mind.
“I have a vision for creating … an external organization, kind of akin to the Buckley Institute at Yale, that hosts conservative speakers; organizes, recruits, [and] supports conservative students at Penn,” he says.
Elites, William argues, go on to exercise outsized influence over systems of power—and conservatives have long groomed new generations of them at top schools.
“The character of campus conservatism at Penn is fundamentally different than that at most colleges across America,” he tells me. “The students from an elite institution like Penn are going to go on to staff future presidential administrations. They’re going to run the investment banks, the big tech companies, et cetera.”
To back up his thinking, he details the overturning of Roe v. Wade, possible only through a decades–long effort orchestrated by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal advocacy group founded at Yale. Even though the majority of Americans were and remain pro–choice, he explains that Republicans achieved that victory, allowing states to instate harsh, sweeping abortion bans, by “creating a conservative legal movement which consisted of almost solely elites.”
“It was about changing the judiciary, which isn’t something that’s done necessarily democratically,” he says.
When I ask Chloe for her thoughts on this bold, shadowy plan, she’s all for it. “It's elites who drive mass movements,” she says. “You know, it's the 20% who decide the future for the 80%.”
When I asked Colin, he tells me “that'd be awesome. I mean, to build a Hoover Institute at Penn.”
“Maybe one day I'll make enough money to be able to endow that,” he adds.
Perhaps because it’s getting late and I’ve caught William in a showy mood, or perhaps because he's really got an astounding amount of self–belief, the intrepid organizer pushes on. “Conservative students are rising up,” he tells me. “We're gonna keep organizing, we're gonna keep, you know, fighting in this liberal echo chamber, and we're gonna make progress.”
“What's going on on Penn's campus is—I think it's fair to describe it as an insurgency.”
