William F. Buckley’s book God and Man at Yale marked a turning point in the role of conservatism in academia.

In a new post at Intercollegiate Review, the editors remember WFB for his tremendous influence.

WFB Jr: Remembering an Icon

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the first hints of political conservatism wiggled their way into the American conscience.

Through books like Richard Weaver’s Ideas have Consequences, F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, Whittaker Chamber’s Witness, Robert Nisbet’s Quest for Community, and, of course, Russell Kirk’s groundbreaking conservative hagiography, The Conservative Mind, the intellectual conservative movement in American began to take shape.

William F. Buckley, conservative writer and critic. Undated file photo.

Then came William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale, published in 1951. With his powerful indictment against Yale’s reigning liberal ideology, Buckley established himself among the pantheon of conservative leaders at just 26 years of age. For the next 57 years Buckley was the preeminent spokesman for conservatism in America, channeling conservative ideas beyond the academy and Capitol Hill into the living rooms of the American public.

George Nash, historian of the American conservative movement,  stated that Buckley was “arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century…. For an entire generation, he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure.”