According to a recent post at Minding the Campus by Peter Wood, Progressives and Libertarians now represent the two largest political groups on college campuses.

Libertarians vs. Progressives: The New Campus Divide

American college students these days seem to divide by moral temperament into two very different cohorts. On one hand, a large number of students prize the freedom to do and say what they want and deeply dislike the constraints of external authority. On the other hand, a large number of students prize social control as an instrument of justice and are deeply committed to a regime of close regulation of their fellow students’ behavior. While there are, of course, students who fall into neither camp, they are relatively few and not very conspicuous. The outliers include adherents to traditionalist religious groups, self-professed conservative students, and students single-mindedly focused on career preparation.

Of the two large and conspicuous cohorts, one may be thought of as “libertarian” and the other “progressive,” but these labels are only approximations and in some respects inaccurate. They suggest more in the way of ideological clarity than either cohort really possesses. The libertarian side includes a large contingent of young people who aren’t so much checked in to libertarian ideology as they are checked out of larger social and political issues. And the new generation of campus progressives are more radically anti-freedom than their predecessors and a lot more willing to forego the search for knowledge for the excitements of immediate power.

To say that these cohorts are in stark opposition is also misleading. They do diverge, but they are rooted in the same soil. On matters such as the legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage, acceptance of sexual minority lifestyles, and—more abstractly—personal autonomy, they are almost indistinguishable. And this makes it difficult for observers to see the real differences between the two cohorts.