An Interview with Karin Lips, Founder and President, Network of enlightened Women (NeW)
College should be a place where young people wrestle with big ideas and discover who they are. Yet for many conservative women, campus can feel so isolating that they just decide to keep their views to themselves before they even arrive.
In the fall of 2004, a University of Virginia student returned from an internship in Washington, DC, looking for a place where college women could talk about public policy, including conservative ideas. When she asked the campus Women’s Center to co-sponsor a group for conservative women, she was essentially laughed at and told, “not here.” So she started a book club. Within a year, women on other campuses wanted chapters of their own. Today, the Network of enlightened Women is on more than 40 college campuses, with professional and alumnae chapters that carry its mission beyond graduation: to educate, equip, and empower women to be principled leaders for a free society.
That student is our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom. Karin Lips is the Founder and President of NeW. A graduate of the University of Virginia and its School of Law, she practiced law at Wiley Rein and was a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. She is the author of You’re Not Alone: The Conservative Woman’s Guide to College and editor of She’s Conservative: Stories of Trials and Triumphs on America’s College Campuses.
Topics Discussed on this Episode:
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How a rejected request at UVA sparked a book club that grew into a national network
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What NeW’s mission to educate, equip, and empower looks like in practice
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How conservative women on campus are finding their voice
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What Karin is seeing in higher education today — and what university leaders should do differently
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What gives Karin hope about the next generation of young women