Narwhal: I have got a "militant" past, I was a member of a (left) Political Party, and I was a member of a (very lefty) Student Union (I was in the "centrist" part of this Student Union though). I was elected to the University Board, and my interventions were on the meeting minuts of said University Board, which were posted on the Internet.
I thereafter had a Finance degree in the most prestigious French business school (HEC), and started to apply for M&A positions. I had a much less "answers" than people from my school and my class. I still had a few interviews, and I understood why. In one of them, the guy told me "We wanted to see you because we don't understand why you want to work in M&A if you are a leftist." Duh !
Can't you tell them that you were exploring different political views/positions? After all, college is thought of as a place where someone experiments with different things, such as drugs or political views, so your prospective employer should have some understanding of that fact. He/she had to go to college/an institution of higher learning, right?
