Black professors outnumber their Republican colleagues at 11 elite higher education institutions including Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.
Roughly 40 percent of college faculty would “oppose hiring a Trump supporter.”
A quarter of faculty in social sciences and humanities departments would “support a campaign” to remove colleagues for expressing conservative views “in at least one of four topic areas.”
These are just some of the issues flagged in a new report from the America First Policy Institute published this month, painting a picture on how higher education is more polarized than ever.
“When you have institutions that are being captured and co-opted by this kind of woke, DEI, critical theory mentality, this is the result,” America First Policy Institute Vice Chair of Education Opportunity Michael Shires told The College Fix. “You chase out people who have even mainstream perspectives.”
“If you think about it,” he added, “half the electorate voted for President Trump, yet on a university campus, you know, 40% of the faculty wouldn’t hire them.”
The report weaves together dozens of studies, research, surveys and other findings to argue government intervention is needed to correct course, as institutional reform is not coming from within, and demands for “academic freedom” ring hollow given the bias against the right.
Although institutions of higher education require “meaningful exposure to competing perspectives,” the report states that liberal faculty still vastly outnumber conservative faculty in campuses across the country.
As leftist scholars continue to vastly outnumber conservative ones on campuses, viewpoint discrimination appears to be rampant in higher education, according to the report.
It noted that from 2016 to 2022, liberal faculty in higher education institutions grew from 59.8% to 74.2%, while conservative faculty declined from 12.1% to 10.8%.
“Mounting evidence suggests that conservative faculty face discrimination from their far more numerous liberal peers in hiring, promotion, grant review, and disciplinary processes,” it states.
“Conservative and other heterodox faculty, students, and visitors also find their expression constrained by speech codes, diversity statement requirements, and cancellation campaigns.”
Shires said the problem is deeply entrenched.
For example, he said, it’s no surprise black faculty outnumber conservative ones at elite institutions, as “colleges and universities have been intentional about hiring racially diverse faculty for a long time.”
What’s more, he added, “during that same time, we have allowed an environment to flourish where we chase out faculty who don’t buy into the progressive leftist views.”
While conservatives are not the only victims of discrimination in higher education, AFPI’s report found that discrimination is “still plainly directed against views associated with ‘conservatives’ or ‘the right.’”
The report states the “campus ideological monocultures have been decades in the making,” which Shires said is both passively and actively promoted on campus.
“They’re silencing the voice of the right, and the right’s nervous about saying things, and they’re even nervous about hanging out with them because it might hurt their careers,” he told the Fix.
But, according to Shires, not all hope is lost – and the federal government may have a role in the solution.
“In the case of our public institutions, and in institutions that are taking federal money, there’s a legitimate public interest in saying, part of why we pay for higher rent is to teach our students how to navigate the complexity of competing ideas,” Shires said, “and if there’s no competing ideas on campus, we’re not getting our money’s worth as taxpayers.”
“You see the really high-profile conversations about Harvard and Columbia and the elites with the federal government, and the federal government is saying, ‘We are giving you money to create this educational opportunity – to create a citizenry that’s able to navigate complex problems, have disagreements, and find solutions peacefully, and you’re not teaching our students that anymore.’”
https://www.thecollegefix.com/40-wont-hire-trump-voters-new-report-details-higher-educations-ideological-divide/
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