How to Depoliticize Higher Education

Only those who have been deceived—or who are trying to deceive—would deny that the left has seized control of higher education in this country. A politicized educational system has harmful consequences both for the integrity and functioning of colleges and for the public trust they require to maintain support. Yet depoliticizing higher education is difficult. Some methods that would work in other industries would be ineffective here, while others would work only by doing so much damage to the educational mission that what remained would hardly qualify as higher education. There is, however, a way to force higher education to fix itself. To see why it would work, we must first understand how we ended up here.

Higher Education Is Heavily Skewed to the Left
The source of many of the problems in higher education is the political imbalance among professors, with those of a leftist orientation far outnumbering those on the right. Researchers have documented this imbalance by surveying faculty, examining voter registration data, and comparing political donations.

Nathan Honeycutt recently pieced together various surveys revealing the political orientation of faculty over the past several decades. His key figure is reproduced below.

The mid-1980s marked the last time the political imbalance was both small and declining. The next four decades saw a steady increase in the share of faculty on the left and a steady decline for those on the right. By the early 2020s, for every professor on the right, there were 6.9 professors on the left. Even when restricting the range to the years covered by the same survey—UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute survey from 1989 to 2017—the left’s share of faculty increased by 14.6 percentage points (from 45.2 percent to 59.8 percent) while the right’s share of faculty decreased by 4 percentage points (from 16.1 percent to 12.1 percent).

Analyses of voter registration are less frequent and cover fewer colleges, focusing disproportionately on top colleges. These snapshots tend to indicate that the political imbalance among faculty is even more extreme at top colleges. For example, Mitchell Langbert, Anthony Quain, and Daniel Klein compared voter registration among faculty in five fields at 40 top universities. They found registration data for more than 7,000 professors, of which 50 percent were registered as Democrats, and 4.3 percent were registered as Republicans, meaning that for every Republican professor, there were 11.5 Democratic professors. Some fields were more skewed than others. Economics and law were the least skewed, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans by 4.5 to one, and 8.6 to one, respectively. History was the most skewed, with 33.5 Democrats for every Republican.

Political donations also provide snapshots of political imbalance. Data from Open Secrets reveal that for the 2024 election cycle, faculty and staff at the 20 universities that donated the most to political campaigns favored Democrats and liberal groups. For every dollar that was donated to Republicans or conservative groups, 28 dollars were given to Democrats or liberal groups. This means that 97 percent of political donations went to Democrats or liberal groups.

The bottom line is that whether examining faculty surveys, voter registrations, or political donations, higher education is heavily skewed toward the left.

Causes of Imbalance: Self-Selection, Unconscious Bias, Discrimination, and Loyalty Oaths
A political imbalance is not necessarily a problem. In some fields, such as physics or engineering, an imbalance would not be cause for concern because there is little opportunity for political bias to affect teaching or research in those fields. But fields in the social sciences and humanities offer ample opportunity for political bias to distort teaching and research.

Nor are all causes of an imbalance the result of nefarious actions. Natural causes of imbalance could be if those who lean left are smarter or more interested in becoming professors than those who lean right. Differences in intelligence can be ruled out as a cause: Joe Duarte and colleagues review studies of intelligence and political orientation and conclude that the evidence is “incompatible with the hypothesis that” faculty “are overwhelmingly left-liberal because liberals are smarter than conservatives.”

But different interests leading to self-selection are a different story. Among first-year undergraduate students in 2004, 26 percent of left-leaning students indicated an interest in earning a PhD, a figure that was only 15 percent for right-leaning college students. But left-leaning students also outnumber right-leaning students: 29.5 percent of students were on the left, 24.1 percent were on the right. Thus, 7.7 percent of students were both on the left and interested in graduate school, while only 3.6 percent of students were on the right and interested in graduate school. If this ratio persists into faculty positions, it implies a natural imbalance of left- to right-leaning faculty of around 2.1 to one.

But how does a natural imbalance of 2.1 to one become the 6.9 to one, or 11.5 to one, imbalance of today? The most plausible reason is that the initial imbalance is unstable and unleashes forces that serve to exacerbate the initial imbalance.

The first force that is unleashed is unconscious bias. When people encounter research that aligns with their own values and views, they tend to accept it at face value, without looking too hard for reasons to be skeptical. But when people encounter research that does not align with their views, they are much more skeptical, looking for flaws in the data, methodology, or interpretation. Since no research is perfect, it is usually possible to find some flaws. As philosophy professor Michael Huemer explains,

Because of the initial imbalance, conservative scholars and findings face more scrutiny than liberal scholars and findings simply because there are more peers that are skeptical of the research and hunting for flaws. Since no department wants to hire faculty who conduct flawed research, and conservative researchers and research will be scrutinized more thoroughly, conservatives are less likely to be hired, exacerbating the initial political imbalance.

Discrimination is the next factor magnifying the imbalance among faculty. Even if similar proportions of faculty on the left and right are willing to discriminate against their ideological opponents, the initial imbalance among faculty means that conservative applicants are much more likely to face a hiring committee that discriminates against them, which, in turn, magnifies the existing imbalance.

In fact, once a field or department is sufficiently lopsided, faculty stop even trying to hide their discrimination. For example, in the field of social psychology, which has a 14-to-one Democrat-to-Republican ratio, 82 percent of liberal social psychologists “admitted that they would be at least a little bit prejudiced against a conservative candidate” when hiring for a faculty job. Looking across academia, “22% of academics admitted they would discriminate against a known Trump supporter” when hiring faculty.

The third force exacerbating the initial political imbalance is political loyalty oaths. The prime example of this is required diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements for those applying for faculty jobs. As Abigail Thompson wrote about these statements: “To score well, candidates must subscribe to a particular political ideology … these DEI rubrics act as a filter for those with nonconforming views.”

DEI statements are made even worse when used by administrators who have veto power over which applicants can be considered. Consider a case at the University of California–Berkeley in which

The use of DEI statements is widespread, but not universal. Scholars James Paul and Robert Maranto document that 19 percent of faculty job listings in 2020 included a DEI statement, with 34 percent of listings at elite colleges requiring statements. In the past several years, some states have outlawed the use of DEI statements, but many other states still allow their usage.

There is likely a natural political imbalance among faculty based on different interests and the resulting self-selection, but this imbalance is then magnified by unconscious bias, overt discrimination, and loyalty oaths, which all serve to dramatically increase the political imbalance.

The Goal Is Competitive Coexistence
While the left’s dominance of higher education is bad, there are a few points to keep in mind.

First, the left’s domination within higher education is a problem not only because it is leftist but also because it is dominant. When one side dominates, only truths that conform with that political ideology will be acknowledged. Inconvenient truths will be ignored, dismissed, or explained away. As Eric Kauffman noted, “certain questions are never asked, or certain answers are off-limits.” If the right dominated higher education, there would still be inconvenient truths, albeit different ones.

Second, to avoid dominance of either side, toleration of the opposing political tribe is essential. In the current context, this mostly means that universities should tolerate conservatives, but it also means that those trying to reform universities should tolerate their ideological opponents. As I’ve argued previously,

Third, clashing ideologies is a good thing. Indeed, some argue that scientific progress requires ideological conflict. For example, Joseph Schumpeter argued that

But as Schumpeter hinted, the individual biases of scholars don’t operate in a vacuum, but are met with different biases from different scholars. As Karl Popper explains, this clash tends toward scientific objectivity. But the objective does “not (and cannot) result from the attempts of an individual scientist to be ‘objective’, but from the co-operation of many scientists,” each with their own biases finding weaknesses and flaws in their opponents’ arguments. As weak arguments and evidence are discredited and discarded, and replaced with stronger arguments and evidence, science moves closer to the truth.

Accounting for these points, the end goal we should strive for is to acknowledge that scholars will have ideologies and biases, and that these may even be necessary and useful for scientific progress, but to keep a balance of power to prevent any one ideology from dominating and purging the others. The best way to describe this goal is the phrase competitive coexistence.

Fortunately, examples exist of competitive coexistence applied in the educational context to help guide us. As Robert Maranto and Michael Mills document,

Higher Education Hasn’t Fixed Itself (and Probably Can’t)
The political imbalance among faculty leads to a host of problems that reduce the faculty’s ability to find and disseminate the truth. Keith Whittington argues that the “public service to be provided by the universities required their independence from politics. Universities that are ideologically or politically captured or that are obliged to propagandize on behalf of favored political, economic, or religious interests can perform neither the research nor the educational interests of society at large.” Duarte and colleagues provide a short overview of problems, including increased groupthink and confirmation bias, nonrepresentative topic selection, and misinterpretation of findings.

To their credit, many academics realize there is a problem. But this group then splits into two camps.

The first camp advocates internal reform, meaning that universities should fix themselves without outside interference. Examples include Heterodox Academy (HxA), whose president, John Tomasi, wrote: “For nearly a decade, HxA has been the voice for internal reform,” as well as experimental psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker, who helped to establish a Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. The internal reform camp agrees that changes are needed, but argues that they need to be driven internally by the university itself, as outside interference will not work and will lead to other problems.

The other camp notes that internal reform has failed so far, with little reason to expect it to work. A few examples are:

William A. Jacobson: “We are beyond the point when academia can reform itself. There is no internal opposition left. Dissenting voices have been purged not just by so-called ‘cancel culture’ but also by a hiring process that excludes not only conservatives, but also anyone who does not express and adhere to leftist DEI dogma. If academia is to be saved from its downward spiral, it will be by reforms imposed from the outside.”

Stanley Kurtz: “If Pinker’s relatively small Academic Freedom Council alone were in charge of selecting new faculty, I might believe that a change could come from strictly internal forces. Yet trusting the much larger left-dominated faculty that has purged conservatives and consolidated its monopoly for decades is folly. Pinker can float his suggestions for achieving intellectual diversity. The faculty will ignore them.”

Bryan Caplan: “Why would they reform? … This is what they actually believe, and they have a super majority, and they keep getting taxpayer money to do what they want.”

Dorian Abbot: “I am confident that internal reform will not achieve the goals … at most universities.”

Omar Sultan Haque: “Universities tend not to be self-correcting ecosystems … universities tend to protect and reward their own insiders for maintaining things as they are; and insiders are, ironically, the very people who are supposed to be responsible for change! That is a conflict of interest; it isn’t a reform recipe consistent with human nature … internal reform efforts, while noble, have as an empirical matter largely failed to produce meaningful structural change over the last decade.” [emphasis in the original].

The internal reformers have not been able to notch many victories. Indeed, the professoriate is even more imbalanced today than when the internal reformers began their efforts to combat it. It is therefore unlikely that internal reform will work in the future.

The ICEHE Solution
If the goal is competitive coexistence, how can a university achieve it? The best solution is to establish a new cross-disciplinary center that essentially functions as a dissident university within the existing university. There are five key characteristics—independence, competition for students, equitable financing, hiring freedom, and an even playing field (ICEHE)—to ensure that the new center is successful in bringing new voices to campus.

Independence. Independence from the existing university is essential. If a new center is needed, then, by definition, the existing faculty and administrators are either unable to reform or are actively hostile to the notion that they should. Either way, allowing existing faculty or administrators to control and oversee the center will ensure failure, with any resources devoted to the new center being diverted to benefit the entrenched status quo. To have any hope of success, the new center needs to be independent from as much of the existing university as possible. While a new center cannot avoid reporting to the provost and president, if it is housed under an existing dean, that is a huge red flag.

Competition for Students. The existence of a center will not mean much if there is no way for the center to attract students. This is a glaring problem with many existing centers across the country—students can engage with the center but have little academic reason to do so. Occasionally, a center will offer a minor or even a major, but unless students are already drawn to those topics, the center is basically invisible to most students at the university. From the university’s perspective, the center mostly acts as a quarantine camp for dissident faculty and students and as a shield against charges of a politicized campus. For example, when Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield considered taking a job offer from another university, his department chair told him: “you mustn’t go. You’re our balance.” Needless to say, a department is not balanced if a single departure would leave roughly half the country without a voice on the faculty.

In contrast, leftist activists have been extremely successful in getting their courses added to the required curriculum or smuggling their political agendas into existing required courses. To counteract this one-sidedness, the new center should be authorized to offer any required course, including both general education requirements and required courses for majors. This will allow the center to offer competing courses when the existing university’s offerings have become politically skewed. For example, most universities require English 101–type courses. But at many colleges, these are some of the most politically biased classes on campus, offering politically one-sided reading lists and assignments. Because the course is required, many students unwillingly end up in courses that are geared more towards indoctrination than education. When the new center can offer competing versions of the class, students will no longer be forced to take biased classes to graduate.

Equitable Financing. The new center should be financed in the same way as the rest of the university. On too many campuses, additional financial burdens are placed on dissident centers, either in the form of having to pay for university services while other groups do not, or in the form of having to raise their own philanthropic funding when others do not.

If other centers and departments are financed based on student enrollment, then the new center should be, too. This would have the added advantage of allowing student enrollments to drive the relative size of different centers and departments on campus, rather than relying on a politicized process or plan.

Hiring Freedom. One of the most consistently stressed points among reformers concerns faculty hiring. As Eric Kaufmann writes, “It is vital that these centres [sic] control tenure lines … with full independence from the rest of the university.”

The reason this feature gets so much attention is that faculty hiring by universities is atypical and a particular threat to those seeking to change the status quo. At almost all universities, existing faculty decide who to hire as new faculty. There is really no viable alternative, since faculty are the only ones who can determine the qualifications and scholarly contributions of applicants. But that does not mean the practice is not without problems. Of particular relevance, there is the tendency of existing faculty to essentially self-clone themselves when hiring. This self-cloning can take a variety of forms, including non-ideological ones like preferred research practices, but also ideological ones, like political orientation. Thus, faculty hiring faculty is both unavoidable and a cause of problems. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, letting current faculty choose new faculty is probably the worst way of choosing new faculty—except for all the others that have been tried.

Because faculty will tend to self-clone, it will therefore be hard for a university to address a political imbalance. For example, 60 percent of history and journalism departments at top universities have zero Republicans. It is delusional to expect such departments to recognize the need for more balance, or to faithfully pursue balance even if they do.

But if obstructionist faculty can be excluded, the faculty hiring process can be used to protect the new center, as well. The key to long-term success is to identify a critical mass of scholars who want to see the new center succeed and give them complete control over further faculty hiring in the new center. If there are not enough existing faculty at a particular college, then outside scholars from other campuses should sit on hiring committees until a critical mass is reached. This will not only exploit the center’s tendency to self-clone but will also protect the center from the rest of the faculty’s efforts to sabotage or hijack the center.

Even Playing Field. For competitive coexistence to work, the playing field needs to be even. If the new center is forced to overcome obstacles that the rest of the university does not, then the competitive pressure is thwarted. Examples of an uneven playing field could be disproportionate class scheduling during unpopular time slots, different rules for research or media engagement for the center than for the rest of the university, and even the admissions office screening out students that might be interested in the center. Efforts like these that seek to sabotage the center need to be monitored and remedied if competitive coexistence will work.

Conclusion
The political imbalance among faculty is large and getting worse. Faculty on the left outnumber faculty on the right by 6.9 to one across the academy, and by 11.5 to one at top colleges. Different interests and self-selection can explain only a small share of this imbalance, with unconscious bias, discrimination, and political loyalty oaths explaining most of it.

Reform is needed, but internal reform is likely a lost cause. Faculty who saw no problem with political loyalty oaths clearly do not see the political imbalance among their peers as a problem and cannot be trusted to reverse it. But most externally imposed reform does not hold much promise, either. The key to successful reform, therefore, is to essentially exploit the existing faculty selection process to create a dissident university within the existing university. The ICEHE method identifies five key markers that increase the likelihood of success: independence, competition for students, equitable funding, hiring freedom, and an even playing field. This method is the most likely path to competitive coexistence, which is necessary to restore and maintain a functioning higher education system.