Many students are going back to school in the coming days of August. Almost everyone is also aware that universities and high schools represent an ideological backbone in the nation. It is important and necessary to understand that to a large but not exclusive extent, educators hold a reactionary zeal with regard to any Republican President and that is especially true of President Donald Trump. As a professor and academic for more than 35 years working in Texas, Kansas, Ohio, and even the larger global community, I have observed this rather abysmal cycle of cynicism that fuels too much of the academic endeavors.
Casual examination of FEC data regarding donations by professors in 2023 and 2024 easily demonstrates that on average more than 85% of professor donations are to the Democratic Party. That percentage escalates as you climb the ladder of elite universities -- approaching 99%. It is disingenuous for academia to pretend that it is ideologically fair or even interested in essential premises of American civics such as the First Amendment promise of free speech. Students openly pretend to hold anti-Republican views in order to curry favor with professors. The survey found 88% of students from 2023 to 2025 indicate such behavior on campus. Top universities such as Harvard and Columbia have become some of the most stalwart opponents of free speech. In 2014, in my first academic book -- The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text -- I included a chapter about the New Anti-Semitism. I warned a decade ago that campuses were cultivating a mood of genocidal contempt for Jews in the 21st century. Many of my colleagues were skeptical. But today the idea of purging every Jew from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea (though many of these protesters cannot identify or locate these places) is politically viable not only in the larger global community but upon some of our greatest college campuses. There are painful lawsuit results than now prove it.
As a debate professor, I do all I can every day to remedy this serious national problem. I will try again this fall. But the public needs to again hear the fair warning. Academia is as agitated and upset as ever. Cuts in federal grants and an array of adjustments regarding Title 9 and so many other aspects of the federal relationship to universities have campuses feeling incredibly defensive. Academia has largely as a culture brought these results upon itself by refusing the basic necessity of debate and civics. Administrators now appear confused as to why campus advocates publicly argue such absurd and violent themes.
Of course, students should be able to oppose and disagree with President Trump, but they should also be equally free to oppose and disagree with Zohran Mamdani. Colleges and universities are dominated by an anti-capitalist ethic that makes Mamdani the mainstream of campus politics to which all participants are expected to bow. The solution is as it always has been free and fair debate. Until this ethic is restored, all efforts at academic reform will fail.
Every campus raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in student fees. These fees are supposed to go to valuable on-campus student activities. No less than five percent of these funds should be expended each year supporting debate activity. These debate programs should honestly practice switch-side debate. Every national debate expert knows what this is but all too often discreetly refuse to let it happen. Unfortunately, debate activity at the college level largely realizes that critical theory places a predicate burden upon switch-side debate meaning students will not entertain or perform opposing viewpoints on a wide range of important issues including: education, abortion, immigration, gender, gun control, energy, and more. College debate programs determine the style and substance of high school debate. I have helped the Coolidge Foundation conduct a decade-long successful experiment in switch side debate focused primarily on economic issues. This style and substance of debate needs to become a new national norm so that true critical thinking not eclipsed by critical theory assumptions can prevail.
Without this renaissance of debate, America’s top colleges and universities will not only fail to uphold basic premises of the civil right of free speech, they will become the very founts of authoritarian limitations they profess to oppose. We must continue to demand and expect critical thinking as found in switch-side debating on college campuses. This is the heart of our national educational crisis.
Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of several academic books regarding political communication, debate, presidential rhetoric, and genocide.
Image: Jakob Reiter