Harvard President Alan Garber recently admitted that the university has a lack of “viewpoint diversity” on its campus, but Harvard isn’t alone: Colleges nationwide have overwhelmingly progressive faculties and show little willingness to change.
However, the Trump administration has put pressure on higher education to get its act together. As some university administrators and state legislators search for strategies to decrease ideological hegemony on college campuses, National Review spoke with right-of-center scholars who have faced hostile academic environments about how to make a difference.
Universities across the country have overwhelming ideological disparities. At Yale University, 97 percent of faculty political donations go to Democrats or progressive organizations. The breakdown is similar at Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and many other schools. Nationwide, more than 90 percent of donations from the education industry go to left-wing candidates or causes.
Cornell law professor and EqualProtect.org founder William A. Jacobson said it is “close to impossible for anyone openly conservative or even moderate to get hired in the Humanities and Social Sciences, a problem increasingly affecting STEM.” He attributed this to the shared governance model, which allows academic departments to have high influence in hiring and other decisions.
Samuel Goldman, an associate professor at George Washington University, says some left-leaning faculty members are open to ideological diversity but would consider a “centrist Democrat” to be conservative. “I don’t see much enthusiasm for hiring or even hearing views that reflect the opinions of the other 50% [of] Americans,” he said.
While conservative scholars agree that academia needs reform, they offer different solutions. Some noted that bringing in conservative speakers or establishing visiting positions are good first steps, but they are not enough to make a long-term difference. Instead, structural change must happen.
Princeton professor Robert P. George said universities must “stop discriminating against conservatives in hiring and promotion.” However, he warned against “affirmative action” or “DEI” for conservatives and said Republicans should not mandate ideological diversity through government action.
AEI Education Policy Studies Director Frederick Hess echoed this, but he believes legislators should “ensure that publicly-funded or -subsidized campuses are not stifling free inquiry, applying double standards to academic discourse, or employing speech codes.”
Universities have faced criticism for applying different rules to different political ideologies. Mandatory diversity statements are required for job applicants at many schools, conservative student organizations often face hurdles that liberal clubs don’t, and right-leaning students feel isolated in class. For example, conservative students at public universities in Wisconsin avoid sharing their views and report feeling pressured to agree with liberal professors on controversial issues.
Goldman suggested that universities promote “neglected fields and approaches that are grounded in scholarship” without explicitly searching for conservative professors. For example, “if you hire a military historian, or a sociologist who argues that proactive policing is effective in reducing crime, or a literature scholar who focuses on teaching 19th century novels, you’ll likely get more ideological diversity as a byproduct.”
State legislature–driven creation of civics schools within established public universities have been one way to do this, according to Richard Avramenko, director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. “These are schools with their own faculty, their own tenure lines, their own budget, and their own curricula,” he said. Similar institutions have shown up in Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and Ohio.
Ryan Owens, director of the Institute for Governance and Civics at Florida State University, said these programs “focus on civic thought in a way that many universities have ignored in recent years.” His institute supports “rigorous scholarship and teaching on the architecture of American government and the rationale for liberty.” Moreover, “We provide students with the knowledge and skills to be effective citizens and responsible leaders.”
Owens believes conservatives must “increase the pipeline of center and center-right students going into higher education.” He suggested that conservative organizations create fellowship programs for graduate school, as universities would be more likely to admit students who don’t need financial support.
Jacobson was the most open to public policy solutions. He believes “federal funding must be contingent on universities imposing diversity of viewpoint measures and transparency as to hiring. The federal message needs to be that if you want the money, then you have to elevate diversity of viewpoint to a priority.”
“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.”