I t’s not news that America’s colleges have little room for right-leaning thought. The same is now true of the nation’s most prestigious federal scholarship program, paid for with public funds and charged with cultivating an inclusive community of future leaders. Fortunately, this challenge is easier to address.

In 1975, Congress established the Truman scholarship as a testament to President Harry Truman’s legacy to identify “aspiring leaders at an important inflection point in their development — when they are college juniors — and recognize and reward their commitments to careers in public service.” The program awards scholars $30,000 in taxpayer dollars for a graduate education, is overseen by a bipartisan board, works closely with public colleges and universities, and offers its celebrated scholars access to special programs and preferential hiring for federal jobs.

In a new study, we examined the issues being explored by the past three cohorts of Truman scholars — encompassing 182 awardees. The program publishes a biography for each scholar, listing their accomplishments and research interests.

We compiled the biographies for all Truman scholars from 2021–2023 and identified their research focus, then tracked interest in twelve core issue areas (four “progressive,” four “centrist,” four “conservative”). The progressive issues included LGBT+, racial justice/DEI, climate change/environmental justice, and immigration rights. Centrist issues included mental health, cybersecurity/technology, national/international security, and sexual-violence prevention. And conservative issues included free markets, religious freedom, pro-life, and gun rights.

So, what have these hand-picked, taxpayer-supported students been studying?

Of the 182 Truman scholars, 74 cite interest in a progressive issue while just six note an interest in even one of the conservative issue areas. Thirty-two study one of the four centrist issues, like cybersecurity or mental health. Many more Truman scholars are focused specifically on racial justice/DEI or immigrant rights than on the whole array of issues relating to technology, national security, religious freedom, and free markets combined. Among the scholars whose research interests don’t fit one of these dozen categories, it’s fair to say that the lion’s share would be reasonably categorized as progressive.

It’s also notable that few of the half-dozen scholars focused on conservative issues appear to be especially conservative. One studied religious freedom while focusing on “protecting women’s right to bodily autonomy” and minoring in women’s and gender studies. Another, with an interest in free markets, has worked for the AFL-CIO. Three of the others study “alternatives to incarceration,” the need to combat anti-Muslim discrimination, and rural education accessibility. In other words, even among the handful with an express interest in conservative issues, few appear to be conventionally conservative.

Truman scholars are pursuing issues that reflect a decided leftward lean and the near-absence of right-leaning thought. This should raise concerns for a program that uses public funds and works closely with public institutions to cultivate an inclusive community of future civic leaders. This is doubly true given that these leaders will confront challenges that may well require bridging stark divides in a distrustful and polarized nation.

Here are some suggestions for how the Truman Foundation can do better.

First, it needs to take the challenge of recruiting students with diverse interests and perspectives much more seriously. Board members and institutional partners should ask hard questions about how wide a net is being cast during recruitment and how the selection process actually works. They should also demand more public transparency around these publicly funded activities.

Recruitment and selection should also more effectively reflect the program’s explicit commitment to identifying and recruiting a pool of applicants that mirrors the nation’s breadth of perspectives, views, and values. After all, the program holds that, “[W]hen it comes to cultivating leaders, our diversity is our strength.” Truman’s own leaders should be held accountable for fulfilling this promise.

And public institutions that engage with the Truman program — by promoting the application, supporting applicants, or celebrating scholarship winners — should reassess their participation if matters don’t improve. More generally, alumni, board members, and legislators should reconsider the relationship of their institutions with a program that has abandoned its nonpartisan ethos.

If the Truman Foundation’s leadership is unwilling to take seriously its commitment to diversity and inclusion, and instead operates a program that serves as a prestigious training ground for advocates of a particular political persuasion, it has lost its claim on public support, publicly provided prerogatives, and its exalted public image. To be worthy of its mission and continued public support, the Truman program needs to serve the whole nation — not just denizens of the campus Left.

Frederick M. Hess is the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Joe Pitts is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute.