A faculty survey released last week shows “few faculty indicated a conservative would fit well in their department.” Only 20% of respondents signaled that a conservative would be a “positive fit,” while 71% said a liberal would fit well.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression survey also shows that academics are nearly four times more likely to self-censor than they were during the height of the McCarthyism era, and conservatives are three times more likely to report self-censorship than their liberal peers.
“The McCarthy era is considered a low point in the history of American academic freedom with witch hunts, loyalty tests, and blacklisting in universities across the country,” Nathan Honeycutt, FIRE’s manager of polling and analytics, said in the report. “That today’s scholars feel less free to speak their minds than in the 1950s is a blistering indictment of the current state of academic freedom and discourse.”
Fifty-five percent of conservative faculty members reported hiding their views “in order to keep their jobs,” compared to just 17% of liberal faculty.
In addition, 39% of respondents said that a conservative would outright be a “poor fit” in their department, compared to just 3% for liberals.
Conservative and “moderate” faculty overwhelmingly oppose political statements from colleges and universities, signaling an 86% and 76% disapproval rate, respectively. A slight majority of liberal faculty, 57%, are also opposed.
Similarly, both a majority of conservative and moderate faculty oppose mandatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statements, with 85% and 59% opposing the practice, respectively. Only 35% of liberal faculty oppose the practice.
“It should surprise no one that conservative faculty are opposed to mandatory DEI pledges, but even a substantial bloc of liberal faculty are opposed to the practice as well,” Honeycutt said. “Given how divisive they are, it’s likely these pledges persist in part due to self-censorship among faculty, who fear expressing opposition openly.”
According to the FIRE survey, 87% of faculty find it “difficult to have an open and honest conversation on campus” about at least one pressing topic. By a wide margin, the respondents report that the issue most difficult to discuss on campus is the Israel-Hamas war.
Approximately one in seven surveyed faculty members report being “disciplined or threatened with discipline” for their academic or off-campus speech.
The survey was fielded from March 4 to May 13 and sampled 6,269 tenured, tenure track, and non-tenure track faculty participants from 55 colleges and universities across the country.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
FIRE also released its 2025 College Free Speech Rankings in September, which ranks elite schools such as Harvard, Columbia, and New York University as having an “abysmal” free speech ranking, based on more than 58,000 student responses.
According to the student survey, conservative pupils also report experiencing significantly more pressure to self-censor their beliefs than their liberal counterparts.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
