We recently discussed how Yale faculty reached academic nirvana after years of purging departments of conservatives and Republicans. The university finally showed zero political donations to Republicans. Now Princeton can claim that it has succeeded in a similar cleansing, according to a new study by Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS). The study shows that 98% of political donations went to Democrats or Democrat-affiliated groups and 0% went to Republicans or affiliated groups.
Political contributions are one measure that helps gauge the degree of ideological orthodoxy and intolerance in higher education. While some academics simply do not make contributions and may still hold conservative views, the study still offers another insight into the political preferences of those who do make such contributions. The study does not mean that we can assume that the number of academics with conservative or libertarian values is zero. (There are obvious outliers such as Robby George). However, few would dispute that it reaffirms the extreme imbalance of ideological views at this and other universities.
Professors often express shock at the thought that there would be any political or ideological litmus test for hiring. I have also opposed such measures. However, the hypocrisy is crushing. Today’s faculty are responsible for a near-complete ideological purging of their ranks. They have created a hostile environment for anyone with conservative or libertarian viewpoints, including students who rarely have the opportunity to hear from a professor from a center-right perspective at most schools.
Most recently, forty percent of college faculty admitted that they would vote against any Trump supporter seeking an academic position regardless of their scholarship or teaching ability. Keep in mind that this is only the professors willing to admit to such bias.
Some are more open than others.
I had dinner with a Harvard Law Professor, who expressed disbelief that I expected him to vote for any faculty applicants who held views he considered wrong. When I noted that I regularly vote for faculty candidates who hold opposing views, he just shrugged and said that, if he rejects their views, he cannot vote for those views to be taught to students.
There are few remaining conservatives or libertarians on law school faculties, which have been purged of dissenting voices through a biased hiring and promotion system. Despite years of complaints and declining public trust in higher education, faculty members continue to reinforce bias and orthodoxy in our schools.
I wrote about the rise of this new McCarthyism on the left seven years ago.
Recently, I discussed the example of Fordham University School of Law professor John Pfaff, who called for “repercussions” for professors who do not “recant” their view that the 14th Amendment does not protect birthright citizenship.
Not long ago, I debated Professor Randall Kennedy at Harvard Law School about the school’s lack of ideological diversity. I respect Kennedy, and I do not view him as anti-free speech or intolerant. Yet when I noted the statistics on the vanishing number of conservative students and faculty in comparison to the nation, Kennedy responded that Harvard “is an elite university” and does not have to “look like America.”
Of course, the problem is that Harvard does not even look like Massachusetts, which is nearly 30 percent Republican.
At schools like Yale and Princeton, they have achieved near 100% for Democrats (with only a couple of percent going for independent or socialist causes). Yet, if you ask faculty about the purging of their ranks, they will often shrug and say that they just cannot find a conservative or libertarian who is intellectually worthy of an appointment to their schools. It was the same absurd rationalization that was once used to justify not hiring minorities or women.
I just had a debate with a William & Mary law professor who admitted there is no other rational explanation for the virtual absence of conservatives and libertarians than systemic bias. Indeed, if a company were to go to court to say that there was nothing intentional in a virtual absence of minority employees, it would be laughed out of court.
Of course, nothing is laughable about the state of higher education. This generation of administrators and faculty are destroying our educational institutions because they cannot set aside their political bias and intolerance for the benefit of their schools. Higher education has reached record lows in public trust. Yet, these professors and deans are insulated from such public opinion. They are often financially insulated from the economic impact of such isolation. In higher education, the echo chamber works to their personal benefit, increasing their opportunities for writing and conferences. They also do not face opposing views of their scholarship or viewpoints.
Recently, I participated in a debate with the President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). He doubled down on his call for universities to pursue more political agendas and activism. AAUP later broke its long-standing apolitical tradition and endorsed Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
This is why I have advised university presidents who want to restore intellectual diversity that they cannot rely on faculty members. With enough donor and faculty pressure, deans may add a single conservative, but they have shown they are unwilling to make real changes to the academic echo chamber they have created.
In the same way, I have encouraged state legislatures to tie further public subsidies to real and substantial changes in creating intellectual diversity among faculty.
If we are to protect these bastions of free speech, legislatures will need to play a more active role in addressing the exclusion of both faculty candidates and speakers on public campuses. Too many faculty members still take the view that citizens are a captive audience expected to keep funding their departments, while excluding conservative or dissenting views held by many, if not most, citizens in a given state.
If faculty members want to maintain echo chambers for their own viewpoints, they should seek private donors to sustain such intolerance and orthodoxy.
Legislatures can demand evidence that schools maintain intellectually diverse faculty when determining the level of continued support from citizens. Otherwise, it is ridiculous to expect the public to subsidize their ideological echo chambers of faculty.
For schools like Princeton, donors clearly do not want or expect intellectual diversity. They keep donating to a school that has systematically purged its ranks and now runs from the left to the far left.
As these surveys confirm what we already know about the intellectual intolerance of today’s faculty and administrators, they can at least spare us the performative denials. They should embrace their bias and dogmatism. Own it. This is what they have built through years of ideological agendas and intolerance.
After all, how many academic institutions can claim true perfection? Princeton is effectively a closed shop for Republicans. “Rah rah rah Tiger, tiger, tiger / Sis, sis, sis / Boom, boom, boom, ah! / Princeton! Princeton! Princeton!”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Trump picked a war with academia. Universities lost massive federal funding and research grants. Why would we expect professors to vote against their own self-interest?
Massive? How massive?
Where did they all go? They weren’t put against a wall or handed to the hangman. Where did the conservative and Republican faculty end up going? And where did the conservative and Republican students shift their dollars, in the fashion of the free market, when those faculty members were no longer there to support the student world view?
What did the parents of those students do? Did they find alternative institutions where the faculty had re-trenched?
It’s not a massacre if there aren’t bodies and it’s not a purge if they quit education entirely. The free market says that if there is a demand someone will fill it. Drug dealers accept they could be shot or killed or arrested and imprisoned; if they can meet a demand, so can a conservative or Republican professor under less dire circumstances.
If there is such a large availability of conservative and Republican educators there should be a conservative and Republican higher education facility open and ready to welcome those who demand that as their primary requirement.
Perhaps conservative and Republican educators and students have no bootstraps of their own.
-But it’s not just academia!
Students leave the classroom and come home to NBC and ABC frightening everyone about the price of gas at $4.59 a gallon —-never once even breathing that gas was over $5.00 a gallon during the BIden administration-with no “war” going on- and nearly three years after the pandemic struck. -That notwithstanding that the average income level was $8,000-9,000 LOWER than today.
https://waysandmeans.house.gov/2022/06/09/gas-prices-have-more-than-doubled-since-bidens-first-day-in-office/
(Biden also left the reserve/reservoirs substantially low for Trump:
“Before the drawdown, the SPR held about 727 million barrels–[despite plenty of time to replenish]. By the end of 2024, inventories had recovered only to roughly 394 million barrels, well below pre-release levels. Claims that the reserve suffered operational damage are also supported by recent evidence. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a March 2026 interview that damage sustained during the 2022 drawdown left the government operating from only three of its four storage cavern groups.”)
https://news.meaww.com/fact-check-did-biden-wreck-the-strategic-petroleum-reserve-and-is-trump-fixing-it
And of course, Media wants to warn everyone about Trump’s $5,000 check to Americans after rising costs have hurt many of them. Media fails to mention that Biden promised everyone $2,000 if they voted for Democrats in Georgia….(why do you think he mentioned Georgia?)
(See, e.g., “Joe Biden promises Americans an ‘immediate” single $2000 relief check if they elect Ossoff and Warnock’ at c-span.org)
(I cannot post more than two links, sorry.)
So let’s talk about raising our kids with the critical thinking they will need to discern MEDIA’s manipulative and selective facts- from the actual whole stories.
That’s what makes good citizens.
Lin,
Great comment!
All the more reason to frequent Independent media like The Free Press.
The chattering monkey has awoken.
You?
@lin
Excellent, and absolutely nails the problem. An awful lot of people that voted for Trump, even, thought somehow we could magically reverse 2020-2024 over night. It’ll take years, certainly more than one election cycle; the damage done by the dems was incalculable, unprecedented, and very much intentional (i.e. – it was SUPPOSED to be nigh impossible to fix). We do not have to go down the same road as the countries the UN has a socialist stranglehold on, but it means waking up and doing better right now, today, and holding the line.
Won’t be easy, but that challenge pales in comparison to trying to undo getting mired in a communist state. We are fortunate enough to have a system that interrupted all that, and it is why the talk of dismantling said system by these actors is stronger than ever. Make no mistake: a totalitarian state is what the modern left wants, 100%, and we cannot hand it to them through reticence or indifference, even in such seemingly personal matters as education and the preparation for same.
Harvard chose as its head chaplain an atheist who authored a book titled “Good Without God”. Ivy League presidents testified before Congress that violent mobs who take over their campuses and call for the extermination of Jews … Do not violate Ivy League Codes Of Conduct. Penn hired Joe Biden as a professor, and Penn’s President was appointed Ambassador to Germany. China funds students and research in the Ivy League. Columbia held racially segregated graduation ceremonies. Cornell has a student who feels comfortable enough there to announce that he’d never work for a Jew. Princeton removed the requirement that classics majors be reasonably proficient in Greek or Latin because it considers the requirement too demanding for the students it now admits. At Brown, students never are graded with a D or an F. Harvard had to restructure its grading policy because too many students were getting graded with an A. Get the picture?
Stephen B. Benisch, Esq.,
That is quite the picture you paint. Did not know you were such an artist. Well done!
Its also delusional. Interesting that you find delusion to your liking.
Point out where Stephen B. Benisch, Esq., is wrong or delusional.
You cannot.
“Ivy League presidents testified before Congress that violent mobs who take over their campuses and call for the extermination of Jews… Do not violate Ivy League Codes Of Conduct.”
This never happened.
Cornell:
The Facts About the CeremoniesAdditional, Not Separate:
The smaller identity-based gatherings (such as for Black, Asian, Latinx, Native, LGBTQ+, and low-income/first-generation students) are held in addition to the main, university-wide commencement and class day ceremonies.
Voluntary Participation: Every student is invited and welcome to attend the main commencement, and participation in any of the smaller multicultural celebrations is completely optional.
Student and Alumni Roots: Most of these specific celebratory events were originally developed and organized in tandem with student groups and alumni
Stephen B. Benisch, Esq. – if you aren’t an attorney you should not make that representation. If you are an attorney, you are likely a terrible one.
This is where the entire nation will find itself if this ideology is allowed to continue.
I find not much difference between the utter censorship and virulent means employed by islam to control its hordes and annihilate their “infidels around them” and the approach of the screaming hordes of progressives who will not tolerate an opposing idea and will go to extreme limits to censor and control those “infidels” around them.
Both are a mind cult of easily led ignorant and vulnerable followers, blinkered to any alternative concepts and willing to accept that mind control in order to stay connected to the horde around them – coerced by ideology that trucks no question of the truth of their ideology.
Those at the top of these ideologies are willingly using their hordes of followers to achieve and maintain control – whether it be a town council, school board, or faculty department. Control and censorship is their goal as that is what is needed to keep the blinkered blinded to alternate concepts and truths.
Great propaganda, and if I may add pretty f+ing sick. The Nazis would have loved you. Now the local MAGAots do.
Folks, here’s a another example of MAGA sickness
OT but related to education, Blue States With Strong Teachers’ Unions Are Terrible At Literacy Reforms
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/blue-states-strong-teachers-unions-have-weak-literacy-reforms
Got any original thoughts to share instead of links?
MORON ANON doesn’t have any original thoughts.
The most shocking thing to me is that any attention is given to a professor’s political leanings (putting aside extreme ideologies like communism, socialism and other such ideologies which deny the foundations of our independent judicial system). The best professor I had in law school taught civil procedure. We knew he had a very active litigation practice before “retiring” to teach but none of us knew or could tell which side of the docket he practiced on. Only after I graduated did I learn that he had been a very successful plaintiffs’ lawyer, primarily in personal injury cases. He knew that advocacy for one side or the other would shortchange us. I also am shocked that to my knowledge, none of the elite law schools’ professors have come out publicly and strongly against the Democrat Socialists of America’s platform to make Supreme Court justices appointed by and answerable to the House of Representatives (after doing away with the Senate). If we had not been blessed with an independent Supreme Court it could be argued that civil rights and other critical changes in our society would have been a long time coming, if ever. An independent Supreme Court is our best protection against the tyranny of the majority.
Professor Turley,
Did you read the survey? Always ready a poll’s methodology!
Issue #1 – Only 818 faculty members surveyed, not the full 950+
Issue #2 – Only donations of $200+ are reported. Over 40% of political donations are typically under that threshold.
Issue #3 – Only federal contributions to candidates were measured. The poll apparently doesn’t think states and localities hold elections too.
Issue #4 – Only direct contributions to candidates were measured. PACs account for roughly 10% – 23% of direct funding for candidates.
Issue #5 – The poll has clear errors. For example, it says 2 donations went to Independents. Then, in the table that examines donations by department, it only shows 1 independent donation. The raw numbers don’t tie up. Poor execution.
Issue #6 – Fundamentally this is a measure of donations, not of private beliefs. The poll notes this and also says that previous voter registration surveys of Princeton found that there are faculty members who are registered as Republicans.
I am sure there are more, but please read the methodology before you write your screed.
+100
Read? Republicans have no time for that.
Professor Turley talks a LOT about purging of conservatives and libertarians and a lack of “academic diversity” based on political contributions and party affiliation. He proposes legislative intervention and using state funds to diversify academic ideology. He’s calling for bringing back DEI. Ironically it’s those “purged” conservatives who used legislation to eliminate DEI, the very thing Turley wants for implementing a more ‘balanced’ academia. He’s quite a hypocrite.
Here’s a better question, does Turley contribute to republicans or democrats. We all know he’s not a Republican. But he freely admits his family is more Democrat. He’s always coy about his political affiliation.
Perhaps Princeton lack of political contributions to the Republican party is their free speech way of letting everyone know Republicans are not doing anything to merit a contribution. Trump is wrecking the economy, is in a losing war with Iran, gas prices are skyrocketing, republicans have done absolutely nothing and just recessed because the speaker wanted to avoid a vote. Mitch McConnell is a vegetable who has no idea where he is.
There’s no “purging”. Republicans, conservatives and libertarians are always bashing academics and higher education. Why would they want to join schools they don’t believe are worthy?
X: “He’s calling for bringing back DEI.” C’mon X, you know better than to start a discussion with a straw man premise. Asking for universities (which should foster dialectics) to avoid being silos of one political persuasion, is not asking to bring back the toxic ideology that DEI stands for.
Ah ha, its George. Got a point somewhere in there? Or just brain farts?
One way to look at the political outlook of teachers is to look at student voting, since students reflect the biases of their teachers. In 1928, students overwhelmingly supported Hoover over Smith. New York Times, October 29, 1928, “College Straw Vote Gives Hoover Lead”.
Compared to today, were American colleges more or less serious academic institutions in the 1920s. I think we know the answer.
Well I feel kind of sorry for these students who attend these universities. A lot of experiences that they will never have and they will be unprepared for the world at large which has a tendency to crush your carefully conceived egos. Although i have my own views, we all advance by encountering other views and then engage in the time honored process of stealing those views and using them as our own. It has happened often enough in the US and also elsewhere.
Also the Ivy League is not the only game in town. Universities across the South and Midwest are bursting with higher enrollments and the money that has followed the businesses to those same areas are investing there in all sorts of new and expanded programs.
Recent report on enrollments at Purdue University shows 111,000 students at all their campuses, 13 % increase in new freshman at the main campus and progressively high completion and graduation rates. There is a building boom around the main campus as more and more 8-10 story private and university residences are being built and the surrounding towns and businesses are bursting at their seams. And all these new license plates like California, New York, Georgia (even) are showing up.
So it’s all refreshing here and a 10 minute drive and you are in fields of corn, soybean and farm houses with fiberoptic internet, running water, indoor plumbing even and no recent raids by indigenous peoples. Bring your musket with you and you should be safe but be polite please.
Two 30 year old family members are Princeton/Penn graduates. They are intelligent and very well prepared for the world. They hold prestigious positions and provide hope for the future of our country.
GEB,
Well said.
The Ivy league title no long carries the weight it once did. The students are no long the best and the brightest. They are the most indoctrinated.
Stupid comment as usual. Did you mean “no longer” instead of “no long” Ya see folks, this is the MAGAot level of smarts. The guy doesn’t have a high school diploma. Typical MAGAot, dumb and willfully ignorant. Ask him about the “Magna Carter”.