Cornell University has long been an example of an academic echo chamber where conservative and libertarian faculty have been largely purged from departmental ranks. For example, a study by The College Fix found that Democrats outnumber Republicans 98 to 1 among Cornell professors across six of the humanities departments. Cornell professors disrupt events, launch campaigns to fire the remaining conservative faculty, and foster a cancel campaign culture on campus. However, the faculty recently decided to review its own record and found . . . wait for it . . . that there really are no concrete measures needed to address their own overwhelming ideological bias.
According to a 238-page faculty report from the Committee on the Future of the American University, there was no consensus on ideological bias or how to handle it. Moreover, some faculty members insist that, while there is an ideological imbalance, it is not a problem because liberal faculty can explain or incorporate conservative values when needed.
The report boldly states that “[t]his report asks how the university must adapt to honor its quietly revolutionary purpose in American life. The answer cannot leave the university exactly as it is today.” However, one thing apparently does not have to change: the faculty’s ideological orthodoxy.
The report has that certain feel of an academic confab product, including a self-congratulatory observation that “disagreements did not curdle into outrage.”
The report acknowledges the ideological diversity problem but leaves it maddeningly undeveloped and ultimately unaddressed:
“The committee takes these concerns seriously without endorsing every version of them. A university that cannot model genuine pluralism of thought, that cannot hold and argue across deep disagreements without dissolving into either enforced consensus or performative conflict, is not promoting learning.”
For example, the Committee considered the fact that “[v]iewpoint diversity within the professoriate is one of the most frequently invoked concerns.” It noted that only “a single stakeholder suggested that graduate programs are the university’s most durable leverage point for producing a more intellectually and ideologically diverse new generation of faculty.”
However, it then notes: “[t]hat claim received no sustained engagement in our graduate-education conversations, even as the underlying concern about homogeneity, self-censorship, and viewpoint diversity generated some of the most extensive commentary anywhere in the committee’s process.”
Some struck out at conservatives complaining about the lack of diversity while others insisted that the priority for faculty should be to increase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) hiring for criteria like race and sexual orientation.
Architecture professor and Dean Milton Curry and chemistry Professor Abraham Stroock, however, explained that ideological diversity is merely a Trojan horse to attack higher education:
“Viewpoint diversity (associated with conservatives’ assertion that universities suffer from the bias of a majority of left-leaning faculty and are incapable of teaching countervailing views), far from being inclusive, is the fulcrum from which a constellation of organized vicious attacks on higher education have emerged.”
Others complained that DEI was not given sufficient attention. Durba Ghosh, a professor of history in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, complained: “[w]e bypassed a definition of diversity in the service of concluding the report; yet our evasion renders the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion vulnerable to complete erasure.”
She added a warning that “[a]s a historian, I am reminded that the groups that are calling for viewpoint diversity these days are descended from the groups that opposed diversity, equity, and inclusion over a half century ago.”
It is an ironic argument since liberal faculty have picked up the very cudgel once used by intolerant faculty to bar voices on the left or faculty based on race or gender. I have written about the rise of a new McCarthyism in our politics that is also evident in higher education. That includes the forty percent of faculty who admit that they will vote against any Trump supporters regardless of their academic credentials, writings, or accomplishments.
Other academics have called for professors to “recant” views on subjects like birthright citizenship or face isolation and other repercussions.
Many faculty members have rejected free speech and intellectual diversity arguments to restore greater balance in our universities. In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss these arguments to justify the current levels of intolerance and orthodoxy in higher education.
Given that history, the Cornell study is a disappointment but hardly a surprise.
After The Indispensable Right was released, I spoke with several university presidents who agreed that ideological bias in hiring was undermining higher education. However, they were looking for some way to address the problem, given the refusal of departments (which generally control hiring) to change their hiring practices and bias. This report is an example of the type of hardened siloes that presidents must deal with in raising, let alone addressing, this obvious problem.
As I have maintained in these conversations, faculty members have not and will not change their hiring practices. They are fully aware of the virtual purging of all conservative and libertarian faculty from their ranks. Privately, they will acknowledge that inescapable fact. However, they refuse to make any meaningful changes.
As the Cornell report recognizes, this generation of academics has left higher education at its lowest level of public trust. It is destroying this profession. While there are various factors in play, it is due in part to the inability to allow for greater diversity of viewpoints. It has alienated many who might consider higher education but see no appeal in going to universities that are an echo chamber for the left.
As I have previously written, parents and students who value free speech must increasingly look to public universities where faculty are subject to constitutional guarantees. Except for outliers like the University of Chicago and other private universities that hold the line on free speech, orthodoxy at private universities remains a barrier for many conservative and independent thinkers.
Public universities may be the final line of defense for free-speech advocates. However, even those universities show the same hiring bias. The difference is that they are more sensitive to public pressure to restore balance.
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 continue to treat citizens like a captive audience. They are expected to continue funding their departments, while faculty exclude 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 are maintaining an intellectually diverse faculty in determining the level of continued support from citizens.
When some of us have argued for such campaigns, academics hypocritically claim that we are calling for political litmus tests or hiring based on political parties. It is an absurd argument that I have previously addressed, including in The Indispensable Right.
The call is for donors and legislators to withhold funding until they see real reforms, including greater diversity on faculties. They are not directing the hiring, but looking at the results. The faculty members objecting to such calls have watched passively (or actively supported) the purging of conservative or libertarian faculty from universities and colleges.
For years, I have raised concerns about the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculty members replicate their own views and values. There is no evidence that faculty members (including those acknowledging the loss of virtually all faculty from the right of center) are honestly willing to reform their schools.
That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many facing rising tuition costs and relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views.
The Cornell Report has many compelling sections on adjusting to the new realities of higher education. However, when it comes to ideological bias in hiring, the report is little more than another academic shrug.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
The left rejects the Constitution and natural freedoms. People don’t have a natural right to speech or press or religion, life nor liberty, due process of any kind nor citizenship or elections nor arms and anything else that all’a says.
Of course colleges reflect it. Gotta run…
in the 1960 or was it the 70’s it was called the anarchists cookbook, they are basically the same thing. The only difference now is these asshatsin france are spoiled brats whose parents better fess up the money for the damages. The book im refering to well the antifa people have copiedf alot out of that and the wont say anarchists , because it sounds anti christ . follow the leads people
The Fix found profs in 6 Humanities depts are 98-1 left…
The Cornell 7 and Jane Doe were and are in the Humanities? What’s the score on the all night mauling and without security notification by anyone?
The GOP platform is now crystal clear 13 days out from the midterm:
2. They are AGAINST child rape victims. Vance said he was “disgusted” with Republicans who condemned Ramaswamy for using Dr. Amy Acton’s estranged birth mother in a commercial that circulated on social media in which she called her daughter a liar. The reason it started on social media is because TV ads require disclosure of the person or organization that is paying for the ad and Ramaswamy wanted to hide his involvement. The birth mother lost custody of Amy and her brother after her husband was indicted for raping Amy. Child Protective authorities found that Amy and her brother were also abused and neglected. Amy was raped when she was 11 and 12. Amy’s stepfather fled the state after being charged and died before he could be brought to trial.
3. They are AGAINST veterans who contracted cancer unless Republicans retain control of Congress. Even though Biden signed a law providing for compensation for veterans and family members who were injured by exposure to toxic water at Camp LeJeune, Trump said that “there is no money” for veterans if Republicans lose the midterms.
So now, in keeping with the tenor of this piece, how should a college like Cornell teach about these topics? What is the “conservative” view?
The GOP Platform is on the web – Trump ran on it in 2024 it is called agenda 47
The US must deal with myriads of foreign leaders who are not nice people
From Erodigan to Xi, to MBS, to Kim Un.
Negotiating with bad people is part of the job
I expect a US president to act in the US’s interests – not Russia, not Ukraine, not Europe, not Israel, not …
Constantly that means dealing with bad people
Get over yourself.
With respect to Acton – I do not know the truth and neither do you.
Every woman who cries abuse is not beleived, and every woman who is beleived is not telling the truth.
What does appear to be True of Acton is that like Spanberger in VA and Sherill in NJ and ….
That she will lie about anything and everything to get elected.
“how should a college like Cornell teach about these topics? “
It should not – Politics has no place in the curicula of a college.
ANON’S brain rotted from severe TDS
Those are some mighty big concerns you’ve come up with. The Dem platform remains unchanged from the last election. The Dems lost then because they normalized the abnormal. They ignored common sense economics creating massive inflation. Focused on the welfare of criminals over their victims. Ignored common sense immigration policies opening the borders and paying the millions of illegals welfare payments and providing housing when our own people lack. And despite their oft repeated claims to be following science, ignored basic science claiming unlimited genders, pushed solutions to a nonexistent climate apocalypse which directly caused increases to energy costs that were devastating to the working class. Biden allowed widespread law fare against citizens protesting at PTA meetings and pursued bogus legal attacks directly against Trump, the leading opposition candidate. I call that a threat to democracy. The Dems pursued and still do censorship at major media keeping vital information from voters (e.g. Hunter’s laptop and refusing to air Trump’s speech last night). Dems are against election integrity calling voter ID voter suppression despite zero evidence. And not least since the election it has become clear that the Dem party is all for welfare and medical payment fraud. They support billions for trains to nowhere when nothing ever gets built and solutions to homelessness that do nothing to solve the problem.
It seems that the practical effect of what Professor Turley is proposing with respect to donors and legislatures is that universities would end up providing preferences, affirmative action, DEI, or quotas to the hiring of conservative professors at the same time we are eliminating with court decisions and executive action (with the support of conservatives and Turley) such preferential policies on campus for blacks, women, and other minorities.
No, CC, PT is suggesting the most qualified in hiring. 😏.
Ive told everyone I know that the polls are lying. Conservatives fear blowback from voicing their political sentiments just like when Trump won the first time. Now this. Its hard to be more despised than the legacy media but here we are. That and Ivy League universities like Cornell U.
National Polling Company Admits It’s Totally Fake — Crows it Was ‘Far Too Easy’ to Get Major Media Outlets to Bite
Oct 21st, 2026
A national polling company cited in numerous outlets, including The New York Timesand MS NOW, has revealed it made up its data, saying that doing so was “far too easy.”
Wedgewood Polls made the shocking admission in an X post Tuesday night after FiftyPlusOne, which reports on polling, confronted them about credentials and data.
In addition to The Times and MS NOW, scores of media outlets and prominent poll aggregators cited Wedgewood polling data, including; Newsweek, Decision Desk HQ, and Mediaite.
Wedgewood is remarkably the second polling company of late to admit its findings are made up. In August, Median Polling Strategies reported that democratic socialist Francesca Hong held a commanding lead over incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the LA mayor’s race.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/national-polling-company-admits-its-totally-fake-crows-it-was-far-too-easy-to-get-major-media-outlets-to-bite/
Neil Bush announced he voted for Talarico because he likes Talarico’s principles. Neil is a brother of George. Texas…
Vance is the upcoming president. Hakeem will be the new speaker? 😂
Bushnandez and the whole Bushnandez familia!
I couldn’t read the whole thing because they sounded like middle school/young high school cliques–whispering, pointing, spreading rumors. Actually, otherwise known as bullies–which is something public (and even private) school supposedly were teaching from k-12 for students not to do. They are probably on their phones at night texting, making up stories. They are supposed to be university professors giving paying students a universal education.
We must thank the Cornell University’s Blue Ribbon Panel for the ‘Cornell Report’.
Summarizing: The Pot calls the Pot black and the Kettle calls the Kettle Black, to whit balances nicely and makes everything much clearer.
We’re eternally grateful for this splendid effort.
The Cornhell Report, Bravo.
I want prosecutions to deter grads from working for Slotkin.
So what?
Is there already “Congress packing”, with the number of congress members already set?
Yes, representing 175 thousand approximately per rep. Far too many isn’t it. Cut reps to 2 per State.
The Answer: Full Privatization
Trump has been a colossal failure as president. Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris would have made better presidents than Trump.
Harris said she wants to pack the Supreme Court, change the Electoral College and add two more states. Harris would not have secured the border, or deported criminal illegals. If Harris was president right now, there would be more Laken Riley like victims across the USA.
There are vastly more “Laken Riley” victims from American citizens, both by raw count and proportionally. Trump and other Republican leaders keep pardoning some of the most violent sexual offenders.
both by raw count and proportionally.
==
The term ‘proportionally’ does not mean what you fancy it means.
California where murder is normalized. People come here and quickly learn criminal behavior thinking that’s American. I’m an American now.
America doesn’t need someone who should be making babies to MAKE presidents.
America needs a man to BE president.
President Donald J. Trump!
WINNING!
Honestly, Hillary was so thoroughly corrupt that we’re lucky she never won. And Kamala was (and remains) stone cold stupid.
I’m happy with what Trump has accomplished and looking forward to more of his policies. He closed the border without any change in laws (as Biden and Harris claimed was necessary). He just enforced existing laws. And he’s gotten a good start despite much resistance on deporting the several millions of illegals that Biden/Harris had allowed in. He’s encouraged energy development which over the medium to long term will mean progressively cheaper energy prices for all. He has shattered illegal and unconstitutional DEI initiatives taking hugely important steps to suppress racism. In his first term he popped the China bubble making corporations realize the risks of investing there, and this term he’s taken significant steps toward encouraging a return of manufacturing to our shores.
He’s made huge and important strides in attacking the welfare fraud that has NGO’s and others stealing many billions of dollars from taxpayers. The Democrats have gotten too used to institutionalized graft as they use public monies to fund NGO’s who then never solve any problems and just make their executives richer. Internationally they fund programs that promote anti-American political movements.
Trump can be relied upon to appoint judges who follow the law instead of the latest leftist feel good fad that invariably is bad for the country. He also can be credited with breaking the back of mainstream media that always seems to parrot Dem party talking points and pushing fake news.
In summary the Dems lost because they normalized the abnormal. They ignored common sense economics creating massive inflation. Focused on the welfare of criminals over their victims. Ignored common sense immigration policies opening the borders and paying the millions of illegals welfare payments and providing housing when our own people lack. And despite their oft repeated claims to be following science, ignored basic science claiming unlimited genders, pushed solutions to a nonexistent climate apocalypse which directly caused increases to energy costs that were devastating to the working class. Biden allowed widespread law fare against citizens protesting at PTA meetings and pursued bogus legal attacks directly against Trump, the leading opposition candidate. I call that a threat to democracy. The Dems pursued and still do censorship at major media keeping vital information from voters (e.g. Hunter’s laptop and refusing to air Trump’s speech last night). Dems are against election integrity calling voter ID voter suppression despite zero evidence. And not least since the election it has become clear that the Dem party is all for welfare and medical payment fraud. They support billions for trains to nowhere when nothing ever gets built and solutions to homelessness that do nothing to solve the problem. Harris and the Dems lost because enough voters understood they were pushing bad policies.
The repub slim majority in congress and courts have been a colossal failure, anon.
ROFL