How Tax­pay­ers Fund Polit­i­cal Activism In High­er Edu­ca­tion – And How To Stop It

Amer­i­cans already know that col­lege pro­fes­sors lean Left. What they do not real­ize is how lop­sided the pro­fes­so­ri­ate has become.
In a recent sur­vey by the Foun­da­tion for Indi­vid­ual Rights and Expres­sion (FIRE), Amer­i­cans esti­mat­ed that lib­er­al pro­fes­sors out­num­ber con­ser­v­a­tives by rough­ly two to one. FIRE’s nation­al bench­mark puts the actu­al ratio clos­er to five to one. At elite uni­ver­si­ties such as Yale, the imbal­ance can reach 36 to one, with some depart­ments employ­ing vir­tu­al­ly no con­ser­v­a­tives.
When respon­dents were shown those bench­mark fig­ures, con­fi­dence in high­er edu­ca­tion fell, espe­cial­ly among Repub­li­cans and inde­pen­dents. That find­ing turns academia’s usu­al def …