Part 1: The Next Campus Battle after Free Speech: Viewpoint Diversity at America’s Elite Universities

By Ed Yingling and Leslie Spencer
Princetonians for Free Speech Editorial

The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles. For example, in the last year, many university leaders, including the Presidents of Princeton, Stanford and Cornell, have given speeches and undertaken initiatives to promote open inquiry and academic freedom on their campuses. However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem – the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities.

Our Princeton alumni group, Princetonians for Free Speech, has as its mission the promotion of three core values – free speech, open discourse, and viewpoint diversity. This is a typical mission statement for the more than thirty alumni free speech groups. With all such groups, most of the focus has been on the first two values. Until recently, this has also been true for leading national groups active in this area, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA), which have played critical roles in trying to reform our universities. An exception is Heterodox Academy (HxA), which is putting important focus on faculty viewpoint diversity.

If universities are truly to live up to their purpose in society, the lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty must be addressed. (There is also a real problem with viewpoint diversity among university administrators, but this article will focus on faculty.) In a recent HxA article, President John Tomasi stated the situation succinctly: “In today’s changing campus climate, supporting free expression and respectful discussion have (thankfully) become fashionable, but viewpoint diversity remains a third rail of university life.”

Indeed, without viewpoint diversity, the values of free speech and open discourse are of limited importance. If everybody on a campus believes pretty much the same thing, there is not much learning or advancement of knowledge through open inquiry and debate.

A LOOK AT THE NUMBERS

It has long been recognized that many universities, including the leading universities, have extremely low levels of diversity in political and intellectual outlook among their faculty. This 2023 Independent Review analysis of faculty surveys over time clearly shows that faculty political leanings since 1969 have turned sharply leftward. Recent polls confirm that often 95% or more of the faculty identify as Democrats and a very low percentage identify as Republicans or independents.

In A Report on Faculty Political Diversity the Buckley Institute at Yale lays this out. Released in December 2025, this study was not done by polling, but rather by a painstaking review of public records of Yale’s faculty party affiliation together with other data sources. It found that, among Yale undergraduate and law and management school faculty:

• 82.3 percent were registered Democrats or primarily supported Democrats.

• 15.4 percent were independents.

• Only 2.3 percent were Republicans.

• Twenty-seven out of 43 undergraduate departments had not a single Republican on the faculty.

And there is evidence that a significant percentage of faculty at many universities, especially in some departments, are not simply Democrats in terms of party affiliation, they also see themselves as “very liberal.” For instance, The Harvard Crimson reported on a 2022 faculty survey showing that over 45% of Harvard faculty identified as “liberal” and an additional 37.5% identified as “very liberal.” In this same study only sixteen percent identified as “moderate” and 1.7% as “conservative.”

In January 2026, the student newspaper, the Yale Daily News, announced the results of a study it conducted in 2025, this one using Federal Election Commission filings that listed Yale as an employer and “professor” under occupation. Of the 1,099 filings that met those two criteria, not one contribution was made to a Republican. 97.6 percent of the donations went to Democrats and 2.5 percent went to independent candidates or groups.

While these studies are Harvard and Yale specific, there can be little doubt that similar studies at many other universities would have similar results. For example, as law professor Johnathan Turley, who has written extensively on the problem of lack of faculty viewpoint diversity, pointed out in a recent column, a Georgetown study found that only nine percent of professors at the top 50 law schools identify as conservative.

And the problem is not just at so-called “elite” universities. Turley uses the example of a study that found that in six humanities departments at North Carolina State University, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 20 to 1.

There is valid critique of using political party registration data to measure faculty beliefs and biases, particularly with recent polarization and the dramatic changes in the nature of the two main parties. But looking at long-term aggregate studies of how tens of thousands of professors self-identify, Sam Abram’s HxA study of data compiled by the Higher Education Research Institute, shows that since 1995 university faculty “went from leaning left to being almost entirely on the left. Moderates declined by nearly a quarter and conservatives decreased by nearly a third.” Meanwhile the general electorate did not change materially. We do not argue here that faculty affiliations or political leanings should mirror the public’s, but decades of data clearly show the virtual disappearance of viewpoint diversity among faculty compared to the general population, with the latter self-identifying roughly equally between moderates, conservatives and liberals.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR UNIVERSITIES’ ROLE IN SOCIETY?

Viewpoint diversity among faculty may be further narrowing as conservatives and moderates tend to be older and are aging out, replaced by left-leaning faculty. In most cases, the faculty of a department has the primary role in picking new faculty, and those faculty often have a clear bias against prospective new faculty who do not think like they do.

Furthermore, the pipeline for new faculty – graduate students – often has severe roadblocks for conservatives and moderates. A highly qualified student we personally know, who recently applied to a half dozen top graduate schools in her field, found that every school required some type of diversity statement as part of the application. It was quite clear that no conservative, or even a moderate, who told the truth about his or her beliefs could submit a statement that would pass muster. The policy of requiring diversity statements was a de facto litmus test to even be considered for acceptance and has produced an active niche industry for faculty applicants on how to write such statements.

Faculty have a very special role in our society: They are the ones teaching our young people and advancing knowledge. But these key roles are almost totally filled by faculty with a one-sided view of politics and society. Unfortunately, much of the debate on this topic is currently colored by controversy surrounding the overly aggressive actions by the Trump Administration. There are a significant number of university leaders who say the problems on campuses are being grossly exaggerated and that the status quo must be defended. But regardless of one’s views about overreach by the Trump Administration, the numbers cited above and reinforced by numerous polls and studies confirm that there is a big problem with the lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty. This problem existed before Trump and will still exist long after Trump’s presidency.

It cannot be overstated how deeply embedded the problem of faculty homogeneity has become, compounded by the power that faculty exert on campuses. University presidents and boards of trustees are often reluctant, even afraid, to take faculty on. And any move to address the imbalance of faculty political views will almost certainly be attacked by faculty groups as a violation of academic freedom. But the ideological monolith that results breeds complacency at universities and thus fails the broader society in important ways.

A GREEN SHOOT – THE GROWTH OF CIVICS CENTERS

Some green shoots have appeared in the last few years that will have a positive impact on faculty diversity, even though viewpoint diversity may not be the principal goal of these initiatives. First, there is the significant increase in the number of universities that have, or are creating, centers for the study of civics. These centers will not only expand undergraduate and graduate level opportunities to study civics and related subjects; they will also create more positions for conservative and moderate faculty. Eventually these centers should have faculty of all political persuasions, and they should be encouraged to make sure that all viewpoints are presented and protected.

A recent article by Leslie Spencer outlines the growth of such civics programs. There are currently forty-five such programs as of December 2025. Thirteen are not yet fully operational, and we are aware of several others in the pipeline. HxA recently released “The New Landscape of Civics Centers in Higher Education,” a seminal study of the growth of civics centers broken down by type. It is by far the most comprehensive source of information about these centers, the issues they raise, and the opportunities they present. The study points out that the mission of these programs varies, but they often have several goals in common, one of which is: “Broadening the range of viewpoints included in teaching, research, and campus programs (typically by including more broadly conservative perspectives).”

The James Madison Program (JMP) at Princeton, created by Professor Robert P. George in 2000, is often cited as an example of how such programs could work. Indeed, Professor George has been consulted in the creation of other programs throughout the county over the past few years. As Princeton graduates who follow the James Madison Program, we know that it is a valuable addition to Princeton for many reasons, including increasing the diversity of faculty, broadening debate and championing viewpoint diversity. Notably, in recent years student interest in the JMP program has increased considerably.

While all types of such civics programs can have value, those that, like the James Madison Program at Princeton, are directly integrated into the university’s curriculum provide a particularly valuable model because the civics program faculty are members of established departments, rather than members of a department or program unto itself. Such a model can prevent a “silo” effect and can help integrate course offerings with diverse perspectives throughout the curriculum. Another important role of these programs can be to increase the pipeline of PhD candidates with diverse viewpoints, the numbers of which do not currently fulfill the need. We suggest that at some point a formal organization be created to act as a central resource for the advancement and creation of these centers. The Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education could be a model for such an organization.

A SECOND GREEN SHOOT: REFORM FROM WITHIN THE FACULTY

There is anecdotal evidence that some faculty are moving to universities where they see a more sincere commitment to viewpoint diversity – for instance, the high profile move by Professor James Hankins of Harvard to the new Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida.

But across academic departments at elite universities, faculty groups are now being created to promote open discourse, academic freedom, and intellectual diversity. Perhaps the best known of these is the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, which has more than two hundred faculty members. Other examples include the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom, Faculty for Yale, and the Columbia Academic Freedom Council.

In addition, HxA launched a major program in 2022, the HxA Campus Community Network, which has shown remarkable growth. The network extends across eighty-two university campuses and includes about 8,200 faculty, staff and students. The import of this development cannot be overstated – few such organized efforts by faculty existed only a few years ago. Individual faculty who support free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity often felt isolated, not knowing which of their colleagues agreed with them. The result was a reluctance to speak out. Now, under HxA’s leadership and along with independent faculty groups, things are changing from within the faculty community.

Another significant development at the national level is the Academic Freedom Alliance. Formed in 2021, it is an alliance of hundreds of faculty members from all political persuasions “dedicated to upholding the principles of academic freedom” for faculty. It serves primarily to defend faculty who are attacked for exercising freedom of thought in their academic work and in their lives as citizens, including raising funds to support litigation when faculty members’ rights are threatened. Like the faculty groups at individual universities, AFA is strictly non-partisan. While faculty viewpoint diversity is not a primary goal of AFA, its growing national network of distinguished members can provide support in the future.

THIRD GREEN SHOOT – BANNING DIVERSITY STATEMENTS

Another green shoot is the movement to end the use of political “diversity statements” in the hiring and promotion of faculty. Mandatory diversity statements are increasingly viewed as “compelled speech” (which would be unconstitutional at public universities) and as a tool to enforce ideological conformity. Several schools have moved to drop their use, including the entire California university system (generally considered the pioneer of mandatory DEI statements), the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, MIT, and the University of Michigan. In his recent book Terms of Respect, Princeton’s President Eisgruber came out against the use of such statements in hiring and promotion. However, they are still widely used, particularly at the department level, in one form or another, including at Princeton. Furthermore, even if the requirement for such statements has been dropped, there are other ways, for example through interview questions and social media background checks, to accomplish the objective of screening prospective faculty for political views.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Edward Yingling ‘70 and Leslie Spencer ‘79 are, respectively, Secretary and Vice-Chair of Princetonians for Free Speech.