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Jonathan Turley
jonathanturley.org
Yale University has finally achieved the academic version of Nirvana, a state of perfect peace and enlightenment. A recent study found that the faculty had finally purged every Republican donor from its ranks. While 98 percent of the political donations went to Democrats, not a single professor could be found who gave to a single Republican candidate. The complete lock for Democrats is in a country that is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.
The Yale Daily News reviewed more than 7,000 Federal Election Commission filings from 2025 listing Yale as the employer: “Of 1,099 filings that included ‘professor’ in their occupation, 97.6 percent of the donations went to Democrats, while the remaining 2.4 percent went to independent candidates or groups,” the student newspaper reported Jan. 14.”
The study reinforces the recent Buckley Institute report, which found that, of the 43 departments surveyed, 27 entire departments contained zero Republican professors.
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Ghent University suspended postdoctoral scholar Nathan Cofnas as a “precautionary measure” pending a “preliminary disciplinary investigation.” The reason he is being suspended, however, has little if anything to do with him legitimately criticizing Jason Arday’s scholarship last month by documenting plagiarism in Arday’s doctoral thesis. Ghent is instead suspending Cofnas because his expressed public views are misaligned with the university’s values and therefore “creates a reputational risk”. This is not how academic freedom should work.
In July of this year, the American Association of University Professors endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary election for U.S. Senate. Reactions from higher ed commentators played out exactly how you might expect: where defenders saw an obligatory bulwark of academic freedom against GOP incursions, critics saw an own-goal that only further justified those attacks.
However justified the AAUP’s decision may have seemed to some, new research suggests that it will only further fracture public trust in higher education.
