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By Edward Yingling ’70 and Leslie Spencer ‘79
A first of its kind study by Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) of reported Princeton faculty political contributions shows an alarming lack of viewpoint diversity as measured by donations to political candidates. Our findings are in line with similar studies of Yale and Harvard faculty.
SUMMARY
Contributions by current Princeton faculty reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show 98% went to Democratic candidates or Democratic affiliated groups; 2% went to independent candidates or affiliated groups; and 0% went to Republicans or affiliated groups.
Similarly, at Yale, a 2025 study of faculty donations reveals that 97.6% of faculty donations went to Democrats; 2.4% went to independents; and none went to Republicans. And Yale's Buckley Institute issued a major report, based largely on voter registrations, showing 82.3% of faculty are registered Democrats or support Democratic candidates; 15.4% are independent and 2.3% are Republican. Twenty-seven of 43 Yale undergraduate departments have no Republican faculty.
A 2022 Harvard Crimson survey found that 82.46% of faculty reported being liberal or very liberal; 16.08% reported being moderates; and 1.46% reported being conservative – an over 56 to 1 ratio of liberals to conservatives.
Princeton’s administration has not responded to the faculty diversity issue: Yale, Harvard and other universities have publicly recognized this extreme imbalance and its high costs to teaching, learning and research. They are taking steps to address it. Princeton’s leadership is not.
Nationally the numbers track: A recent FIRE report analyzing campaign contributions made by over 100,000 faculty at 55 institutions throughout the country found that the average college professor who donates to political candidates is “only slightly less left on the ideological spectrum than Bernie Sanders.” This study also shows that the most elite universities are among those with the least ideological diversity.
PFS has made faculty viewpoint diversity a top priority. See "The Next Campus Battle After Free Speech: Viewpoint Diversity at America’s Elite Universities."
PRINCETON DATA – A DEEPER DIVE
For a more detailed look at PFS’s study and its methodology, we urge readers to read the study prepared by Iron Light. It is based on reports required by the Federal Election Commission. All aggregate contributions in an election cycle of $200 or more to a given candidate and to certain other political groups must be reported to the FEC and all such reports are in a searchable public data base. The individual reports must list employer and occupation. Thus, it is possible to identify all Princeton faculty who have contributed $200 or more in the aggregate to a given recipient. Iron Light then did an analysis of contribution recipients (easy for candidates, a little more difficult for other groups) to determine if they are Democrats, Independents, or Republicans. Iron Light also cross checked the list with a current list of Princeton faculty. The years 2023 – 2024 were picked because FEC’s aggregation of contributions is based on two-year election cycles, and that is the last full cycle. This is not a sample; it is all the contributions of Princeton faculty reported to the FEC.
Our study is the first of its kind on Princeton faculty contributions. There have been two similar recent studies at Yale – one, like ours, based on FEC report data and one based on voter registrations and other data. A Harvard Crimson report was based on a survey of faculty. While different methodologies were used, the results were remarkably similar, especially in the percentage of Republican/conservative faculty, which varied from 0 to 2.3%.
By comparison, according to many polls, the U.S. voting population is roughly 30% each Democrat and Republican and 40% independent. We certainly do not argue that faculty should mirror such ratios, nor do we argue that registrations or contributions are exact measures of faculty thinking. Furthermore, we know that, while our study correctly shows that only 2% of reportable contributions went to independents and 0% went to Republicans, there are of course some independent and Republican faculty at Princeton.
Importantly, Princeton is the home of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions (JMP), a non-partisan program within the Department of Politics which stresses freedom of thought, inquiry and expression to empower the pursuit of knowledge and truth. It is notable that courses taught through JMP draw increasingly large enrollments and are among the most heavily subscribed lecture courses across the entire humanities and social sciences divisions at Princeton. And the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom, a faculty group with a current membership of over 80 faculty members, exists not only to support academic freedom, but also “to cultivate a culture of intellectual pluralism and tolerance at Princeton.”
SPIA STANDS OUT
Iron Light broke out Princeton faculty giving across 34 academic departments and the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) and found that SPIA has the university’s most politically active faculty. Of the 119 SPIA teaching faculty in the study, 29 made reportable federal contributions, a 24.4% donor rate as compared with a 12.3% rate for the faculty university wide. SPIA faculty donated $103,612 – all to Democratic candidates or groups. One can debate the significance of this datapoint. But it is undeniable that this nationally renowned school that enrolls roughly 300 undergraduates and 190 graduate students, many of whom become the country’s public policy and international affairs leaders, is not fostering a culture of wide-open debate in the pursuit of knowledge.
NO ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF A PROBLEM FROM PRINCETON
It is safe to conclude that Princeton, like Yale and Harvard, appears to be almost totally lacking in viewpoint diversity among its faculty. But in one way Princeton differs. Those elite schools that we have numbers for, Yale and Harvard, as well as a growing number of other leading universities – such as Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis – have publicly recognized that this lack of intellectual diversity is a problem for teaching, learning, and research, and are taking steps to address it. Princeton’s leadership has not.
A TRUMP-ERA EFFECT? NO.
The PFS study and many others are overwhelming in their consistent findings: They demonstrate that there is very little diversity of viewpoint among faculty at Princeton and other leading universities. But is this just a Trump-era issue as some have claimed? It appears not.
At Princeton, an early indicator of the bias among Princeton faculty was an analysis of contributions by faculty and staff in the 2012 presidential election: 99 Percent of Donors from Princeton Give to Obama. Only one faculty member contributed to Romney, who was considered a moderate.
And see our recent article “FIRE Survey of Faculty Donations: How does Princeton Compare,” which reports on FIRE’s comprehensive analysis of FEC campaign contribution data since 1979. Looking at the ideological leanings of over 100,000 faculty at 55 universities, FIRE found that Princeton’s scores were very similar to other elite universities – an overwhelming ratio of contributions went to Democrats. Importantly, the report also found that the range of donations since 1979 has increasingly concentrated on the far left.
PRINCETON’S TRUSTEES – SLIGHTLY MORE VARIED
Iron Light also looked at the contributions of the Princeton Board of Trustees, using the same methodology, as a comparison. There were 27 trustees who were U.S. residents and therefore required to report. The donor rate for trustees was 48.1%, while the rate for faculty was 12.3%. The contributions of trustees were more balanced but still strongly tilted left. For donors, ten gave only to Democrats; two gave only to Republicans; and one gave to another party’s committee. The ratio of contributions by dollars was 8.7 to 1, Democrat to Republican. That is more varied than Yale’s Board of Trustees, which had no registered Republicans and whose political donations showed a 50 to 1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans.
STRONG FACULTY PUSH-BACK
Faculty in opposition to reform across the country have become vocal, led by the 44,000-member American Association of University Professors (AAUP). A notable example was an article in the AAUP’S flagship magazine, "Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity," by Johns Hopkins professor Lisa Siraganian, in which she argues that “viewpoint diversity functions in direct opposition to the pursuit of truth.” Siraganian’s article was refuted by Heterodox Academy’s (HxA) President John Tomasi and co-founder Jonathan Haidt, "Universities Can’t Pursue Truth Without Viewpoint Diversity." To achieve greater viewpoint diversity, reformers will have to overcome the entrenched opposition of many faculty.
WHY IS VIEWPOINT DIVERSITY IMPORTANT?
Because without it, universities cannot fulfill their role in society. Students cannot learn how to think critically if they are only exposed to one narrow view; knowledge will not advance if research cannot be subject to evaluation and criticism through different lenses. If everybody on a campus has pretty much the same viewpoint because other viewpoints have been excluded, there cannot be real open debate and freedom of inquiry. Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor and a leader of faculty-driven reform said:“The joke went that in a university, ‘diversity’ means people who look different and think alike; viewpoint diversity, in contrast is the form of diversity that really matters in scientific and intellectual life.”
VIEWPOINT DIVERSITY – THE FOCUS OF REFORMERS
There is a growing focus among campus reform groups on the problem of faculty viewpoint diversity. So much so that PFS has made this a primary focus of our efforts.We started with "The Next Campus Battle after Free Speech," a comprehensive article we published in February on the importance of viewpoint diversity and the difficulties of achieving it. Now PFS has released this political giving study to demonstrate how deep the problem is at Princeton and to establish a baseline for future analysis of faculty viewpoint diversity.
In "Campus Leaders Can’t avoid Viewpoint Diversity in Pursuit of Open Inquiry," John Tomasi, the president of Heterodox Academy and a leader in the effort to increase diversity of thought, said it best: “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.” Why a “third rail?” It is largely because of the entrenched position against addressing the issue among many faculty.
HxA’s recent regional conference at UC Berkeley centered on the theme "The Value of Viewpoint Diversity: Why it Matters and How to Practice it Well." And FIRE has not only conducted research on faculty political donations, as highlighted above, it has introduced model legislation that prohibits the use of ideological litmus tests in faculty hiring and promotion and in admissions.
Another significant reform development that PFS follows closely is the growth of civic centers at universities across the country. In "The Rise of Civics Centers at America’s Universities," Leslie Spencer reports on the explosion in the number of such centers in the last decade, drawing on an HxA report charting this dramatic rise in the numbers and the different types of such centers. Either indirectly or by design, these centers can help correct the ideological imbalance among faculty on campuses. According to that report, as of October 31, 2025, there were 41 universities with such centers, many created in the last few years. Others are being set up or under consideration. Here again there is an organized effort by faculty through the AAUP to attack and undermine the creation of such centers.
UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP IS STEPPING UP
University leaders are emerging as an increasingly vocal and important group for reform.
Daniel Diermeier and Andrew Martin, the Chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis, have joined forces to support other reform-minded university leaders. As part of that effort, they brought together ten eminent academics from around the country, including two from Princeton, to create the recently released "Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences" which argues that political activism has seriously compromised academic standards.
In her recent Wall Street Journal commentary "Is a Four Year Degree Worth It?” Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock, states the need for higher education to return to a focus on learning rather than “political posturing.” She wrote: “Research funding, faculty hiring and academic recognition should be grounded in scholarly excellence, not ideological litmus tests.”
Harvard President Alan Garber has pledged to “speed the establishment of a university-wide viewpoint diversity effort." And The Harvard Crimson recently reported that Harvard’s provost, John Manning, is raising funds to hire faculty specifically to broaden viewpoint diversity.
Yale’s president, Maurie McInnis, recently made public a broad set of recommendations for reform that includes an analysis of the issue of faculty intellectual diversity. Among the many recommendations, all which McInnis endorsed, was that “starting in 2026 – 27, each department and school should engage in a self-study examining the breadth of intellectual and methodological commitments” including “the range of scholarly approaches represented on its faculty.”
Led by President Ronald J. Daniels, Johns Hopkins has created a program to increase faculty viewpoint diversity on campus despite considerable pushback. A recent article "Inside an Elite University’s Campaign to Bring Conservatives to Campus" discusses the innovative approaches Johns Hopkins has undertaken to create a more intellectually diverse faculty, as well as the opposition to such efforts by some of the Hopkins faculty.
THERE WILL BE NO LONG-TERM SUCCESS WITHOUT FACULTY SUPPORT
HxA’s recently released study of faculty nationwide "Liberal faculty are surprisingly bullish on political diversity" paints a somewhat unexpected and hopeful picture. Survey results of 3,500 faculty from 80 institutions found that liberal faculty are likely to agree that political diversity improves the quality of teaching and research. These results may well highlight the stark difference between the attitudes towards viewpoint diversity at elite institutions like Princeton compared to the much broader cohort throughout the country included in this survey. We believe that many faculty nationwide, even at elite universities, do not like many aspects of the ideological monocultures on their campuses, but are not willing to express their views openly, the way they are in an anonymous survey.
Does a majority of faculty quietly understand that viewpoint diversity fosters a climate that’s necessary for genuine pursuit and truth and knowledge? There is reason for optimism.
WHERE IS PRINCETON?
The battle is now joined, and it is a critical one for the future of our universities. But where is Princeton? Princeton’s leaders, as we have said many times, must first recognize there are problems. Public trust in higher education has cratered for many reasons, including high costs and doubts about return on investment. But in no small measure this loss of trust is because universities are increasingly seen as ideologically extreme, in sharp contrast to the society at large. Princeton’s leaders have yet to acknowledge this problem. Other top university leaders have done so. With our study now public, Princeton is increasingly the outlier.
Over 20,000 Princeton alumni subscribe to our PFS reports and monthly newsletters. Certainly, our subscribers want Princeton to continue its leadership role among the world’s universities. But Princeton is in danger of falling behind. PFS will continue to advocate for action, and we urge all alumni to join us. Please let us have your input.
Additional Resources:
Edward Yingling is PFS co-founder and chair, and Leslie Spencer is PFS vice chair.
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The public increasingly sees through the righteous image that American higher education wishes to project. Professors and administrators say that they curtail only injurious and hateful speech despite their tendency to equate injurious and hateful speech with conservative opinions. They maintain that they promote diversity, equity, and inclusion to rectify injustice and enhance education and not, as evidence suggests, to reward minorities and women whose thinking conforms to progressive orthodoxy. And they offer an undergraduate curriculum that allows students to fashion a slate of classes that suits their individual needs, tastes, and skills but which – typically lacking a mandatory and coherent core – leaves graduates destitute of that basic knowledge of America, the West, and other civilizations that informs the judgment of responsible citizens.
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Princeton fell to 176th out of 261 schools, earning an F for the second year running. The drop is despite strong marks from Princeton's own students. What's holding Princeton back is its written policies and its refusal to adopt institutional neutrality, both fixable without touching campus culture at all. The university could improve quickly if it acted on the PFS-provided recommendations already sitting with its administration.
