June 30, 2026
The academic year is at an end, but two major studies are keeping higher education in the spotlight:
New FIRE study finds narrowing range of political views among faculty donors
The study finds that donations to political candidates from faculty at top universities have become increasingly one-sided, with the range of opinion becoming concentrated on the left.
PFS’s response, How does Princeton Compare? explains Princeton’s ranking of 13 out of the 55 university faculties studied and concludes:
“Princeton faculty as measured by political contributions are among the least ideologically diverse in the country and occupy a narrow band of left and far-left politics with virtually no conservative or moderate presence as a counterweight.”
The second study, drily entitled “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences” has set off a firestorm of reaction among humanities faculty and professional organizations such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The fiercest protests have come from within the disciplines that the report critiques. Commissioned by university reform leaders, chancellors Daniel Diermeier of Vanderbilt and Andrew D. Martin of Washington University, it is addressed to fellow university leaders with a diagnosis of what has gone wrong with Humanities scholarship and teaching, and how to fix it. The committee of ten eminent professors that produced the study was chaired by NYU philosophy professor Paul Boghossian and included Princeton Professor of Philosophy Gideon Rosen and Princeton Professor of History Sean Wilentz.
Our Articles of Interest section below includes reactions to both these studies.
Articles of Interest
How to Bring Free Inquiry Back to Campus—And Restore Trust
A new study shows that the ideological middle has collapsed among faculty.
By Jonathan Farber, The Dispatch, June 9
FIRE’s new study shows us how intensely concentrated faculty ideology is in a very narrow and very progressive band of the political spectrum. But the real issue is that the faculty is now so devoid of ideological diversity that it is not effectively able to challenge what have become inviolable assumptions. Until serious dissent is encouraged, the central truth-seeking mission of the university will remain compromised, and universities will not regain the trust of a society that desperately needs places where disagreement still produces understanding.
Is a New Report About the Humanities ‘Diabolically Evil’? We Questioned Its Authors.
Inside a Report that has Divided the Academy
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11
Cited Professors Say the Vanderbilt Report Misrepresents Their Work
By Emma Whitford, Inside Higher Ed, June 10
Where does Viewpoint Diversity Matter the Most?
Answer: Anywhere our identities are at stake.
By Justin McBrayer, Free the Inquiry, June 22
It’s now widely (though not universally) conceded that improvingviewpoint diversity on campus would improve university teaching and research. Faculty on American campuses are overwhelmingly cut from the same ideological cloth, and this homogeneity has harmful effects on all aspects of the professoriate, includingteaching,research, andservice. The research mission, in particular, is under threat as faculty political and religious homogeneity distort our knowledge of everything fromgender andimmigration tosecularism andterrorism.
The University As We Know It Is Finished
That’s a Good Thing
By Nils Gilman, Persuasion, June 17
Why American Universities Are Coming Apart
The 20th century was about building bigger universities. The 21st century may be about breaking them apart.
By Daniel M Rothschild, Free the Inquiry, June 10
Podcast of the Month
Yale Needs More Free Speech! with guest Lauren Noble - American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA)
Lauren Noble is the founder and executive director of The Buckley Institute at Yale University, speaking with Radio Free Campus Podcast co-hosts Steve McGuire and Justin Garrison about Yale’s strengths and weaknesses when it comes to promoting free speech and intellectual diversity.
Quote of the Month
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NYU Philosophy Professor Paul Boghossian, Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier
and Washington University Chancellor Daniel D. Martin
We have identified several forms of politicization in recent humanistic scholarship that threaten to distort the enterprise, having taken care to distinguish these problematic forms of politicization from scholarship that takes a stand on politically charged issues but which employs fully defensible standards.
Let us, in conclusion, step back and consider the larger stakes of the afflictions in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.
Part of the raison d’être of a university is that it should engage in disinterested inquiry — inquiry aimed at knowledge and understanding, both for their own sake and for the sake of further goods that require genuine knowledge and understanding, rather than ideologically informed opinion, for their promotion. This, at least in part, is what universities are for. Indeed, it might well be thought that one of the greatest contributions a university can make to society is to provide a model of what disinterested inquiry can be and how it might thereby be of value. If the pursuit of disinterested inquiry is compromised, it strikes at the very foundation on which a university should be based, just as the corrupt administration of justice strikes at the foundation upon which a system of justice should be based.
As we have already noted, there are those in academia who would question the value of disinterested inquiry, or even its possibility. But as we have argued, these doubts are the product of philosophical confusion; there is in fact no good reason to question either the coherence or the value of disinterested inquiry, however difficult it may be.
It is largely for these reasons that we regard the failings we have pointed out as so serious. They are not mere problems in the administration or operation of a university, but they strike at the very heart and soul of what a university should be for.
From the conclusion to the State of Scholarship Report,by a committee of scholars led by NYU Philosophy Professor Paul Boghossian and commissioned by chancellors Daniel Diermeier of Vanderbilt and Andrew D. Martin of Washington University.
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