Only 20% of College Faculty Believe a Conservative Would ‘Fit In’ With Their Department: Report
A new survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that only 20 percent of college faculty believe a conservative would fit in well in their department. The survey included responses from 6,269 faculty members at 55 major universities across the country for the “Silence in the Classroom: The 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey Report.” FIRE explained that the report “discovered a fraught campus atmosphere in which wide swaths of those surveyed admitted to hiding their political views to avoid censure.”
The findings indicate that only 20 percent of faculty believe a conservative would fit well in their department, compared to 71 percent who said the same about a liberal individual. The report also highlighted a broader trend of self-censorship, with 87 percent of faculty reporting difficulty having open and honest conversations about at least one controversial political topic on campus. Additionally, 14 percent of respondents reported being disciplined or threatened with disciplinary measures for their teaching, research, academic discussions, or off-campus speech.
“The McCarthy era is considered a low point in the history of American academic freedom with witchhunts, loyalty tests, and blacklisting in universities across the country,” said FIRE’s Manager of Polling and Analytics Nathan Honeycutt. “That today’s scholars feel less free to speak their minds than in the 1950s is a blistering indictment of the current state of academic freedom and discourse.”
Among the most contentious issues reported was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which 70 percent of faculty identified as particularly difficult to discuss. Other top issues included things like racial inequity, transgender rights, and affirmative action. The survey found that 35 percent of faculty admitted to toning down their written work to avoid controversy.
Political ideology appeared to play a significant role in faculty behavior and experiences. Over half (55 percent) of conservative faculty members reported occasionally hiding their political views to protect their jobs, a stark contrast to just 17 percent of liberal faculty members.
“There are very few conservative faculty,” Honeycutt said. “If they’re not expressing their views, then students are even less exposed to conservative perspectives than one might expect based on the numbers.”
