‘Traded ideas for ideology’: Nearly 75% of college faculty believe academic freedom is in danger

Nearly three-quarters of faculty at four-year colleges and universities believe academic freedom is not secure, a report released Thursday found.

Faculty are increasingly afraid of suffering consequences for views they express inside and outside of the classroom and are choosing to self-censor as a result, according to a report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Issues such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), gender ideology, and the Palestinian conflict are the driving forces behind the politically tense scene on campus.

“The universities have traded ideas for ideology,” a professor at the University of Michigan said, according to FIRE. “I never feel comfortable speaking about issues related to DEI or transgender issues. The university I work at has adopted a stance on both of these issues that cannot be question[ed] without fear of reprisal, sanction, or ostracization from the academic community.”

Of the 6,269 faculty surveyed, the majority believe that academic institutions should remain neutral on political issues and should not take official stances, the report shows.

At least 23% of faculty say their departments are “somewhat” or “very” hostile toward people with their political beliefs, the report found. Conservatives were three times more likely than their liberal counterparts to report hiding their political beliefs from other faculty in fear of retaliation.

“Although I am more in the middle of the road and have viewpoints on both sides, I feel like I need to keep my mouth shut or I would be ostracized or fired,” a professor at Indiana University, Bloomington told FIRE.

Faculty at colleges and universities tend to skew left of the political spectrum, with nearly 80% vowing to vote for former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the November election, one survey showed.

College campuses have been riddled with chaos since Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which led to fiery protests across the U.S. and resulted in hundreds of arrests. DEI has also become a hotly debated topic at universities, with many schools choosing to abandon the practices in response to public pressure and shifting political tides.

“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,” Nathan Honeycutt, FIRE’s manager of Polling and Analytics, said in a statement. The fact “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,” he added.

The survey was fielded from March 4 to May 13, 2024, using a sample of tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty from 55 four-year colleges and universities across the country.

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