Yves here. Rajiv Sethi reviews and raises questions about a recent survey of political views and self-censorship among teaching faculty at 55 universities. Not surprisingly, quite a few report believing they have to keep some views, notably on Israel and Palestine, to themselves.
Many of you are in academia or have close connections there. Please describe your experiences in comments.
By Rajiv Sethi, Professor of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University &; External Professor, Santa Fe Institute. Originally published at his site
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has released the results of a national survey of university faculty that deals with freedom of expression on campus. There’s plenty of interesting material in the report, but it needs to be interpreted with some care.
The organization contacted all active faculty in undergraduate-facing departments at 55 colleges and universities. Most elite private institutions and many flagship state universities were included, and the list of invited participants numbered 112,510. A total of 6269 people completed the survey, for a response rate of about 5.6 percent.
This rate is within the typical range for surveys of this kind, but immediately raises the question of representativeness. Those who took the time and trouble to submit responses were a self-selected group who probably differ along multiple dimensions from those who chose not to participate. I suspect that the respondents were disproportionately likely to have a generally favorable (or at least neutral) view of the organization, and to have witnessed or experienced things that they felt an urge to communicate.
This ought to be kept in mind as one interprets the report.
For instance, suppose that faculty in the ideological minority on a campus are more likely to self-censor in the course of their professional lives, and also more inclined to submit responses to such surveys. This will have two effects—the pool of respondents will be more ideologically balanced than the campus faculty as a whole, and the reported degree of self-censorship will be greater than its actual incidence. And one can imagine many other ways in which self-selection into the pool of respondents can lead reports to diverge from underlying realities.
This doesn’t mean that the survey is uninformative; on the contrary, I think its value is immense. But the value lies in the exposure of general qualitative regularities rather than specific quantitative claims.
With that preamble out of the way, let’s take a look at the findings.
The degree of self-censorship in the professional lives of responding faculty is substantial, affecting areas of research for one-fifth of them, classroom discussion for two-fifths, and online activity for a majority:
In addition, about a quarter of respondents engage in self-censorship in conversations with administrators, colleagues, and students, prompted by “fear of social, professional, legal, or violent consequences.” According to the report, these “self-censorship dynamics… are more prevalent and salient to conservative faculty, but also more pronounced for faculty who have weaker job protections.”
There are many issues about which faculty feel unable or unwilling to speak openly and honestly, but on almost every campus the one that tops the list is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was mentioned by 70 percent of respondents overall, and by more than 80 percent of those at Columbia, Harvard, Indiana University, Oklahoma State, Rutgers, Stanford, Syracuse, the University of Oregon, and Yale. The survey asked participants where their sympathies lay in this conflict, and got the following distribution of responses:
Source: Silence in the Classroom: The 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey Report
This suggests to me that that faculty with a wide range of views are holding their tongues.
Next, consider self-reported party affiliation. About 61 percent of respondents identify with or lean Democrat, 12 percent identify with or lean Republican, 13 percent are independent, and the rest are allied with smaller parties, no parties at all, or choose not to disclose any affiliation:
Source: Silence in the Classroom: The 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey Report
The distribution of self-reported political ideology is similar: about 59 percent are on the left, 17 percent on the right, 17 percent are moderates, and the remainder either do not disclose any ideological commitment or do not place themselves on this spectrum.
Finally, consider attitudes towards diversity statements for hiring or promotion. These are considered never or rarely justified by about half of respondents:
As in the case of self-censorship, there are significant differences in responses by faculty ideology—conservative faculty are overwhelmingly opposed to such requirements, moderates are somewhat less strongly opposed, and liberals are quite evenly divided.
What should one infer about the faculty at large based on results in the report? This question can’t be answered without making some judgments about the kinds of characteristics that affect response rates. My own view is that in the population invited to participate, conservative faculty are present in fewer numbers, self-censorship is less frequent, and diversity statements are less strongly opposed than a literal reading of the report would suggest. But I don’t think these distortions are large, and the general qualitative picture emerging from the survey is reasonably accurate.1
I’ll make two other points in closing.
A couple of years ago, Lara Bazelon published an article in which she argued that the ACLU, “once a bastion of free speech and high-minded ideals… has become in many respects a caricature of its former self.” It seems to me that FIRE now occupies the space that the ACLU has vacated.2 But it is not the only organization taking a principled stand on behalf of free expression—an amicus brief by PEN America in support of University of Washington computer scientist Stuart Reges is worth reading.3
Free speech and academic freedom are currently topics of animated debate on campuses across the country, and things are in a state of flux. Many institutions have taken steps towards institutional neutrality and the adoption of the Chicago principleson freedom of expression. But the embrace of abstract principles such as these will do little to restore a climate of free expression unless the thorny problem of self-censorship is squarely addressed. The FIRE faculty survey—problems with self-selection notwithstanding—gives us a sense of the nature and scale of the problem, and is therefore an essential starting point.
There has been a surge of new subscribers to this newsletter over the past few days, which I think is due to a mention on the DealBook holiday reading list. I’m grateful to Sarah Kessler and the rest of the team for that recommendation, and hope that the new arrivals find something of value here. And this will be my last post of 2024, so I wish all readers a very Happy New Year.
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1 One way to address the question of representativeness empirically is to examine the demographics of survey respondents alongside those of academic faculty as a whole. About 64 percent of respondents to the survey were male, and about 76 percent were white. These numbers can be compared with the faculty composition at the relevant institutions using a searchable list published by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The largest number of responses to the survey came from the University of Michigan, which has a faculty that is about 57 percent male and 53 percent white. Most other participating institutions have similar demographics, suggesting that respondents were more likely to be white and male than the population that was invited to participate. This doesn’t necessarily imply that race or gender affected response rates conditional on other characteristics such as age or seniority, but does mean that self-selection matters—respondents were not evenly drawn from different segments of the surveyed population.
2 I attended the organization’s annual faculty network conference this year, discussed the experience with Glenn Loury on his podcast, and participated (with Diana Mutz, Eugene Volokh, and John Hasnas) in a webinar on campus speech that was hosted by FIRE’s Director of Faculty Outreach, Komi Frey.
3 Reges responded to a suggestion by university administrators that he include a land acknowledgement on his syllabus by posting one that clearly mocked the very idea of such acknowledgements, and was disciplined for it. He sued, and a federal district court sided with the university. The PEN America brief was submitted to the Ninth Circuit where an appeal is pending.
Starting with footnote 3. Ahhhh, land acknowledgments, the cotton candy of diversity, all fluff and no substance. I’ve sat through a few. In one of them, I am pretty sure that the acknowledger was mispronouncing the name of the Indian nation being acknowledged.
And, of course, what is the practical effect of such acknowledgments? Are they soliciting funds for Ojibwe immersion schools? Asking for support for the Zuni school system? No.
https://www.waadookodaading.org
As to the body of the article by Rajiv Sethi, which is fascinating in a dire way, I’d argue that the 5.6 percent response rate is fairly good for a survey sent out randomly. The results, even if they may be slightly skewed from the characteristics of the population, indicate a significant amount of self-censorship.
One factor that bothered me, though, is that respondents could be identified by school. To me, this violates the principle of confidentiality, which may have lowered participation.
All in all, though, the article indicates that a problem indeed exists. Groupthink is smothering dialogue. Various rules and procedures, such as the system of (harassment) complaints against faculty members, are now treacherous. Tenure is becoming a rarity, so all faculty members are in delicate positions with regard to their deans and, errrr, marketing departments.
As to the Chicago Principles. Hmmm. I am a Maroon, and I have been receiving information about how the U of Chicago beat up the pro-Palestinian demonstrators last spring, as well as threatened to withhold degrees. The U of Chicago is all about freedom of speech till someone steps on the ever-gurgling firehose of donations and the endowment — try criticizing the voodoo economics of the biz school and department of econ. Let alone demonstrate on the Quads!
Of course some might argue that the whole purpose of college in the modern context is to produce “excellent sheep” who will support the ruling class–in the Ivy League version–or the middle class in the rest. As I mentioned the other day it’s remarkable the degree to which many famous and prominent Americans of the last century either didn’t go to college or didn’t finish.
To be sure our ever more complex societies require training but the huge and often needless increase in the cost of education has only enhanced the gatekeeper function and power (to educational bureaucrats) corrupts.
We can deplore the censorship you talk about but not be surprised. The diversity that that is a mantra in current PMC culture would be a good thing if only they believed in it. There was a time when they did.
Some would indeed argue that. For example Jeff Schmidt did in his wonderful and amusing but worrying book:
Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives (2001).
https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/
Lyn Gerry read the book on the radio, on a show called Unwelcome Guests https://www.unwelcomeguests.net/ I was able to load the RSS in my podcast player.
Doris Lessing argued the entire educational system is a sheep-machine decades ago (sorry I don’t have the reference). I taped a big-font A4 print of her argument on my classroom door window, facing out so entering students and passersby could read it, and left it there for seven years. I suspect Admin never read it–or was too dull to grok it–because I was never called to the carpet over it:
~~~
WHY YOU ARE HERE
You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture.
The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be.
You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself – educating your own judgment. Those who stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being molded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this society.
– Doris Lessing
—
So glad I retired when Zero Covid ended here in China. The new job description additions–“will happily suffer repeated Covid infections in super-spreader classrooms” and “will not call genocide genocide in the presence of students”–would drive me effing crazy.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/5606-ideally-what-should-be-said-to-every-child-repeatedly-throughout
1962
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/books/review/the-golden-notebook-doris-lessing.html
July 1, 1962
THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK
By Doris Lessing
In 1962, our reviewer described this radically feminist novel — now considered Lessing’s most influential work — as “a coruscating literary event.”
In Doris Lessing’s new novel — her 12th book, fifth to be published here, and a coruscating literary event — she bites off only one thing that she doesn’t properly chew. Though her dissection of British Communism, which is part of each of her characters’ past or present, is clearheaded and most thorough, certain passages of lumpen-politics lie soggy and undigested. That aside, one can only salute and marvel at the staggering fecundity of idea and insight that turns almost every remaining paragraph into a hive of constellated meaning. Mrs. Lessing’s special genius lies in the particular observation, and a firkinful of scorching aphorisms could be culled from nearly every page.
Superficially, this is the story of Anna Wulf, a divorced English novelist, disillusioned with the Communist Party, and navigating the perilous “hazards and chances of being a ‘free woman.’” One might say, in a footless stab at simplification, that the book deals with the feminine predicament in a time when “women’s emotions are still fitted for a kind of society which no longer exists,” with particular emphasis on Anna’s duels with lover after crucifying lover. But immediately one has said it, he sees how much has eluded such a coarse-meshed net…
— Ernest Buckler
Random connection. Our friends bought their house on Dartmoor from Doris Lessing’s estate after she died. She divided her time between there and London. It is an old granite longhouse (animals one end, people the other). There are no scandalous stories unless you count some of the colours she painted the rooms. :-)
My brother has been a tenured professor in the humanities at a state university for a few decades (and, as a talented administrator, head of the department for some years). Politically he seems to be close to Pat Buchanan, but his publications are all bland papers that link his discipline to trendy topics like gender and ethnic studies. His personal firewall between what he thinks politically and what he does academically has been in place since the 1990s.
He tells me teaching has become more difficult in the last several years, due to ongoing budget cuts, the increased usage of AI tools in student essays, and an administration that increasingly treats professors as the hired help. The topics mentioned in this post are not particularly new and they have always been off limits as far as he’s concerned.
And no, he wouldn’t have answered this kind of survey.
The careful wording of the survey – seem to me – to slant outcomes.
Like careful wording of political statements or surveys to elicit the surveyors pre-hoped for responses.
Like having to choose sympathies between two groups instead of say, support for genocide in certain circumstances or no support for genocide under any circumstances.
or
As normal, sane human beings, where should we lay the heavier taxes, on industry or speculation?.
I absolutely would not speak about Israel/Palestine either in class or in the faculty room. Same with Ukraine or the Trans issue. Faculty who support Israel and/or Ukraine speak freely on those issues. Pretty much all my colleagues are Democrats who get the news via CNN and MSNBC.
Until this piece I had never heard of DEI pledges. I’m suspicious that this questionnaire is Making Things Up. The question is being worded in a way which ensures most (even DEI supporters) will answer negatively, because pledging is completely wrong in this context.
A DEI statement in the corporate world is generally just the leadership of an organization saying “hey, we’d like to be this kind of workplace, this is our vision, let’s align to get us there”. It’s like any other vision, mission or purpose statement. Typically, when doing performance evaluations you’d list the stuff you’ve done to help the organization align to its goals, whatever those goals might happen to be, and if you really understand DEI, you’d also understand just how easy it is to list because most people are inclusive by nature and can see how generally, overall, this helps any organization, with or without DEI statements in place.
It’s a great way to get promoted because “I helped a disabled student with such and such a solution” is clearly a better attitude than “f*ck disabled students and their DEI sh*t, they’re not even real human beings, don’t belong in a university, I have no obligation to help them”. DEI achievements is just another way of saying “Are you a wonderful human being? Please, we’d love to hear how!” This should be pretty easy for the vast majority of people in the world.
If some faculty are interpreting that as “pledging” then I question their fitness to teach, let alone comprehend the world around them.
Search engines are your friend. I would suggest using them rather than rejecting an idea based on your beliefs.
The term of art is indeed “DEI Pledge”. See for instance
Many many many more like that.
Having said that, McKinsey dared write how they were virtue-signaling (in consultant-speak) and suggested how to make them more credible:
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/its-past-time-to-get-strategic-about-dei
I had googled it as a first step, without much success. UC and Harvard have something like DEI mission statements but not in the form of pledges. No other university or college appears to have a pledge as such or it doesn’t register with the search algorithm, so that’s where I was with that.
But here I was thinking (after only coffee number one) it was something akin to people standing, hand on hearts and pledging allegiance to the United States of America. If people disagree with their organizations committing (or stating commitment) to being more equal, diverse, and inclusive then that’s pretty messed up.
Oh, apologies for making a bad assumption.
I think there is a ton of norms enforcement outside formal structures in the US. Look at how we had to self-censor on Covid and other topics to not risk demonetization. Academics and students know how doxing and online harassment are common. They even have to self-censor to the degree of avoid being accused of engaging in micro-aggressions. So signals like a speech by a uni president or a department head could go a long way in laying down markers, much more so in a less conformist era.
My experience (I still have links to some institutions) is that sciences absolutely hate DEI statements: foreign scientists have no idea what these mean or what to do with them and they need to be directed to some websites for some generic templates. So, basically, everyone fills out some standard form with a few blank spots, basically. None of these mean anything, other than extra bureaucracy (if only to produce the standard templates that repeated).
Is this “terrible”? I don’t know. We do many tons of things as a matter of bureaucratic routine–we do them because “they” tell us to do them. We know what kind of answers they expect, so we give them those answers, regardless of the relevance. This thing strikes me as rather similar to the one thing that my mother has had a lot of experience often: whenever she needs to deal with the government bureaucracy, especially CA state ones, there’s always the statement that you have been explained A, B, and C and that you have been able to make sense of all these things blah blah blah. These are usually in legalese and not easy to understand in the first place–but once you translate them into a foreign language (b/c you have to, in CA, if the person on the other end requests an explanation in that language, if it is one of the “listed” languages, if you needed to phone somebody to ask about it in that language), and that statement is usually terribly translated and literally make no sense, and, especially when she was just starting to deal with such agencies, she was often just confused and told the other person “I have no idea what you just said. How can I agree with the statement”? The idea, of course, is that you’re just supposed to say yes, whether or not you agree or even understand it (like a lot of EULA, I guess), and these are hooks for the other side to come after you for some reason or another for allegedly violating the agreement. I do wonder if there has been any instance where academics have been subject to discipline for allegedly having made a false statement in DEI forms…but I suspect that’s really what they are designed to do.
Yves, I see your point. Even in my own org, during townhalls we’ve had people posing questions to our exec, anonymously, along the lines of “isn’t DEI preventing deserving men from getting jobs” or “isn’t this giving unqualified women jobs over qualified men?” Our execs just answer this with data proving otherwise, but also pointing out that if candidate screening is now blind (e.g. applicant name, gender, ethnicity is removed from the application process, or prevented from being a consideration) then this ensures qualified candidates are getting the roles. I think other orgs may politically clamp down on such questions but not the ones I’ve been with, the questions are treated respectfully. But yes, if people need to ask anonymously this would indicate they’re afraid of consequences (whether or not they should be).
A while ago, a forget when and have not looked for a date yet, Harvard Law faculty voted to grade student papers with names required on them. Law School students quickly decided to strike and stayed away from class for a very short while until the grading system reverted to being by number rather than name.
The point being the law students did not trust graders.
I got that from my opening undergraduate year, and was ever so careful.
Let me add several relevant links.
In 2019 the life-sciences department at Berkely rejected 76% of applicants on the basis of their diversity statements. A similar practice is widespread throughout the UC system. The news was first reported in obscure outlets, but MSM caught up once DEI got out of fashion.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/life-science-jobs-at-berkeley-with-hiring-giving-precedence-to-diversity-and-inclusion-statements/
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/02/04/american-universities-are-hiring-based-on-devotion-to-diversity
The selected institutions were mostly elite private or large state university campuses. Would have been interesting to see the inclusion of some more obscure state campuses, small colleges, religious affiliated schools, etc. Millions attend these places as well, and my gut feeling is that tenure and respect for faculty professionalism is even more endangered than at the universities surveyed.
I work in public health.
When protesting in working groups about the replacement of the word “mother” with “birthing parent” and requiring “gender” instead of biological “sex” in surveys needed to inform about development of new infrastructure, I was reffered to HR (anonymous complaints).
The interview was ultimately just a going through the motions and even though I was sidelined in the beginning (the topic was not provided to me), I went on attack with health related arguments. The thing was never discussed since. Nevertheless, now we have birthing parents which are also reported by age group and, drumroll, by delivery method, which is mostly vaginal… I did ask if this categorization will be kept (it was a tongue in cheek question from me) since it is relevant for the health of the mother, sorry, birthing parent and the baby, and I was assured that it will be. Oh, the pretzel of contortions…
As for the reference to first nations stewardship, I always like to point out at the communitarian ownership and stewardship, which is in opposition with the private oriented wordview in which we live in…
I have XX chromosomes but I took testosterone for many years. I have a beard. I am able to ‘pass’ as a man. I wouldn’t call myself a mother even though I can still get pregnant by stopping the testosterone and resuming cycles. Now, look. These DEI crazed correction officers make people like me look bad, as if I am being demanding, but the truth is *other people* do not want to call me things like woman and mother. Sometimes asking for a more “visually correct” taxonomy prohibits me from being hate crimed. In addition, some queer people may interpret these small amounts of flexibility in systems as progress and struggle towards a world where they are accepted. (This is usually not the case, it is usually illusory, centered around keeping people in the business as usual mindset with limited conflicts.)
It does not really make sense, the proportionality of how you claim you are upset by what you feel is absurd, considering how few people like me (or intersex, visually gender nonconforming, women with pcos and beards, etc) actually exist within this alleged place of risk. Being a trans man is difficult and I wish there were other ways outside of bureaucracy to gain respect. Some people cannot interpret their world view outside of that of a captured corporate context and, unfortunately, have been trained to “take what they can get” which appears to be a very liberal and shaky implementation of “supporting new types of bodies”. But please, don’t get it twisted, not all of us are asking for these changes.
I can speak for myself and say I’d rather toil and wait being jammed into the wrong “sex” box for much longer if that means down the line there is a more accurate representation of my body outside of the current binary. (In the context of medical services, that is.) I can’t disagree, this IS absurd. Now, maybe you should try to find more Queer voices in your life to supplement what appears to be frustrated, blame-heavy thinking. There are reasons as to why we Queer people are made to awkwardly stick out.
Think about it. There’s no incentive to really help us because many underlying medical institutions are so westernized that they medicalize our queerness or claim we are behaviorally/cognitively deficient. Please do not blame the oppressed but rather the anemic implementations of requests for better treatment. It is not our fault: you should not be “protesting” such changes, but rather asking, maybe there is something you are not considering in the broad spectrum of gender, sociology and Westernization (colonialization) of medicine.
I am a long-time professor at a large, reputable undergraduate arts college. The DEI obsession took over like kudzu during the George Floyd protests, and since then academic freedom at this institution has been a decaying thread. I used to include a great deal of content intended to connect the artistic techniques in class to the “real world”, and would sometimes reference current events, pop culture, and politics.
No more. I have essentially shut down all free inquiry in my own classes, because the institution has made it clear that my views on such matters (anti-genocide, anti-authoritarian, anti-neoliberal) are extremely unwelcome, and that they no longer care about free speech or academic inquiry (if they ever did). These trends were already underway before the pandemic and the Floyd protests, but that environment was the perfect storm for the vitrue-signalling PMC that runs our DIE initiative. Nowadays, I teach the art, and nothing else. Students hardly ever bring up outside issues, and on the rare occasions that they do, I ignore it.
It disgusts me to self-censor considering the importance of my role in my students’ development. This is absolutely counter to the very idea of education and the students’ growth. But I am more disgusted by the overall situation in academic itself, which is preventing that at scale. I am nearing “retirement” age and frankly, I no longer care what happens to my institution. I’m just going to punch my time card, take my salary for a few more years, keep my head down, and try to gain artistic satisfaction in other ways. Basically, after 30 years of college teaching, I have concluded that the American higher ed system is a corrupt failure, with DIE as poster child.
One index of the level of virtue display that is felt to be necessary is the content of signature blocks in email messages. This is anecdata, because I wasn’t keeping count, but in the final years of my academic career it seemed to be much more common for people (should I say folx?) to include both their pronouns AND a land acknowledgement alongside basic contact info and job title in their email signature.
I always kept mine pretty stripped down, and never suffered any adverse consequences, but I had tenure, and wasn’t a particularly ambitious careerist.
Once again, if you remember that the world works like high school, a lot of behavioural patterns make sense.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/01/mit-student-banned-from-campus-facing-suspension-after-pro-palestine-activism/
Case in point?
My comment above that the censorship isn’t surprising doesn’t mean we should accept it.
And here’s betting Turley, for all his valuable commentary on free speech, won’t be citing the above except to agree with MIT. Time for Israel to stop being a speech third rail