It’s Time to Upend the Modern University

University presidents have been in the limelight in recent months, more than at any other time in living memory. The additional scrutiny is amply warranted. They occupy powerful positions at their respective institutions. They formulate and communicate a vision for the university. They handle budgetary priorities. They approve hiring requests and promotions. They oversee the creation of new colleges, schools, and centers. They issue statements on behalf of the entire institution. They are the public face of the university.

But while the debacle on Capitol Hill on December 5, 2023 heightened public awareness of the inscrutable hegemon we call the Ivy League President, it also revealed how extensively and thoroughly DEI has infected most of our elite institutions, top to bottom. Most now know that something is terribly, terribly rotten in the state of Denmark – and it goes far beyond university presidents. The problem is systemic.

Consider the political and ideological homogeneity of the American higher education complex. College and university administrators – positions that have mushroomed in recent years – are especially egregious on this point. One study by Samuel Abrams found an astonishing 12:1 ratio of liberals to conservatives among administrators (71 percent identified as “liberal” or “very liberal”; only 6 percent identified as conservative).

Faculty are hardly better, and sometimes worse depending on the school and department. The STEM fields have less of a problem with political variety, but the social sciences and humanities are a veritable echo chamber. A 2018 study by Mitchell Langbert, for example, looked at the public voter registrations of nearly 9,000 tenured and tenure-track professors. For faculty in the humanities, the ratio was 32 Democrats for every Republican. A well-publicized survey last year by The Harvard Crimson found that a measly two percent of Harvard faculty describe themselves as conservative.

Small wonder that Gallup in 2023 found that only 19 percent of Republicans and only 36 percent of Americans have confidence in higher education (as recently as 2015, the number was 56 and 57 percent respectively)…..

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Jonathan Barth is an associate professor of history at Arizona State University and is a fellow with the Jack Miller Center.

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