We know, by now, that most university campuses skew hard to the political left. And we have heard enough tales — over the decades, but with increasing frequency of late — of college students who feel like they cannot fully engage in the exchange of ideas because the risk of disagreement with the dominant leftist worldview is not just getting into a frustrating argument — it’s being canceled entirely, as hundreds of self-appointed scolds and censors make your life on campus a living hell.

But in a report released today by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), we can now see that even the faculty are afraid to say what’s on their minds sometimes. And it’s not just the few conservatives among them, though the numbers do lean in that direction. A national sample of 6,269 tenured, tenure track, and non-tenure track faculty participants was recruited

from 55 U.S. colleges and universities to make up the sample, with participants being recruited from all undergraduate-facing departments, according to the survey’s statement on methodology. (See p. 19.)

According to FIRE’s faculty survey, “only 17 percent of liberal faculty say they at least occasionally hide their political views in order to keep their jobs, compared to a staggering 55 percent of conservative faculty who say the same. And this fear is more prevalent among faculty who do not have tenure than those that do.”

It’s not even just about what they say to each other at department meetings, or to their students in a classroom. One in five professors reported even limiting the scope of their own research rather than risk demonstrating a result that it would be politically uncomfortable to talk about in public. That is to say: both the instructional and research aims of the universities are being undermined.

The trend is national, but the FIRE survey also had some specifics on Pennsylvania institutions of higher learning. At the University of Pennsylvania, 121 faculty members responded to the survey and the results show why that once-elite institution was the local center for Gaza protests and mayhem this past year.

Only 26 percent of UPenn faculty surveyed said they believed academic freedom on the campus was “very secure” or “completely secure.” There were 44 percent who said the opposite, calling it “not very secure” “not at all secure,” with the remaining 30 percent landing in the middle. More than half said it was “not very clear” or “not at all clear” that the administration protects free speech on campus. (These and other Penn statistics are on p. 80 of the report linked above.)

Penn State Main Campus fared somewhat better, but still not great, according to the 200 faculty surveyed there. Thirty-one percent (compared with UPenn’s 44 percent) of faculty believed academic freedom there “not very secure” “not at all secure.” Again, a majority thought the administration did not adequately protect free speech on campus. (More on p. 79.)

In both places, the top-ranked issue on the “difficult to discuss on campus” list was the war in Gaza. At UPenn, unsurprisingly, the percentage who felt that topic was too fraught to talk about freely was extremely high: 78 percent. We all saw the widespread vandalism, destruction, and even harassment of Jewish students that took place at their Philadelphia campus earlier this year. In the face of an unruly and often violent mob, is it any wonder that students and faculty kept their mouths shut? 

Most professors are there to teach and do research. Most students are there to learn and get a degree. But the administration allowed a mob to take over a portion of the campus and intimidate everyone in the vicinity.

This is not what our institutes of higher learning are meant to achieve. 

Most people expect to encounter new ideas when they go to college, and to have their old ideas challenged. That’s a good thing. It doesn’t mean students have to become as far-left as the average professor, but they should be in a position to hear and understand arguments from the left, right, and center, and to discuss them freely. Only after weighing the other sides of an issue can they truly master it and make an informed decision about where they stand.

The role of the faculty in this is to facilitate that discussion, adding the knowledge they’ve acquired over years of study, and sharpening their students’ minds through free and open discussion. But they can’t do that if they themselves are afraid to speak out in any way that strays from the progressive orthodoxy. 

Earlier I referred to the average professor as “far-left,” and survey after survey shows that the profession does lean heavily in that direction. But maybe they’re not really all as far left as we think. FIRE’s research here shows that to the extent even a left-leaning professor has a heterodox idea, he tends to shut up about it to avoid being the latest target of the mob. Many of the senior faculty are left-leaning, but came of age at a time when that meant favoring more and freer speech, not suppressing it as “misinformation.” 

The old-fashioned liberals and their intellectual descendants believe that the cure for bad ideas is good ideas, that the way to truth is through discussion and discovery. It’s not a new idea, but it is an important one.

In his “Areopagitica,” John Milton wrote, “Though all the windes of doctrin were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licencing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falshood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the wors, in a free and open encounter. Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.”

The truth will out, eventually. That was true in 1644 and it’s true in 2024. Faculty and students come to campus in a search for truth and knowledge. They won’t find it in a place where everyone is afraid to speak their minds.

Kyle Sammin is the managing editor of Broad + Liberty.