The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be the single most divisive election in our history. The public is split right down the middle, with almost every group splintering between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
There is, however, one group that seems to be approaching virtual unanimity: professors. A new survey of more than 1,000 professors shows that 78 percent will vote for Harris, and only 8 percent will vote for Trump.
Outside the Democratic National Committee, few groups are more reliably Democratic or left-wing. The poll offers further insight into the political homogeneity of higher education.
For anyone in higher education, the result is hardly surprising. The polls track what we already knew about the gradual purging of academic departments around the country of conservative, libertarian and dissenting professors.
Indeed, the lack of political and intellectual diversity may be turning some donors and even applicants away from higher education. With falling revenue and applications, universities are even starting to re-embrace commitments to neutrality on political issues.
Some, however, are doubling down on advocacy and orthodoxy.
In an op-ed this week, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth called on universities to reject “institutional neutrality" and officially support Kamala Harris. Calling neutrality "a retreat," Roth compared Trump's election to the rise of the Nazis and insisted that schools should “give up the popular pastime of criticizing the woke and call out instead the overt racism.”
He added, without a hint of self-awareness or irony, that "we should not be silenced because of fears of appearing partisan.”
In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican, as faculties replicate their own views through new hires.
So not only are professors voting en masse for Harris,........