College faculty members are only slightly less radical than Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a new study commissioned by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has found.
The May 28 study cross-references over 100,000 faculty members with over 850 million state and federal campaign contributions. David M. Primo, the author of the study, found that the average ideology score of faculty donors was -1.02. Sanders’s score, in comparison, is -1.14.
Of course, faculty members can donate to whomever they like, and their political preferences may not cultivate a conformist campus environment. But that’s nonsense.
Only 20% of university faculty believed a conservative scholar would be a welcome addition to their department, a separate FIRE Faculty Survey found. That’s compared to 71% of respondents who said the same of a liberal scholar.
Other studies show students imitate their teachers. Only about half of students believe that their campus should expose them to all types of speech, even if they may find it offensive, according to a Knight Foundation-Ipsos study. Almost 80% believed the same in 2016. It’s no wonder that three-fifths of college students report that their school climate prevents them from saying what they believe because others might find it offensive.
Conservatives used to joke that indoctrinated students would “grow up” once they got their first paycheck. For the most part, they were right: Only 8% of students say they would disrupt a speech they oppose. But that loud minority has not grown out of campus radicalism. It has exported the conformist tactics learned from left-wing faculty into electoral politics.
Ideologically captured students have graduated into the protesters at Delaney Hall — a migrant detention facility in New Jersey. Over 90 protesters have been arrested on charges of assaulting federal officers, possessing weapons, and endangering others. The FBI charged Nicholas Matthew Scelfo — a Brooklynite who crossed the Hudson River seeking trouble — with threatening to assault and murder an ICE officer and his family.
Our fast-paced newscycle compels us to write off the riots at Delaney Hall as an isolated incident. But university faculty and their second-hand dealers of ideas, whom renowned economist Thomas Sowell calls the “intelligentsia,” say the violence in recent demonstrations is connected.
“After 2020, the militancy of our movements increased — more people willing to take risks and break rules to stop business as usual,” Dean Spade, an “organizer,” said in a Teen Vogue story. “This is visible in the student uprising against genocide in Palestine, the disruptions of weapons manufacturers, as well as in mobilizations against ecocide.”
Many university faculty members endorsed the displays of “resistance” and took part after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack. The University of California Ethnic Studies Faculty Council, which represents over 300 members, issued a joint letter to the UC Board of Regents. They condemned the university administration’s use of the word “terrorism” to describe the Hamas attacks.
More than 100 Columbia and Barnard professors signed an open letter defending student protesters. The letter criticized the Ivy League school for prioritizing Israeli deaths over the Palestinian struggle. Many of these staffers later formed human shields to protect student demonstrators from academic suspension. Other academics at The New School nearby launched the first faculty-led encampment in the country.
Yes, the “8 percenters” of the campus encampments in 2023 are rioters across the country today. The conformist culture taught by faculty, tested at the university, and performed in California and New Jersey has changed indigenous Americans’ opinion on immigration. America’s third-largest concern in the 2024 election may now be a political loser for the Trump administration this November.
BRITAIN MUST AVENGE HENRY NOWAK THE RIGHT WAY
Progressives are campaigning on the frustrations egged on by ICE agitators. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani reiterated his calls to abolish ICE during a June 1 interview on MS Now. His endorsee, Darializa Avila Chevalier, unapologetically demands the same. Embattled Maine Democratic nominee for Senate Graham Platner has said ICE is not welcome in Maine’s communities. And Texas Democratic nominee for Senate James Talarico called ICE “a secret police force” that needs replacing.
Ideological conformity within university staff does not necessarily mean dissenters are stifled from the conversation. After all, the professors Primo cross-referenced only represent a small portion of all faculty members across academia. But it’s clear that Bernie Sanders-lite academics and their noisy pupils have played a critical role in stirring unrest, which primes well-meaning voters to choose blue this November.