Liberal faculty still hugely outnumber conservatives in higher education: report
FIRST ON FOX: Liberal faculty members continue to vastly outnumber their conservative colleagues on college campuses, according to a new report exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital.
The report, released by the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), revealed that liberal faculty members outnumber conservatives nearly 7-to-1 nationwide — a massive shift from 1969, when the ratio sat at less than 2-to-1.
"Having helped build a university founded on open inquiry, I've seen what higher education is supposed to be, and this report documents how far the academy has drifted from its primary purpose," said Michael Shires, Ph.D., vice chair of Center for Education Opportunity at America First Policy Institute.
"When an institution weaponizes academic freedom to purge the views it dislikes, it forfeits the very principle it claims to defend. Reviving genuine viewpoint diversity isn't an attack on academic freedom — it is its restoration," Shires added.
According to AFPI, the left-wing dominance over campus culture carries deeper implications for academic freedom and hiring practices. The data shows that 40% of surveyed faculty members openly admitted they would oppose hiring a Trump supporter, while over 80% of Ph.D. students acknowledged they would discriminate against a conservative job candidate.
"At many elite universities, registered Republican faculty are now more underrepresented than African American faculty," the AFPI report states. "More than half of conservative professors say they hide their views to keep their jobs."
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The findings come amid a broader push by the Trump administration to rein in viewpoint discrimination, antisemitism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices across higher education.
The administration previously identified civil discourse as one of four key areas of "national need" through its competitive grants program. Following that directive, the Department of Education unveiled seven priorities under the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) for the FY 2025 competition cycle to target those needs.
As part of the initiative, $60 million in federal grants is being distributed under "one absolute priority" specifically titled "Promoting Civil Discourse on College and University Campuses."
Colleges and universities qualifying for the FIPSE funding are required to support initiatives designed to "foster respectful deliberation and debate on college and university campuses, where free expression has too long been eroded by censorship, harassment, and even violent unrest."
The approved campus programs include seminars, speaker series, conferences, debates, and alternative learning opportunities designed to welcome a broader range of political viewpoints and encourage open dialogue.
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AFPI argues that aggressive policy interventions are necessary to break the current ideological monopoly, pushing back against critics who argue federal involvement threatens university independence.
"Many well-meaning reformers nonetheless oppose government-led efforts to address viewpoint discrimination on ‘academic freedom’ grounds," the AFPI report states. "In practice, this elevates institutional autonomy over individual academic freedom, allowing one of higher education’s means to obstruct its ends."
The report concludes by urging a shifting of priorities to protect vulnerable faculty: "Education reformers should instead prioritize the public interest in higher education by defending individual academic freedom and supporting all viable efforts —internal and external — to restore viewpoint diversity and equal treatment to viewpoint minority scholars and students."