The Academic Mind in 2022: What Faculty Think About Free Expression and Academic Freedom on Campus

Executive Summary

In this report we explore findings from a national survey of 1,491 faculty at four-year colleges and universities in the United States regarding their attitudes on free expression and academic freedom. These findings provide a mixed picture on the state of academic freedom among American faculty. On the positive side, a majority of faculty surveyed endorsed broad conceptualizations of freedom of speech and academic freedom, rejected harsh punishment for colleagues who engaged in controversial expression, and opposed deplatforming speakers on campus. Compared to the results of FIRE’s “College Free Speech Rankings” survey, faculty are markedly more tolerant than the students they teach. The vast majority had not been disciplined, or threatened with discipline, by their department or university for their teaching, research, or non-academic expression. 

Yet, there is serious cause for concern. A majority of faculty worry about losing their jobs or reputations because someone misrepresents their words. A third self-censor out of concern over the responses of staff, students or administrators. Moreover, a significant portion of faculty support punishing their colleagues in softer ways that can chill expression. These restrictions include formally condemning certain views but not punishing someone for expressing them; investigating colleagues for controversial expression; and applying social and professional pressure to get colleagues to take mandatory training they philosophically oppose. The academic freedom glass is, at best, half full.

Key findings include:

1. Roughly three-in-five faculty (61%) surveyed said that “a university professor should be free to express any of their ideas or convictions on any subject,” and more than half (52%) said speech should only be restricted “where words are certain to incite physical violence.” 
2. On average, 81% of faculty supported allowing four different hypothetical controversial speakers on campus, compared to 48% of the students who were asked about the same speakers in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings (CFSR) survey. 
3. More than half of faculty (55%) said students shouting down a speaker is never acceptable. Four-in-five said this about students blocking entry into a campus speech and 92% said this about students using violence to stop a campus speech. In FIRE’s CFSR the percentages of students who say these actions are never acceptable are 38%, 63%, and 80% respectively.
4. Roughly one-in-10 (11%) faculty reported being disciplined or threatened with discipline because of their teaching, while 4% reported facing these consequences for their research, academic talks, or non-academic publications. 
5. Liberal and conservative faculty have starkly different views on mandatory diversity statements for job applicants, the value of political diversity on campus, and when freedom of speech should be restricted. They also have very different social and professional experiences on campus.
6. Faculty are split evenly on whether diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements are a justifiable requirement for a university job (50%) or are an ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom (50%). Three-in-four liberal faculty support mandatory diversity statements while 90% of conservative faculty and 56% of moderate faculty see them as political litmus tests.
7. More than half of faculty (52%) reported being worried about losing their jobs or reputation because someone misunderstands something they have said or done, takes it out of context, or posts something from their past online. Almost three-quarters of conservative faculty (72%), 56% of moderate faculty, and 40% of liberal faculty reported feeling this way.
8. A significant portion of faculty (ranging from 18% to 36%) endorsed their college’s administration launching a formal investigation into other faculty members for their controversial expression. 
9. Roughly one-third (34%) of faculty said they often feel they can not express their opinions on a subject because of how students, colleagues, or the administration would respond, compared to one-fifth of students surveyed for FIRE’s CFSR.
10. The percentages of faculty who said they were very or extremely likely to self-censor in different contexts ranged from 25% (in academic publications) to 45% (on social media). Only 8% of all faculty said they do not self-censor in any of the four contexts asked about. 

About Us

About FIRE 

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE also recognizes that colleges and universities play a vital role in preserving free thought within a free society. To this end, we place a special emphasis on defending these rights of students and faculty members on our nation’s campuses.

For more information, visit thefire.org or @thefireorg on Twitter.

About SSRS 

Social Science Research Services (SSRS) is a full-service survey and market research firm that provides researchers with innovative methodologies, optimized sample designs, questionnaire refinement, and ways to reach low incidence populations.

For more information, visit ssrs.com.

Acknowledgements 

Our gratitude goes to Nathan Honeycutt, Sean Stevens, and Eric Kaufmann for questionnaire design, data analysis, and authoring this report; and to SSRS for working with our team on questionnaire design and administering the survey. 

Greg Lukianoff

President and CEO, FIRE 

Published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. 

Suggested citation

Honeycutt, N., Stevens, S.T., & Kaufmann, E. (2023). The Academic Mind in 2022: What Faculty Think About Free Expression and Academic Freedom on Campus. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Available online: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/academic-mind-2022-what-faculty-think-about-free-expression-and-academic-freedom

Methodology

The survey was primarily developed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). SSRS provided recommendations on question wording and was responsible for administering the survey. No donors to the project took part in the design or conduct of the survey. The survey was fielded from July 6, 2022, to August 31, 2022. The data in this report come from a sample of 1,491 university faculty who were then employed at public or private four-year degree-granting universities in the United States.

Questionnaire Development

FIRE’s research team primarily designed the survey instrument. SSRS provided feedback regarding question wording, order, clarity, and other issues related to questionnaire quality in order to maximize reliability, validity and survey response, and worked with the FIRE team to finalize the survey instrument. Once finalized, SSRS formatted the instrument for programming and pretesting. 

Prior to launching the survey, six cognitive pretest interviews were conducted to evaluate the usability of the online survey instrument and faculty members’ understanding of the survey questions. Cognitive pretest interviews were completed with participants from the FIRE Faculty Network who agreed to be contacted. Participants included four professors, one instructor, and one professor Emeritus. Four participants were male and two were female. All participants worked at a four-year public or private nonprofit institution. 

For each cognitive interview, an SSRS team member asked participants to review the proposed email invitation and was on Zoom with the participant as they responded to the survey. The SSRS team member asked the participant to “talk out loud” as they went through the survey — pausing to identify any issues or confusion. At the end of the survey, the team member asked some additional questions and reviewed any other relevant issues that still needed debriefing.

SSRS provided FIRE with recordings from the interviews and a detailed memo including feedback on the email invitation, the survey questions, and usability/clarity of the online survey instrument. After the cognitive interviews, changes were made to the email invitations and the questionnaire. For the email invitations, we added a sentence to inform possible respondents that we would be happy to send survey results when published. We also added a sentence explaining how their email address was obtained. Changes to the survey instrument did not substantially change its content but further clarified questions and response options to ensure data validity.

Prior to the launch of the main study, SSRS provided FIRE’s research team with access to the online system to review and test the final instrument prior to the main field launch.

Sample

SSRS procured a sample for professors at four-year public or private nonprofit institutions from Market Data Retrieval (MDR), a D&B company well known for maintaining accurate sample lists of educators.

In addition to the MDR sample, a sample was also drawn from a list of tenure and tenure-track professors (N = 87,904) from 361 colleges and universities provided by FIRE. ​​This email list was developed between 2018 and 2022 and included tenured or tenure-track (i.e., no adjunct) professors at the top-ranked four-year public and private college or university in each state according to the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, the list contained the top research colleges and universities in each state, including both four-year public and private institutions. These institutions in the sample were categorized by their level of research activity as R1 (highest), R2 (high), and R3 (moderate), and also by the size of their masters’ programs as M1 (large), M2 (medium), M3 (small), and finally bachelor’s only programs BA-Arts & Sciences/Diverse Fields. Within each college and university, faculty info was collected from the departments specified in the Appendix.  

The initial goal was to obtain 1,000 completed surveys split equally between the MDR list and the list provided by FIRE. The first sample release consisted of 12,500 pieces of sample from FIRE’s list and 12,500 pieces of sample from the MDR list. From this initial release, significantly more completions were obtained from FIRE’s list (68% vs. 32%). 

The second sample release consisted of about 18,200 pieces of sample from FIRE’s list and about 49,500 pieces of sample from MDR. With the second wave of sample, total completions exceeded 1,000 and balanced the sample split to 47% of the FIRE list (n=703) and 53% of the MDR list (n=788).

The response-rate for the FIRE sample was 2.2% and the response rate for the MDR sample was 1.6%. Respondents were determined ineligible for the study if they had the rank of adjunct or if they were not working at a four-year public or private nonprofit institution. When an email was no longer valid, it was labeled undeliverable. The margin of errors for the FIRE and MDR samples were +/- 7.1% and 4.2% respectively. The margin of error for the total sample is +/- 4.0%, with larger margins of error for subgroups. 

Weighting

Data were weighted to represent college professors from four-year public and private nonprofit institutions in the United States by balancing the demographic profile of the sample to target population parameters.

Weights were established using distributions of: sex, race, age, tenure track, academic rank, and region, per sample source, and then combined into a single weight variable for analysis. Weighting was accomplished using SPSSINC RAKE, an SPSS extension module that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables using the GENLOG procedure.^[1] Missing data in the raking variables were imputed using hot decking using an SPSS macro detailed in ‘Goodbye, Listwise Deletion: Presenting Hot Deck Imputation as an Easy and Effective Tool for Handling Missing Data’.^[2]

The sex, race, and academic track benchmarks were obtained from the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) for 2020.^[3] Age was derived from MDR. The academic rank and region benchmarks came from Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) 2020.^[4] Weights were trimmed at the 2nd and 98th percentiles to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on survey-derived estimates. Tables 1 and 2 in the Appendix compare unweighted and weighted sample distributions to target population benchmarks.

All analyses presented are weighted and were performed on the combined sample in SPSS or R.^[5]

Overview

Targeting scholars for their pedagogy, research, or viewpoints is ubiquitous throughout human history. For instance, Socrates was sentenced to death for “corrupting the youth” of Athens and Voltaire served time in the Bastille twice, and was once exiled to England for speech crimes.^[6] These sanction attempts are often politically motivated and tend to be initiated by an authority figure (e.g., a monarch, a democratically elected representative, or a college administrator) or an outrage mob appealing to authority figures to punish one or more scholars for something they have said or done.^[7],^[8] These sanction attempts seek to discipline controversial speech by either censoring it (e.g., deplatforming a speaker, retracting a scholarship) or punishing the source(s) of it (e.g., suspending or terminating faculty) and can be considered examples of hard authoritarianism.^[9]

Hard authoritarianism peaked on campus during the McCarthy Era, when Americans were repeatedly told that subversive Communist elements had infiltrated society’s major institutions, including its universities. During these “difficult years” college and university administrators faced increased pressure to avoid controversy, causing many professors to censor their own political views so they would not be suspected of endorsing communist beliefs.^[10] This apprehension was warranted. A survey of 2,451 social scientists, conducted during April and May 1955, identified a total of 990 incidents in which some kind of accusation was made against at least one professor.^[11] Almost half of these incidents resulted in some form of sanction, and in 104 of them a faculty member was fired or forced to resign for political or religious reasons.^[12],^[13] Other scholars estimate that 100-150 faculty members were terminated by their college or university during this time period.^[14]

College Free Speech Rankings

Page

The College Free Speech Rankings is a comprehensive comparison of the student experience of free speech on their campuses.

Read More

This created a chilling effect on campus. Faculty aware of more incidents targeting colleagues were more worried about facing repercussions for expressing their own political views and were relatively cautious about doing so. Indicative of this, one-fifth of faculty said that they thought their colleagues were less willing than they were six or seven years ago to express unpopular political views on campus. Faculty were also fearful of students and “approached topics with such unshakeable conviction that classroom activity was impaired. Certain subjects and opinions were labeled ‘bad’ in advance by these students.” Some students made faculty wary because they were quick to take offense, made snap judgements, and had no qualms about publicly accusing a professor of being a communist. And even though two-thirds of faculty felt most of their colleagues would support them if they were accused of being a leftist, one-third either did not expect staunch support (28%) or were uncertain (6%).^[15]

Even though some faculty were wary of outspoken conservative students and did not expect to receive their colleagues’ support during a controversy, the prevailing view among most faculty during “the difficult years” was that the pressure on school administrators to restrict faculty expression came largely from outside academia — from alumni, trustees, politicians, and the community at large.^[16] This is also the conclusion of a number of scholars who have studied the era.^[17] Over subsequent decades, analyses of campus speech controversies have reached similar conclusions: Administrators are largely under pressure from forces outside academia to sanction scholars for their work or expression.^[18]

Over the past decade however, something has changed on campus. Attempts to sanction speech from within academia (i.e., initiated by undergraduates, graduate students, and/or other scholars) have increased, and faculty are being targeted for their expression with increased frequency. This is primarily a result of attempts initiated by undergraduate students, but the increasing number of attempts by graduate students and other faculty is also notable.^[19] According to FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire database, from 2000-2014, 78 attempts to sanction scholars at American colleges and universities were initiated from within academia. From 2015 to present, the total number of attempts to sanction scholars initiated from within academia is 450: It includes 328 by undergraduates, 80 by graduate students, and 138 by other scholars — with 62 of them resulting in a termination or forced resignation.^[20],^[21],^[22] Pressure from students and staff leads to hard authoritarianism in the form of institutions censoring or disciplining a scholar.

Other research indicates that although most faculty do not support hard authoritarian tactics to limit expression on campus, the level of support for soft authoritarianism — a general antipathy toward and even open condemnation of certain viewpoints that results in social discrimination (e.g., avoidance or exclusion of those who express offensive viewpoints) — is concerning.^[23] In simple terms, if hard authoritarianism is about being fired, soft authoritarianism is about not being hired, promoted, published or included in collegial interactions.^[24] For instance, many faculty, regardless of their own political ideology, say they would discriminate against colleagues with different ideological views in professional settings (e.g., during anonymous peer-review) or during day-to-day social interactions. In contrast to “the difficult years” however, the majority of students and faculty today are even more politically left-of-center, and politically conservative expression is now unpopular and controversial on most campuses across the country.^[25]

In this report we explore findings from a national survey of 1,491 faculty at four-year colleges and universities in the United States regarding their attitudes on free expression and academic freedom. Part one discusses our survey findings pertaining to the support for hard authoritarianism among university faculty in the United States — which we find to be fairly low. Part two focuses on findings pertaining to the support for soft authoritarianism among faculty — levels of which we find concerning. Finally, part three compares the current findings with previous data collected from scholars and students in the United States.

Support for Hard Authoritarianism is Low

Part one examines faculty members’ attitudes on freedom of speech and academic freedom, how they think their college administrations should handle student complaints about controversial professors, how acceptable they believe it is to deplatform speakers on campus, and their own experiences with disciplinary action for their pedagogy, research, or expression made off-campus.

Most faculty do not support hard authoritarianism and our findings reinforce this conclusion.^[26] Just over half of faculty surveyed (52%) said speech should only be restricted “where words are certain to incite physical violence.” Similarly, 61% of faculty endorsed the broadest and most tolerant conceptualization of academic freedom — that “a university professor should be free to express any of their ideas or convictions on any subject.” Just 1% endorsed the opinion that “a university professor should not be free to express any of their ideas or convictions, even if in their subject, their ideas and convictions are divergent from widely accepted beliefs or standards.”

Most Faculty Reject Harsh Punishment of Controversial Colleagues

Most faculty rejected severe forms of punishment (i.e., removal from classroom, suspension, termination) for controversial speech by other hypothetical colleagues or specific professors. For example, just over half of the faculty surveyed were asked how the administration should deal with “several professors” who refused to take mandatory diversity training (n = 761), the remaining faculty were asked about “several White male professors” who refused such training (n = 730). The majority of faculty, regardless of how the question was worded, rejected any formal penalties for their colleagues who refused to take the mandatory diversity training. Just over two-in-five said that the administration should “take no action of any kind” (43% for “several professors” and 41% for “several White male professors”), while one-fifth said that the faculty members should not face any penalties, but should be pressured socially and professionally to comply (24% for “several professors” and 21% for “several White male professors”). At the same time, the percentage of faculty in either condition who endorsed firing the professors who refused to comply was below 3%. 

This reluctance to punish colleagues was also evident, regardless of how the questions were posed, when faculty were asked how their administration should handle student complaints about controversial faculty expression. Roughly half the sample of faculty were asked about two specific professors. In the case of Phillip Adamo, who was suspended after quoting James Baldwin using a racial slur in class, 44% of faculty said he should not have been suspended while another 48% said they “[didn’t] know enough to say.” Just 7% said Adamo should have been suspended. When asked if Charles Negy, a gay Hispanic professor who tweeted that “Black privilege is real: Besides affirmative action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege,” should have been fired, 64% of faculty said “no” and another 33% said they “didn’t know enough to say.” Just 3% said he should have been fired.

Some notable gender differences emerged. First, in all cases, male faculty, compared to their female counterparts, were significantly more likely to say that the “administration should defend the professor’s free speech rights” after a controversy.^[27] This was also the case when the response option presented was instead “take no action of any kind.”^[28] Third, when asked about how the administration should handle several white male professors or several professors refusing diversity training, female faculty were more likely to say that “the professors should be removed from the classroom until they comply.”^[29]

Most Faculty Oppose Deplatforming

Faculty were also asked how much they support or oppose allowing different controversial speakers on campus.^[30] Compared to students surveyed earlier in 2022 for the College Free Speech Rankings (CFSR) survey, faculty were more tolerant of all four hypothetical speakers.^[31] On average, across the four speaker types, 81% of faculty supported allowing them on campus, compared to 48% of the students surveyed for the CFSR. Support among faculty peaked at 91% for a speaker who expressed that “structural racism maintains inequality by protecting White privilege.” And, while faculty were most strongly opposed to allowing a speaker who expressed that “Black Lives Matter is a hate group,” more than two-thirds of faculty (68%) still supported allowing this speaker on campus.

Figure 1

Compared to students surveyed earlier in 2022 for the CFSR, faculty were also less accepting of deplatforming speakers using illiberal tactics. Specifically, more than half (55%) of faculty said that it is never acceptable for students to shout down a speaker during their talk to prevent them from speaking, compared to 38% of students.^[33] Four-in-five faculty said it is never acceptable for students to block entry into a campus speech, and 92% said it is never acceptable for students to use violence to stop a campus speech. On the other hand, when it came to students surveyed for the CFSR, these percentages were 63% and 80% respectively.^[34] 

Figure 2

Female faculty members, compared to males, were more likely to oppose allowing all four speakers on campus. They were similarly more likely to say that students shouting down a speaker is acceptable, to at least some degree, than were male faculty members (49% never acceptable, compared to 61%).^[35] Female and male faculty did not differ in how acceptable they thought it was for students to block entry to a campus speech or use violence to stop it. These gender patterns resemble those in the student data.

Younger faculty members found it more acceptable for students to use illiberal tactics to stop a speaker than their older colleagues. Among faculty 35 years old and under, 37% said students shouting down a speaker is never acceptable, 59% said blocking entry is never acceptable, and 79% said using violence is never acceptable. These figures are similar to the student results. In contrast, among faculty over 55 years old, these percentages are 65%, 86%, and 97%, respectively. Additionally, the percentage of faculty members 36-45 years old who said students blocking entry to a campus speech (77%) or using violence to stop it (92%) is never acceptable is considerably higher than those 35 and under who said the same. Ideological differences are also evident. The majority of conservative faculty were significantly more likely to find students’ use of illiberal tactics never acceptable than their more moderate and liberal counterparts: 88% of conservative faculty said that students shouting down a speaker is never acceptable, 95% said this about blocking entry, and 98% said this about using violence. In contrast, the percentages of liberal faculty who said these tactics are never acceptable are 37%, 69%, and 89%, respectively.^[36]

Figure 3

Differences in faculty members’ perception of how acceptable it is for students to use illiberal tactics to deplatform speakers are particularly pronounced when looking at age and political ideology simultaneously, with faculty 35 and under standing out as a clear outlier. Among liberal faculty 35 and under, only 23% indicated that shouting down a speaker is never acceptable, 43% said the same for blocking entry, and 64% for using violence to stop a campus speech. In stark contrast, the percentages of conservative faculty 35 and under who indicated it was never acceptable for students to use these tactics are 88%, 93%, and 100%, respectively. Moderate faculty in this age group were also much more likely than their conservative colleagues to endorse the acceptability of these tactics.^[37]

Young liberal faculty differed significantly from older liberal faculty on these measures.^[38] Among liberal faculty over 55, 51% indicated that shouting down a speaker is never acceptable, 83% indicated that blocking entry was never acceptable, and 96% said the same for using violence to stop a campus speech — considerably higher numbers than among young liberals. Overall, young liberal faculty members clearly stand out as more illiberal than their peers.^[39] The views of young faculty resemble those of their students, suggesting that age and ideology, rather than just being a faculty member, are the key predictors of intolerance.

Most Faculty Have Little Experience with Disciplinary Action

Only a small portion of faculty reported being disciplined for their research, teaching, talks, or non-academic publications (e.g., op-eds). A little more than one-in-10 faculty (11%) reported facing discipline or threats of discipline for their teaching, while 4% reported facing discipline or threats of discipline for their research, their academic talks, or their non-academic publications. Across all four contexts, 7% of faculty reported being disciplined for at least one of these. This number rises to 16% when adding in faculty who reported having been threatened with discipline for at least one of these. Furthermore, ideological differences are somewhat pronounced — in all four contexts asked about, conservative faculty members reported being disciplined or threatened with discipline more than their moderate or liberal colleagues. 

Table 1

Most Faculty Reject Hard Authoritarianism

In sum, the majority of faculty surveyed rejected hard authoritarianism. They endorsed broad conceptualizations of freedom of speech and academic freedom, rejected harsh punishment for colleagues who engaged in controversial expression, and opposed deplatforming speakers on campus. Only among young liberal faculty was there support for hard authoritarianism, and still, only with respect to external speakers. Experience with hard authoritarianism was also rare, as the majority of faculty were not disciplined or threatened with discipline by their department or university for their teaching, research, or non-academic expression. 

Support for Soft Authoritarianism is Concerning 

For decades, college and university faculty have identified as predominantly left-leaning (e.g., affiliating with the Democratic party, self-identifying as liberal), a skew that has become more pronounced over the past three decades.^[40] For instance, in the Higher Education Research Institute’s 1990 faculty survey, 6% identified as “far left,” 16% identified as “conservative,” and 0.4% identified as “far right.” In 2020 these percentages were 12%, 10%, and 0.2%, respectively.^[41] College students are also predominantly left-leaning, though the rate is closer to 2:1 left vs. right, compared to 6:1 among faculty.^[42]

An ideological skew can lead to prejudice against the ideology of the minority, especially perpetuated by those in the majority with strong political views. Accordingly, some find that political or ideological prejudice is most pronounced among those with the most education, and that significant portions of faculty say that they would discriminate against colleagues with different ideological views in professional settings (e.g., during anonymous peer-review) or during day-to-day social interactions.^[43]

Part two of this report examines findings regarding faculty attitudes toward softer restrictions on, or punishment for, faculty expression. These restrictions include openly condemning certain views but not punishing the faculty member for expressing them, investigating faculty for controversial expression, and applying social and professional pressure to get professors to take mandatory training they oppose. The number of faculty who endorse such actions is far from insignificant, and this has produced a chilling effect which disproportionately strikes political minorities: principally, but not exclusively, faculty with more moderate or conservative viewpoints.

Support for Indirect Restrictions on Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom 

Even though the majority of faculty surveyed (52%) supported freedom of speech with restrictions only for words intended to incite physical violence, and even more (61%) endorsed the broadest and most tolerant conceptualization of academic freedom, notable portions of faculty still endorsed restrictions on free speech and academic freedom. When it came to freedom of speech, one-third said it is acceptable to restrict speech “only where words are intended to be hateful,” and an additional 15% said we should “protect against hate speech even if this restricts speech not intended to be hateful.” In terms of academic freedom, one-quarter said that a university professor should be free to express any ideas or convictions on any subject “so long as they stay within their field of special subject.” And, another 12% said a professor should be free to do so “so long as they [their ideas] are presented tactfully and are not divergent from widely accepted beliefs or standards.” These limits on freedom of speech are indirect and open to subjective interpretation. What is hateful (or tactful), is often in the eye of the beholder. Thus, there is a risk that such restrictions could be arbitrarily applied to those with unpopular views. 

Interesting demographic differences also emerged on the question of balancing free speech and hate speech. Significantly more female than male faculty favored protecting against hate speech even if this restricts speech not intended to be hateful (19% of females, 8% of males), as well as restricting speech only where words are intended to be hateful (38% of females, 29% of males). Meanwhile, significantly more male than female faculty supported restricting speech only where words are certain to incite violence (62% of males, 42% of females).^[44] Significantly more liberal and moderate, compared to conservative, faculty also endorsed the first two positions, and vice-versa for the last.^[45]

Faculty were more divided on the issue of requiring job applicants to submit Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statements with their applications. Half of the faculty surveyed thought this is a justifiable requirement for a job at a university, while the other half said the requirement is an ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom. Notable demographic differences emerged. Specifically, significant gender differences surfaced: 61% of female faculty indicated they view DEI statements as a justifiable requirement while 61% of male faculty said that such statements are ideological litmus tests.^[46] A similar pattern was observed for White compared to non-White faculty.^[47] Finally, significant ideological differences emerged, such that nearly three-in-four liberal faculty supported using DEI statements (compared to 44% of moderates and 10% of conservatives), while 90% of conservative faculty (versus 26% of liberals and 56% of moderates) indicated they view DEI statements as ideological litmus tests.^[48] No significant differences emerged for age. Overall, faculty are relatively split on whether or not DEI statements are a justifiable requirement for applicants applying to faculty jobs, with significant differences emerging for key demographic variables.

Support for Mild Punishment of Controversial Colleagues

While large percentages of faculty rejected punishing colleagues for controversial speech, a significant portion of them (ranging from 18% to 36%) endorsed their college’s administration launching a formal investigation into other faculty members for their controversial expression. Notable differences also emerged within various demographic categories, particularly for endorsement of a formal administrative investigation.^[49] For each scenario, nearly twice (or more) as many women than men endorsed formal administrative investigation. Similar differences also emerged for race, with significantly more nonwhite than white faculty endorsing formal administrative investigation in each of the four scenarios.^[50] Lastly, significantly fewer conservative faculty endorsed formal administrative investigation than did moderate and liberal faculty across all four scenarios.^[51] No significant differences emerged for age. These gender, race, and ideological predictors resemble those for analogous questions in the CSFR student data.

Table 2

Table 3

A portion of faculty also reported being pressured by administrators or their colleagues to avoid researching controversial topics, with over one-quarter of faculty (29%) saying administrators pressured them, and roughly one-third (34%) saying this about other faculty. Nonwhite faculty (21%) were significantly more likely than white faculty (13%) to report being pressured by their college administration.^[54] Differences were more pronounced along ideological lines. Conservative faculty reported significantly more pressure to avoid researching controversial topics than their moderate or liberal colleagues, regardless of whether the source of the pressure was from the college administration or from their peers.^[55]

Figure 4

Although most faculty did not support firing their colleagues for refusing to take mandatory diversity training, liberal faculty members were significantly more likely to endorse removal from the classroom or suspension than their more moderate and conservative counterparts.^[56] Additionally, male faculty, compared to their female counterparts, were significantly more likely to say the administration should take no action of any kind regardless of whether they were asked about “several professors” who refused DEI training (53% vs. 33%) or “several White male professors” who did the same thing (49% vs. 31%).^[57]

Academia’s Ideological Monoculture

Overall, half of the faculty surveyed identified as liberal, 17% identified as moderate, and just over one-quarter (26%) identified as conservative. The percentage of professors who identified as conservative was somewhat higher than the percentages found in other recent surveys of faculty.^[58] This could reflect the associations made by respondents. The survey recruitment email specifically mentioned FIRE, an organization that some academics consider overly sympathetic to conservative viewpoints.^[59] The email also specified that the survey focused on issues of free expression and academic freedom. It’s possible that these factors increased the likelihood that moderate and conservative faculty would participate. Nevertheless, most of the faculty (71%) also reported that the average member in their department is liberal, while just 9% said the average member is conservative. Faculty 35 and under were the most liberal, with almost two-thirds (62%) identifying this way.

The majority of faculty were not that concerned about this political homogeneity — 36% said achieving political diversity should be less important than achieving gender and racial diversity, and another 19% said achieving political diversity is not important at all. Among liberal faculty, 57% said improving political diversity is less important than advancing race/gender diversity while an additional 23% said increasing political diversity is not at all important. These findings contrast sharply with those from the general public, where even among liberal respondents in 2022, just 21% said advancing political diversity in academia and journalism is less important than advancing race/gender diversity and 13% said political diversity is not at all important. In other words, 66% of liberals in the general public think achieving political diversity in academia and journalism is as or more important than furthering race/gender diversity in those fields, compared with 19% of liberal academics who say the same about their field. This is a stark, threefold difference.^[60]

Surveyed faculty also reported that their friend groups are mostly homogeneous, with more than three-fourths saying that half or more of their friends have the same party identifications or leanings as they do. Liberal faculty had the most politically-homogeneous friend groups, with 92% of them saying that half or more of their friends have the same party identifications or leanings as they do, compared to 68% of moderate faculty, and 66% of conservative faculty. Among moderate and conservative faculty, roughly one-fifth indicated that less than half of their friends share their partisan leaning, compared to 5% of liberal faculty. Furthermore, 21% of moderates and 14% of conservatives reported that none or almost none of their friends share their partisan leaning, compared to 5% of liberals. A slight gender difference also emerged, such that 84% of female faculty, compared to 74% of male faculty, reported that half or more of their friends have the same party identifications or leanings as them.

When asked about their identification with the culture of their academic department, almost two-thirds of liberal faculty identified strongly (20%) or moderately (42%) with it, and almost nine-in-ten said their department is somewhat (51%) or very (35%) supportive of someone with their beliefs. In contrast, roughly the same percentage of conservative faculty identified strongly (21%) or moderately (41%) against their department’s culture, and roughly three-quarters (76%) said that their department is somewhat (51%) or very (25%) hostile towards people with their beliefs. Given these findings, it is not surprising that two-in-five conservative faculty also think that their colleagues would discriminate against them all the time (15%) or frequently (25%), while another 30% say this happens occasionally. In contrast, fewer than one-in-five liberal faculty say they are discriminated against by their colleagues as frequently (the percentages are 2%, 5%, and 12%, respectively).

The antipathy on campus perceived by conservatives toward people with their beliefs is not a figment of their imaginations. Almost three-in-five faculty (57%) said that someone who supported Trump in the 2020 election would not be comfortable expressing their views at work. This rose to 81% among conservative faculty. Conversely, 83% said that someone who supported Biden in 2020 would feel comfortable expressing their views at work. When it comes to one’s own willingness to break bread with political opposites, gender and racial differences were not significant, but ideological differences were. Thus, while similar proportions of conservative faculty reported being comfortable sitting with a known Sanders supporter (63%) and a known Trump supporter (71%), this gap grew wider among moderate faculty (69% for a Sanders supporter,  58% for a Trump supporter), but was the widest among liberal faculty, with 84% reporting being comfortable sitting with a known Sanders supporter, and only 40% with a known Trump supporter.^[61]

Additionally, on a feeling thermometer that assessed how much faculty liked right-wing voters, more than half (51%) said they disliked them. On a separate question, one-in-five (22%) said that they would be uncomfortable sitting with a known Trump supporter. In contrast, 27% of faculty said they dislike left-wing voters, and only 4% indicated they would be uncomfortable sitting with a known Bernie Sanders supporter. Differences on these questions are particularly pronounced along ideological lines. When it came to right-wing voters, 79% of liberal faculty said they dislike them, compared to 40% of moderates and 11% of conservatives. Conversely when it came to left-wing voters, 58% of conservative faculty said they dislike them compared to 35% of moderates and 10% of liberals. These findings broadly echo those of a 2022 Legatum Institute study of anglosphere academics which found that 70% of left-wing academics dislike right-wing voters while just 36% of right-wing academics dislike left voters.^[62]

The preference for liberal or left-leaning ideas is also evident when considering which controversial speakers faculty would more likely support allowing on campus. Allowing speakers with an offensive liberal message on campus was supported, on average, by 88% of faculty. When it came to offensive conservative speakers, an average of 74% of faculty supported allowing them on campus.^[63] This bias was strongest among liberal faculty. On average 92% of liberal faculty supported allowing controversial liberal speakers on campus compared to an average of 63% who supported allowing controversial conservative speakers on campus. Conservative faculty also demonstrated an ideological bias, but the difference is not as stark. On average, 93% of conservative faculty supported allowing controversial conservative speakers on campus, compared to an average of 84% who supported allowing controversial liberal speakers on campus. Moderate faculty members demonstrated no bias, an average of 83% supported allowing controversial liberal speakers on campus, and an average of 85% supported allowing controversial conservative ones.

Figure 5

A final point is that liberal faculty with more political diversity in their friendship groups were significantly more tolerant, even when controlling for other factors. For instance, 44% of liberal faculty whose friends were all or almost all Democrats said they would feel uncomfortable having lunch with a Trump-supporting colleague, compared to 21% of liberal faculty with half or fewer friends from the same political tribe. This is not an artifact of far left faculty having fewer Republican friends than faculty on the center left: among far left faculty, 55% of those with “almost all’”or “all” Democratic friends would feel uncomfortable sitting with a Trump supporter compared to 11% of far left faculty with half or fewer friends sharing their partisan affiliation. For conservatives, the numbers for those uncomfortable sitting with a Sanders supporter differed much less, with 8% uncomfortable among those with politically diverse friends and 12% uncomfortable among those with mostly Republican friends.

As noted, among liberal faculty, those in friendship circles where nearly everyone is a Democrat were significantly more uncomfortable sitting down with a Trump supporter. But Democratic friendship homogeneity is also significantly associated with a more negative attitude to right-wing voters in general, and more illiberal attitudes on certain speech questions, such as whether they would shout down a speaker or allow anti-BLM speakers on campus. Living in partisan bubbles is a particular problem for liberal faculty because it is more difficult for conservative academics, or even highly educated conservatives living in metro areas and college towns, to socialize only with their own ilk. For instance, one survey showed that 40% of highly educated Democrats say almost all of their friends have the same political views, compared to barely 20% of Democrats with a low education-level and 30% of Republicans with a high education-level. The study also showed that highly educated Democrats have significantly greater misperceptions about the median characteristics of Republican voters than do poorly educated Democrats, ascribing the greater degree of misperception to the relative homogeneity of educated Democrats’ social worlds.^[64]

Many academics, especially but not only liberals, support applying “horizontal” peer pressure against dissenting political views and “vertical” institutional pressure, albeit for mild rather than severe punishments. The association between soft and hard authoritarianism is extremely robust across many questions. For instance, while 73% of liberal faculty who are comfortable having lunch with a Trump supporter would permit a speaker on campus who claims that “Black Lives Matter is a hate group,” this falls to 33% among liberals who are uncomfortable having lunch with a Trump supporter. A similar relationship holds with respect to disliking right-wing voters. For instance, 45-55% of liberals who dislike right-wing voters endorse formal punishment of staff who refuse diversity training compared to 27-28% of liberals who like right-wing voters. In almost all cases, support for political discrimination (soft authoritarianism) is strongly associated with support for institutional punishment or censorship (hard authoritarianism), even with controls for ideology, age, gender and race.

In summary, independent of ideology, most of the faculty surveyed acknowledged that conservative views are viewed negatively on their campus, and a notable portion of them explicitly indicated their dislike of those on the right. Negative views toward conservatives were associated with support for punishment and censorship of dissenters even when controlling for a person’s political ideology and demographics. The bias in favor of allowing controversial liberal speakers on campus, compared to conservative ones, sends a clear message to campus constituents about which viewpoints are preferred on campus and which are viewed unfavorably. These findings also validate the self-reported experiences of conservative faculty.  

A Chilling Effect on Faculty Expression

Academia possesses a strong social reputational system: The thoughts of one’s peers heavily influence one’s ability to achieve nearly all the positive incentives in academia.^[65] This makes it somewhat easy to discourage specific ideas through social disapproval. Over time this creates a spiral of silence where views are expressed less often by fewer people until only “hard core true believers” remain to express views that are now widely considered “fringe” or “extreme.”^[66] This spiral is reinforced through formal and informal channels, such as bias against conclusions that question liberal or progressive ideology (formal) in the peer-review process or advising younger scholars to “wait until they have tenure” before pursuing a line of research on a controversial topic (informal).^[67]

Our findings indicate that concerns over self-censorship in academia are not overblown: One-third of faculty reported that they self-censor on campus “fairly” or “very” often, a figure that does not compare favorably to the 21% of students who said they felt this way in FIRE’s 2022 CFSR survey.^[68] And, while there were no notable gender or racial/ethnic differences in self-censorship on campus, tenure status and ideological differences were evident. For tenure status, 42% of faculty not on the tenure track, compared to 31% of tenured/tenure-track faculty, indicated they self-censor often on campus.^[69] Over half of conservative faculty (57%) indicated they self-censor often on campus, compared to a third of moderate faculty, and a fifth of liberal faculty.^[70] As with self-censorship rates overall, the percentage of faculty from each ideological group who said they self-censor often is higher than the equivalent percentage among students — 42% for conservative students, 23% for moderates, and 13% for liberals.

Some have argued that the question used to measure self-censorship in FIRE’s CFSR surveys is flawed because of variations in how it is interpreted, and that the term “self-censorship” has many potential meanings so it is difficult to know what people are thinking about when they answer questions about it.^[71] To ensure self-censorship was measured, later in the survey faculty were presented with a definition of self-censorship and then asked how likely they were to self-censor in the following settings: on social media; in official meetings with administrators, faculty, or student groups; in publications, talks, interviews or lectures directed to a general audience; and in academic publications.^[72]

A stunning 91% of all faculty said they are at least “somewhat likely” to self-censor on social media, in meetings, in presentations, and/or in publications.^[73] Within each context the percentages of faculty who said they are “very” or “extremely” likely to self-censor ranged from 25% (academic publications) to 45% (social media), and 55% said they were very or extremely likely to self-censor in at least one of the four settings. Faculty were also asked if they are more likely to self-censor now compared to in September 2020: 38% said “much more” or “more” likely, and 53% said that their frequency of self-censorship is about the same.^[74]

Tenure status differences were again notable. Faculty not on the tenure track were significantly more likely to self-censor in all four settings compared to their tenured/tenure-track colleagues.^[75] Specifically, 62% of faculty not on the tenure track said they were “extremely” or “very” likely to self-censor in at least one of the four settings. This increased to 77% when also including those who responded with “likely” in at least one of the four settings. By comparison, among tenured/tenure-track faculty these numbers are 54% and 71% respectively.

Once again, ideological differences in self-censorship are pronounced. Conservative faculty are significantly more likely to self-censor in all settings compared to their liberal colleagues.^[76] Indeed, 73% said they are “extremely” or “very” likely to self-censor in at least one of four settings, rising to 82% if we include “likely” as indicating pervasive self-censorship (equivalent liberal numbers are 45% and 68%). Additionally, 51% of conservative faculty (31% of liberal, 40% of moderate) said, compared to September 2020, they are “much more” or “more” likely to self-censor. In terms of gender, significantly more female (43%) than male (35%) faculty members indicated that they are “much more” or “more” likely to self-censor compared to September 2020.^[77] No other notable demographic differences emerged.

Figure 6

The chilling effects reported extend beyond self-censorship. Notably, more than half of the faculty respondents (52%) indicated they are worried about losing their jobs or reputations because someone misunderstands something they said or did, took it out of context, or posted something from their past online. Among those who were very or somewhat worried, roughly one-fifth (18%) agreed that their fear of losing their jobs or reputations because of something they said or posted online was a justified price to pay to protect historically disadvantaged groups. This indicates a modicum of support for hard authoritarianism despite personal speech fears.

There are no notable gender or racial differences in chilling effects, but there are differences by tenure status, as well as by ideology. Significantly more non-tenured faculty (24%) than tenured/tenure-track faculty (19%) expressed being “very worried” about losing their job or reputation because someone misunderstands something they said or did, took it out of context, or posted something from their past online.^[78] Ideological differences for this question were even more pronounced, as almost three-fourths (72%) of conservative faculty reported being “somewhat” or “very” worried. This fear was not limited to conservative faculty, as 56% of moderate faculty, and even 40% of liberal faculty, also felt this way. In other words, 40% of those in the dominant ideological group on campus reported being worried about losing their jobs or reputations, which speaks volumes about the climate of fear, intimidation, and censorship on campus.

Soft Authoritarianism and a Spiral of Silence

While most faculty surveyed rejected hard authoritarianism, the story differs for horizontal peer-to-peer discrimination, or soft authoritarianism, that leads to social ostracism and self-censorship. A notable portion of faculty endorsed indirect and arbitrary restrictions on free speech and academic freedom, requiring DEI statements for employment, and investigating controversial colleagues for their expression. Illiberalism stems not only from institutions but also from peer pressure, which leads to self-censorship, hence soft authoritarianism. Faculty recognized that certain viewpoints — mostly politically liberal ones — are considered safe to express on campus, while others — mostly politically conservative ones — are unpopular and even risky to express. Conservative faculty were acutely concerned, and most viewed their departments and colleagues with some trepidation. For some of them, this concern manifested as a feeling of pressure to avoid studying controversial topics; for others, it manifested as self-censorship in different contexts (e.g., academic publications, social media). That said, moderate and liberal faculty also expressed concern about losing their jobs or reputations because something they said or did is taken out of context. The message being sent to faculty is clear: Express certain viewpoints on campus at your own risk.

The Bigger Picture

In part three of this report we compare our findings to existing data, with a particular focus on other work that has asked the same or similar questions of faculty members. It is encouraging that faculty in our sample are generally tolerant of allowing controversial speakers on campus, intolerant of illiberal protest, and opposed firing, suspending, or removing controversial colleagues from the classroom. However, much of this survey’s data are consistent with a growing body of work investigating the attitudes and beliefs of university faculty: Those findings indicate that a significant portion of faculty support soft authoritarianism. It should be added that horizontal pressure from students to have the “correct” ideological views is also a form of soft authoritarianism that produces self-censorship.

Faculty in this survey are mostly liberal, and perceived their colleagues to be predominantly liberal. Conservative faculty were more likely to identify against the culture of their department, worry that they would lose their jobs or reputations, and self-censor. Conservatives also were more likely to report that they have fewer friends who share their beliefs, that their department is a hostile climate for their views, and that their colleagues would actively discriminate against them because of their political beliefs. These findings are comparable to other research which documents that non-liberal faculty report experiencing greater hostility and greater anticipation that their colleagues would stigmatize them if their political beliefs were to become known.^[79]

Additionally, non-liberal faculty report experiencing greater hostility and discrimination than their liberal colleagues — and this experience is corroborated by others. Faculty in general — liberals, moderates, and conservatives — all report perceiving that the climate on campus is not overwhelmingly welcome toward those who are right-leaning. This matches the results of other studies. Further, many faculty in this survey indicated they dislike voters on the right, and would be uncomfortable being around them at work. This closely parallels findings from prior research which shows that substantial proportions of faculty reported an explicit willingness to discriminate against those in their ideological outgroup.^[80] Additionally, a different survey found that almost a quarter of American social science and humanities professors supported ousting faculty members in at least one-of-five scenarios in which an academic expressed a controversial politically conservative viewpoint.^[81]

A number of findings also closely match results obtained from surveys of U.S. faculty and graduate students. First in a 2021 survey, support for hard authoritarianism is low, as only 9% of U.S. faculty were willing to support various dismissal campaigns and only 7-18%, depending on the issue, supported ousting a dissenting academic.^[82] By comparison, support for these forms of punishment is even lower in this survey: Depending on the context, only 1-7% of faculty supported removing, suspending, or terminating controversial colleagues. Additionally, other faculty surveys found that few faculty have been subject to disciplinary action:  3-6% of left-leaning and 2-12% of right-leaning academics reported having been subject to discipline (e.g., for teaching, research).^[83] In this survey, 1-3% of liberal and 3-7% of conservative faculty reported having been subject to discipline (e.g., for teaching, research). 

Comparable results can also be found for various measures of soft authoritarianism. Prior work found that two-thirds of “very” left-leaning and “fairly” left-leaning faculty identified with the cultures of their departments, compared to 61% of right-leaning and 33% of centrist faculty who identified against the cultures of their departments. These numbers almost precisely match our results for conservative and moderate faculty who identify against the cultures of their departments (62% and 32%, respectively), and for liberal faculty who identify with it (63%). Similarly, 70% of right-leaning academics previously reported a hostile climate for their beliefs, compared to the 76% of conservatives in this survey who indicated the same.^[84] Previous studies found that 70-76% of right-of-center faculty self-censor. We find that 73% of conservative faculty said they were “very” or “extremely” likely to self-censor in at least one of four settings, rising to 82% if we include “likely” to self-censor among the response categories. 90% of Trump supporters in a prior study said a Trump supporter would not express their beliefs to colleagues: Similarly, we found that 81% of conservative faculty say a Trump supporter would self-censor in this manner.^[85]

Finally, faculty in this survey were similarly apathetic toward those holding conservative beliefs: 86% of surveyed faculty previously responded either “yes” or “unsure” when asked whether a Trump supporter would be uncomfortable expressing their views at work (77% in this survey), and 57% reported they would be uncomfortable sitting next to a Trump supporter at lunch, in a meeting, or in the staff room (48% in this survey).^[86] The share of liberal academics who dislike right-wing voters (79%) is precisely identical to that found in previous studies.<^[87]/p>

Conclusion

It is encouraging that a majority of faculty surveyed endorsed broad conceptualizations of freedom of speech and academic freedom, rejected harsh punishment for colleagues who engage in controversial expression, opposed deplatforming speakers on campus, and had not been disciplined or threatened with discipline by their department or university for their teaching, research, or non-academic expression. Furthermore, faculty opposed deplatforming speakers — either by not allowing them on campus or by disrupting their speech — more than undergraduate students surveyed earlier in 2022.^[88] This supports some prior research which suggests faculty are not indoctrinating students with radical leftist beliefs.^[89] Intolerance seems, instead, to be linked to more general societal patterns that are most prominent among young, liberal, and female faculty members.^[90]

At the same time, a significant portion of faculty supported softer forms of punishment that chill expression — a finding consistent with previous work.^[91] These softer restrictions on expression include formal public condemnations of certain views through social and professional pressure and investigations into colleagues for controversial expression. Faculty are aware of this climate: More than half of them indicated that they are worried about losing their reputations or jobs because someone takes something they have said or done out of context. This concern was particularly pronounced among conservative faculty, but was also on the minds of a notable portion of liberal faculty. Furthermore, over a third of faculty self-censored their views because of concern over how students, colleagues, or administrators might respond. Rates of self-censorship ranged from 25%, in academic publications, to 45% in social media posts.

Thus, even though harsh punishment for a range of expression — from research to pedagogy to off-campus expression — was rare, a significant portion of faculty reported a chilled expressive climate on their campuses. This climate is the result of a number of factors. Undergraduates endorse deplatforming speakers at appalling levels and are increasingly targeting professors for sanction.^[92] Younger faculty resemble their students in worldview, and are the most supportive of hard authoritarianism within the academy.^[93] Over the past two decades, faculty members have increasingly identified as liberal or far left, while those with a college education have become less tolerant of offensive, hateful speech.^[94]

Additionally, male-to-female ratios among undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty have changed over the past three decades. Females tend to be more left-leaning and more supportive of speech restrictions than males, even as age and ideology are typically more important independent variables than gender.^[95] On some questions, racial and ethnic minorities are less supportive of free expression, though this is not as strong or consistent a finding as that between support for free speech and age, ideology, and gender. This suggests that as a relatively more Boomer/Xer, male, and white professoriate is replaced by a relatively more Millennial/Gen-Z, female, and minority professoriate, support for restrictions on expression may increase. These trends also indicate that free speech advocates need to spend more time thinking about how to tailor their arguments to young, liberal, female, and minority faculty, as well as considering how to build on these groups’ majority opposition to most forms of hard authoritarianism.

Support for soft authoritarianism, already running at high levels, will likely also increase with the generational and demographic changes noted above. The result? More scholars will be investigated for their expression regardless of whether it occurs in professional (e.g., research, teaching) or nonprofessional (e.g., off-campus) settings. An investigation, or the mere threat of one, can create or strengthen existing social pressure to avoid certain topics, questions, or viewpoints, stifling classroom discussions of complex and important topics. Such social pressure can also impede scientific progress by reinforcing paradigmatic thinking within academic disciplines and in public debates about scientific conclusions.^[96]

We believe these findings warrant concern. At the end of the McCarthy era, 9% of social scientists said they had toned down anything they had written lately because they were worried that it might cause too much controversy; 27% said they had wondered about how a political opinion they’d expressed could affect their career; and 40% were concerned about students reporting a distorted version of their political views to administrators.^[97] Almost 70 years later, the current findings paint a similar, maybe even bleaker, picture on campus for faculty expression. Notable portions of faculty are self-censoring in their academic publications, in professional meetings, when speaking to a general audience, and on social media. Almost two-in-five faculty are doing so more often in 2022 than they did in 2020 and, as in the McCarthy era, specific kinds of political views are likely to be targeted for sanction. Furthermore, today, compared to the McCarthy era, larger proportions of faculty hold non-tenured status. As the academy grows not only more liberal, but also more heavily staffed by non-tenured faculty, self-censorship may continue to increase particularly among those in the ideological minority and more generally among those with weaker job protections.

The majority of faculty support restricting freedom of speech only when it is clear that the speech will incite physical violence. Even more faculty endorsed a conceptualization of academic freedom by which a professor is free to express their ideas or convictions on any subject. Yet, more and more faculty are being investigated, or worse, for their expression in professional and nonprofessional contexts. At the same time, a concerning number of their colleagues support the use of social and professional pressure to restrict the range of ideas and viewpoints which can be expressed on campus.^[98] Faculty who endorse broad conceptualizations of freedom of speech and academic freedom face a choice: They can do nothing and hope the current fever passes, or they can take a stand on these issues. They can clarify that they do not sympathize with soft and hard authoritarian restrictions on campus expression and they can speak openly in favor of free expression and open inquiry.

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FIRE, a free speech nonprofit, effectively and decisively defends the fundamental rights of tens of thousands of students and faculty members on our nation’s campuses while simultaneously reaching millions on and off campus through education, outreach, and college reform efforts.

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Notes

[1] https://community.ibm.com/HigherLogic/System/DownloadDocumentFile.ashx?DocumentFileKey=17fd2f0b-7555-6ccd-c00c-5388b082161b&forceDialog=0

[2] Hot deck imputation replaces the missing values of a respondent randomly with another similar respondent without missing data, see: Myers, T.A. (2011). Goodbye, listwise deletion: Presenting hot deck imputation as an easy and effective tool for handling missing data. Communication Methods and Measures, 5(4), 297-310.

[3] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_315.20.asp

[4] https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/TrendGenerator/app/build-table/5/51?rid=6&ridv=1%7C2%7C4%7C5%7C6%7C8%7C9%7C10%7C11%7C12%7C13%7C15%7C16%7C17%7C18%7C19%7C20%7C21%7C22%7C23%7C24%7C25%7C26%7C27%7C28%7C29%7C30%7C31%7C32%7C33%7C34%7C35%7C36%7C37%7C38%7C39%7C40%7C41%7C42%7C44%7C45%7C46%7C47%7C48%7C49%7C50%7C51%7C53%7C54%7C55%7C56&cid=164

[5] The following R packages were used to perform data analysis:

Comtois D. (2022). _summarytools: Tools to Quickly and Neatly Summarize Data_. R package version 1.0.1,

https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=summarytools;

Hervé M. (2022). _RVAideMemoire: Testing and Plotting Procedures for Biostatistics_. R package version 0.9-81-2,

https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=RVAideMemoire;

Wickham H., Hester J., & Bryan J. (2022). _readr: Read Rectangular Text Data_. R package version 2.1.3, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr.

[6] Mchangama, J. (2022). Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media. Basic Books..

[7] An outrage mob is defined as: A group or crowd of people whose goal is to sanction or punish the individual, individuals, or organization they consider responsible for something that offends, insults, or affronts their beliefs, values, or feelings. This group or crowd demonstrates a flagrant disinterest in any further explanation from the target or targets and attempts to carry out punishment often by enlisting authorities with the power to level sanctions on the target or targets; see Stevens, S.T., Jussim, L., & Honeycutt, N. (2020). Scholarship suppression: Theoretical perspectives and emerging trends. Societies, 10(82).

[8] Lazarsfeld, P.F. & Thielens Jr., W. (1958). The Academic Mind: Social Scientists in a Time of Crisis. The Free Press of Glencoe; Schrecker, E.W. (1986). No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. Oxford University Press; German, K.T. & Stevens, S.T. (2021). Scholars under fire: The targeting of scholars for ideological reasons from 2015 to present. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Available online: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/scholars-under-fire-targeting-scholars-ideological-reasons-2015-present; German, K. & Stevens, S.T. (2022). Scholars under fire: 2021 year in review. Available online at: https://www.thefire.org/research/publications/miscellaneous-publications/scholars-under-fire/scholars-under-fire-2021-year-in-review-full-text/.

[9] Kaufmann, E. (2021). Academic freedom in crisis: Punishment, political discrimination, and self-censorship. Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. Available online: https://cspicenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/AcademicFreedom.pdf.

[10] Wilson, J.K. (2014). A history of academic freedom in America. Theses and Dissertations. 257. https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/257. See also Lazarsfeld & Thielens Jr., (1958); Schrecker (1986).

[11] An incident was defined as: “[a]n episode, long or short, in which an attack, accusation, or criticism, was made against a teacher, a group of teachers, or a school as a whole” (Lazarsfeld & Thielens Jr., 1958, p. 44).

[12] An estimated 436 resulted in a sanction (obtained from Table 2-8 in Lazarsfeld & Thielens, Jr., 1958, p. 70).

[13] Estimate for number of terminations/forced resignations obtained from Lazarsfeld & Thielens, Jr. (1958; see Table 2-9, p. 70).

[14] Holmes, D.R. (1989). Stalking the Academic Communist: Intellectual freedom and the Firing of Alex Novikoff. Vermont; McCormick, C.H. (1989). The Nest of Vipers: McCarthyinsm and Higher Education in the Mundel Affair. University of Illinois Press; Woods, R.B. (2005). Quest for Identity: America Since 1945. Cambridge University Press. See also Schrecker, (1986) and Wilson, (2014).

[15] All data cited in this paragraph are from Lazarsfeld & Thielens Jr. (1958).

[16] Lazarsfeld & Thielens Jr. (1958).

[17] Holmes (1989); McCormick (1989); Schrecker (1986); Wilson (2014); Woods (2005).

[18] See Lukianoff, G. (2012). Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate. Encounter Books.

[19] German & Stevens (2021, 2022).

[20] The Scholars Under Fire database is available online: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/scholars-under-fire.

[21] The sources who initiate a sanction attempt are not mutually exclusive, for instance undergraduate students and graduate students can simultaneously be the source of a sanction attempt.

[22] All Scholar’s Under Fire data were obtained on January 23, 2023.

[23] Honeycutt, N. & Freberg, L. (2017). The liberal and conservative experience across academic disciplines. Social Psychological and Personality Science. 8(2), 115-123; Peters, U., Honeycutt, N., De Block, A., and Jussim, L.  (2020). Ideological diversity, hostility, and discrimination in philosophy.” Philosophical Psychology 33(4), 511-548; see also Kaufmann (2021).

[24] Honeycutt & Freberg (2017); Inbar & Lammers (2012); Kaufmann, 2021; Peters et al. (2022).

[25] Goldsen, R.K., Rosenberg, M., Williams Jr., RM., & Suchman, E.A. (1960). What College Students Think. D. Van Nostrand Company.; Langbert, M. & Stevens, S. (2022). Partisan registration of faculty in flagship colleges. Studies in Higher Education, 47(8), 1750-1760; Stevens, S.T. (2022). 2022 College Free Speech Rankings: What’s the Climate for Free Speech on America’s College Campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Available online: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2022-college-free-speech-rankings; Stevens, S.T. & Schwictenberg, A. (2020). 2020 College Free Speech Rankings: What’s the Climate for Free Speech on America’s College Campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Available online: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2020     -college-free-speech-rankings; Stevens, S.T. & Schwictenberg, A. (2021). 2021 College Free Speech Rankings: What’s the        Climate for Free Speech on America’s College Campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Available online: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2021-college-free-speech-rankings. See also Honeycutt & Freberg (2017); Inbar & Lammers (2012); Kaufmann, 2021; Peters et al. (2022).

[26] Kaufmann (2021).

[27] All p’s < .05.

[28] All p’s < .05.

[29] All p’s < .05.

[30] Faculty were asked about four different speakers, each of whom had previously expressed that “Black Lives Matter is a hate group,” that “abortion should be illegal,” that “the Second Amendment should be repealed so that guns can be confiscated,” or that “structural racism maintains inequality by protecting White privilege.”

[31] Stevens (2022).

[32] Wording was different in the student sample: “White people are collectively responsible for structural racism and use it to protect their privilege.”

[33] “Acceptable to some degree” sums the percentages for the percentage of faculty who said the tactic was “always,” “sometimes,” or “rarely” acceptable.

[34] All student percentages in this paragraph are from Stevens (2022).

[35] All p’s < .05.

[36] The percentages for moderate faculty were 53%, 84%, and 93% respectively.

[37] The percentages for moderate faculty were 7%, 59%, and 100% respectively.

[38] All p’s<.001

[39] Among faculty 35 and under, 22% were conservative, 15% moderate, and 63% liberal.

[40] Duarte et al. (2015); Honeycutt & Freberg (2017); Honeycutt & Jussim (2020, 2022); Kaufmann (2021); Langbert (2018); Langbert & Stevens (2022); Peters et al. (2020).

[41] Stolzenberg, E. (2022). Draft tables by institution type, 2019-2020 HERI Faculty Survey.

[42] Stevens (2022);  Stevens, S.T. & Schwictenberg, A. (2020). 2020 College Free Speech Rankings: What’s the          Climate for Free Speech on America’s College Campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Available online: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2020-college-free-speech-rankings; Stevens, S.T. & Schwictenberg, A. (2021). 2021 College Free Speech Rankings: What’s the Climate for Free Speech on America’s College Campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Available online: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2021-college-free-speech-rankings; Stolzenberg (2022).

[43] Henry, P.J. & Napier, J.L. (2017). Education is related to greater ideological prejudice. Public Opinion Quarterly, 81(4), 930-942.; Honeycutt & Freberg (2017); Inbar & Lammers (2012); Kaufmann, 2021; Peters et al. (2022).

[44] p’s < .05.

[45] p’s < .05; 20% of liberals, 14% of moderates, and 3% of conservatives endorsed protecting against hate speech. 44% of liberals, 31% of moderates, and 21% of conservatives endorsed restricting speech only where words are intended to be hateful. 38% of liberals, 54% of moderates, and 76% of conservatives endorsed restricting speech only where words are certain to incite physical violence.

[46] p < .05.

[47] p <.05.

[48] p < .05.

[49] All p’s < .05.

[50] All p’s < .05.

[51] The percent of conservative faculty endorsing formal administrative investigation ranged from 5-25% across the scenarios, while among moderate and liberal faculty this ranged from 21-44%.

[52] No respondent selected this option.

[53] See previous footnote.

[54]  p < .05.

[55] All p’s < .05.

[56] When asked about “several professors” who refused DEI training, 23% of liberal faculty said those professors should be removed from the classroom compared to 11% of moderates and 6% of conservatives; 16% of liberals said their colleagues should be suspended compared to 14% of moderates and 5% of conservatives. When asked about “several White male professors,” 26% of liberal faculty said those professors should be removed from the classroom compared to 31% of moderates and 6% of conservatives; 22% of liberals said those professors should be suspended compared to 17% of moderates and 2% of conservatives. All p’s < .05.

[57] All p’s < .05.

[58] Stolzenberg et al. (2019); Kaufmann (2021).

[59] Franks, M.A. (2019). The miseducation of free speech. Virginia Law Review Online, 105, 218-242.

[60] Kaufmann, E. (2022). The Politics of the Culture Wars in Contemporary America. Manhattan Institute, January, 64 (and associated data).

[61]  All p’s < .05.

[62] Goodwin, M. (2022). Is Academic Freedom Under Threat?, Legatum Institute, January, 11.

[63] The two offensive liberal speakers had previously expressed that “the Second Amendment should be repealed so that guns can be confiscated” or that “structural racism maintains inequality by protecting White privilege.” The two offensive conservative speakers had previously expressed that “Black Lives Matter is a hate group” or that “abortion should be completely illegal.”

[64] Yudkin, D., et al. (2019). The Perception Gap: How False Impressions are Pulling Americans Apart. New York, More in Common.

[65] Jussim, L., Krosnick, J. A., Stevens, S. T., & Anglin, S. M. (2019). A social psychological model of scientific practices: Explaining research practices and outlining the potential for successful reforms. Psychologica Belgica, 59(1), 353–372. See also Stevens et al. (2020).

[66] Matthes, J., Knoll, J., & von Sikorski, C. (2018). The “Spiral of Silence” revisited: A meta-analysis on the relationship between perceptions of opinion support and political opinion expression. Communication Research 45(1), 3–33; Noelle-Neumann, E. (1974). The spiral of silence: A theory of public opinion. Journal of Communication, 24(2), 43-51.

[67] Abramowitz, S.I., Gomes, B., & Abramowitz, C.V. (1975). Publish or politic: Referee bias in manuscript review. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 5(3), 187–200; Stevens, S.T., Jussim, L., Anglin, S.M., Contrada.R., Welch, C.A., Labrecque, J.A., et al. (2018). Political exclusion and discrimination in social psychology: Lived experiences and solutions.  In J.T. Crawford and L. Jussim (Eds.), The Politics of Social Psychology. Routledge.

[68] Faculty were asked: On your campus, how often, if at all, have you felt that you could not express your opinion on a subject because of how students, colleagues, or the administration would respond? (Response options: Never; Rarely; Occasionally; Fairly often, a couple times a week; or Very often, nearly every day)

[69] p<.001

[70] All p’s < .05.

[71] Niehaus, E. (2021). Self-censorship or just being nice: Understanding college students’ decisions about classroom speech. University of California: National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. Available online: https://freespeechcenter.universityofcalifornia.edu/fellows-20-21/niehaus-research/; Wilson, J.K. (2014). A history of academic freedom in America. Theses and Dissertations. 257. https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/257

[72] Self-censorship was defined as: Refraining from sharing certain views because you fear social (e.g., exclusion from social events), professional (e.g., losing job or promotion), legal (e.g., prosecution or fine), or violent (e.g., assault) consequences, whether in-person or remotely (e.g., by phone or online), and whether the consequences come from state or non-state sources.

[73] Put another way, 91% of faculty indicated they were at least ‘somewhat likely’ to self-censor in at least one of the four settings assessed: on social media, in meetings, in presentations, in publications.

[74] Significant correlations emerged between the self-censorship items, providing helpful validity to responses. Specifically, the more often a participant reported feeling they could not express their opinion on a subject because of how students, colleagues, or the administration would respond, the more likely they reported they are to self-censor on campus compared to September 2020 (r(1491)=. 46, p < .001). Significant positive correlations also emerged between all four of the self-censorship setting questions (r’s ≥. 58, p’s < .001). Finally, significant positive correlations emerged between all four of the self-censorship setting questions and expressing their opinion, such that the more often a participant reported feeling they could not express their opinion on a subject because of how students, colleagues, or the administration would respond, the more likely they were to report self-censoring on social media (r(1483)= .54, p < .001), in official meetings with administrators, faculty, or student groups (r(1483)= .65, p < .001), in publications, talks, interviews or lectures directed to a general audience (r(1483)= .56, p < .001), and in academic publications (r(1484)= .49, p < .001).

[75] p’s ≤ .004

[76] p’s < .05.

[77] p < .05.

[78] p<.05

[79] Honeycutt (2022); Honeycutt & Freberg (2017); Inbar & Lammers (2014); Kaufmann (2021); Peters et al. (2020).

[80] Honeycutt & Freberg (2017);  Inbar & Lammers (2014); Kaufmann (2021); Peters et al. (2020).

[81] Kaufmann (2021).

[82] Kaufmann (2021).

[83] Kaufmann (2021).

[84] Kaufmann (2021).

[85] Goodwin (2022); Kaufmann (2021).

[86] Kaufmann (2021).

[87] Based on raw data for left-wing US respondents from Goodwin (2022).

[88] Stevens (2022).

[89] Woessner, M., & Kelly-Woessner, A. (2015). Reflections on Academic Liberalism and Conservative Criticism. Society, 52(1), 35–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-014-9864-0.

[90] Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2019). The coddling of the American mind: How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. Penguin Press.

[91] Kaufmann (2021).

[92] German & Stevens (2021); German & Stevens (2022); Stevens (2022); Stevens & Schwictenberg (2020); Stevens & Schwictenberg (2021).

[93] Kaufmann (2021).

[94] Boch, A. (2020). Increasing American political tolerance: A framework for excluding hate speech. Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 6, 1-12; Chong, D., Citrin, J., & Levy, M. (2021). The realignment of political tolerance in the United States (October 27, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3951377; Chong, D. & Levy, M. (2018). Competing norms of free expression and political tolerance. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 85(1), 197-227. But see also De keersmaecker, Bostyn, Van Hiel, & Roets (2021). Disliked but free to speak: Cognitive ability is related to supporting freedom of speech for groups across the ideological spectrum. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(1), 34-41; Stolzenberg (2022); Stolzenberg et al., (2019).

[95] Clark, C. & Winegard, B. (October 8, 2022). Sex and the academy: The inclusion of women in higher education is a great achievement for Western liberal societies. How is this changing academic culture? Quillette. Available online: https://quillette.com/2022/10/08/sex-and-the-academy/; Edsall, T.B. (January 12, 2022). The gender gap is taking us to unexpected places. The New York Times. Available online: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/opinion/gender-gap-politics.html; Golebiowska, E. A. (1999). Gender gap in political tolerance. Political Behavior, 21(1), 43-66.; Lambe, J.L. (2002). Dimension of censorship: Reconceptualizing public willingness to censor. Communication Law and Policy, 7(2), 187-235. Paek, H. J., Lambe, J. L., & McLeod, D. M. (2008). Antecedents to support for content restrictions. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 85(2), 273-290. See also Stevens (2022); Stevens & Schwictenberg (2020); Stevens & Schwictenberg (2021).

[96] Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (Vol. 111). University of Chicago Press; Stevens, S.T., Jussim, L., Anglin, S.M., & Honeycutt, N. (2018).  Direct and indirect influences of political ideology on perceptions of scientific findings. In B.T. Rutgens & M.J. Brandt (Eds.) Belief Systems and the Perception of Reality. Routledge.

[97] Lazarsfeld & Thielens, Jr. (1958).

[98] German & Stevens (2021); German & Stevens (2022).

Survey Items and Toplines

Q1: Which of the following statements comes closer to your view, even if neither is exactly right?

• University administrators (excluding teaching faculty and students) should be free to make political statements in their official role even if some students and faculty disagree. 31%
• University administrators (excluding teaching faculty and students) have a duty to be politically neutral in their statements when speaking in their official role. 68%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q2: Some universities ask applicants for faculty positions to submit statements demonstrating their commitment to equity and diversity before they can be considered for a job. Which comes closer to your view?

• This is a justifiable requirement for a job at a university. 50%
• This is an ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom. 50%
• No answer. 0%

 

Q3: Which of the following statements best expresses your opinion on the academic freedom of professors?

• A university professor should be free to express any of their ideas or convictions on any subject. 61%
• A university professor should be free to express any of their ideas or convictions on any subject only so long as they are presented tactfully and are not divergent from widely accepted beliefs or standards. 12%
• A university professor should be free to express any of their ideas or convictions only so long as they stay within the field of their special subject. 25%
• A university professor should not be free to express any of their ideas or convictions, even if in their subject, if their ideas and convictions are divergent from widely accepted beliefs or standards. 1%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q4: When it comes to the balance between free speech and hate speech, where do you stand?

• Protect against hate speech even if this restricts speech not intended to be hateful. 15%
• Restrict speech only where words are intended to be hateful. 33%
• Restrict speech only where words are certain to incite physical violence. 52%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q5: Minnesota professor Philip Adamo was suspended in early 2019 based on student complaints that he repeated the N-word after a student quoted black writer James Baldwin in class. In your opinion, should he have been suspended? (asked of 788 respondents)

• Yes. 7%
• No. 44%
• Don’t know enough to say. 48%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q6: A professor repeats the N-word after a student quotes black writer James Baldwin in class. What is the appropriate administrative response? (asked of 703 respondents)

• The administration should defend the professor's free speech rights. 29%
• The administration should condemn the professor's speech, but not punish the professor. 14%
• The administration should conduct a formal investigation into the incident. 25%
• The administration should remove the professor from the classroom. 1%
• The administration should suspend the professor. 1%
• The administration should terminate the professor. 1%
• The administration should take no action of any kind. 29%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q7: In 2020, a gay Hispanic University of Central Florida professor Charles Negy was fired for tweeting: "Black privilege is real..." Should he have been fired? (asked of 788 respondents)

• Yes. 3%
• No. 64%
• Don’t know enough to say. 33%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q8: A gay Hispanic professor tweets: "Black privilege is real..." What is the appropriate administrative response? (asked of 703 respondents)

• The administration should defend the professor's free speech rights. 39%
• The administration should condemn the professor's speech, but not punish the professor. 13%
• The administration should conduct a formal investigation into the incident. 18%
• The administration should remove the professor from the classroom. 0%
• The administration should suspend the professor. 1%
• The administration should terminate the professor. < 1%
• The administration should take no action of any kind. 29%
• No answer. 0%

 

Q9: A professor tells the class that all white people are racist. A student reports the incident to the campus administration. What is the appropriate administrative response? (asked of 801 respondents)

• The administration should defend the professor's free speech rights. 23%
• The administration should condemn the professor's speech, but not punish the professor. 22%
• The administration should conduct a formal investigation into the incident. 36%
• The administration should remove the professor from the classroom. 1%
• The administration should suspend the professor. 1%
• The administration should terminate the professor. 1%
• The administration should take no action of any kind. 15%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q10: A professor tells the class that it's racist to say that all white people are racist. A student reports the incident to the campus administration. What is the appropriate administrative response? (asked of 690 respondents)

• The administration should defend the professor's free speech rights. 43%
• The administration should condemn the professor's speech, but not punish the professor. 6%
• The administration should conduct a formal investigation into the incident. 20%
• The administration should remove the professor from the classroom. 0%
• The administration should suspend the professor. < 1%
• The administration should terminate the professor. < 1%
• The administration should take no action of any kind. 29%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q11: If several white male professors refused to take mandatory diversity training at your college or university, claiming that the training is hostile to their identity, how should the administration deal with them? (asked of 730 respondents)

• Take no action of any kind. 41%
• Do not issue any formal disincentives but apply social and professional pressure. 22%
• The professors should be removed from the classroom until they comply. 20%
• The professors should be suspended until they comply. 15%
• The professors should be fired. 2%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q12: If several professors refused to take mandatory diversity training at your college or university, claiming that the training is hostile to their identity, how should the administration deal with them? (asked of 761 respondents)

• Take no action of any kind. 43%
• Do not issue any formal disincentives but apply social and professional pressure. 24%
• The professors should be removed from the classroom until they comply. 15%
• The professors should be suspended until they comply. 14%
• The professors should be fired. 3%
• No answer. 1%

 

Regardless of your own views on the topic, would you support or oppose your school allowing a speaker on campus who has previously expressed the following idea… 

Q13: Black Lives Matter is a hate group.

• Strongly support the school allowing this speaker. 42%
• Somewhat support the school allowing this speaker. 36%
• Somewhat oppose the school allowing this speaker. 14%
• Strongly oppose the school allowing this speaker. 17%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q14: Abortion should be completely illegal.

• Strongly support the school allowing this speaker. 52%
• Somewhat support the school allowing this speaker. 28%
• Somewhat oppose the school allowing this speaker. 11%
• Strongly oppose the school allowing this speaker. 9%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q15: The Second Amendment should be repealed so that guns can be confiscated.

• Strongly support the school allowing this speaker. 57%
• Somewhat support the school allowing this speaker. 29%
• Somewhat oppose the school allowing this speaker. 9%
• Strongly oppose the school allowing this speaker. 4%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q16: Structural racism maintains inequality by protecting White privilege.

• Strongly support the school allowing this speaker. 67%
• Somewhat support the school allowing this speaker. 24%
• Somewhat oppose the school allowing this speaker. 5%
• Strongly oppose the school allowing this speaker. 4%
• No answer. < 1%

In your view, how acceptable, if at all, is it for students to engage in the following action to protest a campus speaker? 

 

Q17: Shouting down a speaker during their talk to prevent them from speaking on campus.

• Always acceptable. 4%
• Sometimes acceptable. 15%
• Rarely acceptable. 27%
• Never acceptable. 55%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q18: Blocking other students from attending a campus speech.

• Always acceptable. 1%
• Sometimes acceptable. 4%
• Rarely acceptable. 15%
• Never acceptable. 80%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q19: Using violence to stop a campus speech.

• Always acceptable. < 1%
• Sometimes acceptable. < 1%
• Rarely acceptable. 7%
• Never acceptable. 93%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q20: On your campus, how often, if at all, have you felt that you could not express your opinion on a subject because of how students, colleagues, or the administration would respond?

• Never. 12%
• Rarely. 21%
• Occasionally. 33%
• Fairly often, a couple times a week. 20%
• Very often, nearly every day. 14%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q21: How often, if at all, does your college administration pressure you to avoid researching controversial topics?

• Never. 71%
• Rarely. 14%
• Occasionally. 10%
• Fairly often, a couple times a week. 2%
• Very often, nearly every day. 2%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q22: How often, if at all, do other faculty members on your campus pressure you to avoid researching controversial topics?

• Never. 66%
• Rarely. 17%
• Occasionally. 14%
• Fairly often, a couple times a week. 2%
• Very often, nearly every day. 1%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q23: How worried, if at all, are you about losing your job or reputation because someone misunderstands something you have said or done, takes it out of context, or posts something from your past online?

• Very worried. 19%
• Somewhat worried. 32%
• Not too worried. 30%
• Not at all worried. 19%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q24: How much, if at all, do you (agree) or (disagree) with the following statement? - My fear of losing my job or reputation due to something I said or posted online is a justified price to pay to protect historically disadvantaged groups. (asked of the 768 respondents who said they were worried about losing their reputation on Q23)

• Strongly agree. 3%
• Agree. 4%
• Somewhat agree. 11%
• Neither agree nor disagree. 11%
• Somewhat disagree. 4%
• Disagree. 17%
• Strongly disagree. 49%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Have you ever been disciplined for your?

Q25: … research?

• Yes. 2%
• No, but I have been threatened with discipline. 2%
• No, I have not been disciplined or threatened with discipline. 81%
• Not applicable. 14%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q26: … teaching?

• Yes. 5%
• No, but I have been threatened with discipline. 6%
• No, I have not been disciplined or threatened with discipline. 86%
• Not applicable. 3%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q27: … talks?

• Yes. 2%
• No, but I have been threatened with discipline. 2%
• No, I have not been disciplined or threatened with discipline. 81%
• Not applicable. 14%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q28: … non-academic publications?

• Yes. 2%
• No, but I have been threatened with discipline. 3%
• No, I have not been disciplined or threatened with discipline. 73%
• Not applicable. 22%
• No answer. < 1%

 

This next series of questions asks you about self-censorship in different settings. For the purpose of these questions, self-censorship is defined as follows:

Refraining from sharing certain views because you fear social (e.g., exclusion from social events), professional (e.g., losing job or promotion), legal (e.g., prosecution or fine), or violent (e.g., assault) consequences, whether in person or remotely (e.g., by phone or online), and whether the consequences come from state or non-state sources.

How likely, if at all, are you to self-censor in?

Q29: … official meetings or offices of administrators, faculty, or student groups

• Not at all likely. 14%
• Somewhat likely. 25%
• Likely. 17%
• Very likely. 18%
• Extremely likely. 27%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q30: … academic publications

• Not at all likely. 40%
• Somewhat likely. 23%
• Likely. 11%
• Very likely. 11%
• Extremely likely. 14%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q31: … publications, talks, interviews, or lectures directed to a general audience

• Not at all likely. 20%
• Somewhat likely. 26%
• Likely. 16%
• Very likely. 16%
• Extremely likely. 20%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q32: … email or over social media or other online settings

• Not at all likely. 15%
• Somewhat likely. 26%
• Likely. 14%
• Very likely. 19%
• Extremely likely. 26%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q33: Compared to the start of the last academic year (September 2020), are you (more) or (less) likely today to self-censor on campus?

• Much less likely. 2%
• Less likely. 7%
• About the same. 53%
• More likely. 22%
• Much more likely. 16%
• No answer. 1%

 

 

Q34: Do you generally identify (with) or (against) the culture of your department?

• Strongly identify with. 13%
• Moderately identify with. 29%
• Neutral. 26%
• Moderately identify against. 22%
• Strongly identify against. 10%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q35: Where do you think the political views of the average member of your department are on this scale?

• Far left. 12%
• Liberal. 40%
• Slightly liberal. 18%
• Moderate, middle-of-the-road. 12%
• Slightly conservative. 5%
• Conservative. 4%
• Far right. 1%
• Not listed above. 1%
• Haven’t thought much about this. 6%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q36: Do you think someone in your workplace who supported Trump in the 2020 election would be comfortable expressing their views at work?

• Yes. 22%
• No. 57%
• Unsure. 20%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q37: Do you think someone in your workplace who supported Biden in the 2020 election would be comfortable expressing their views at work?

• Yes. 83%
• No. 4%
• Unsure. 12%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q38: If a known Bernie Sanders supporter worked at your workplace, how would you feel about sitting with them at lunch, in a meeting or in the staff room?

• Very comfortable. 66%
• Somewhat comfortable. 8%
• Neither comfortable or uncomfortable. 21%
• Somewhat uncomfortable. 2%
• Very uncomfortable. 1%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q39: If a known Donald Trump supporter worked at your workplace, how would you feel about sitting with them at lunch, in a meeting or in the staff room?

• Very comfortable. 40%
• Somewhat comfortable. 12%
• Neither comfortable or uncomfortable. 25%
• Somewhat uncomfortable. 14%
• Very uncomfortable. 8%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q40: Do you feel that there is a (supportive) or (hostile) climate towards people with your political beliefs in your department?

• Very supportive. 22%
• Somewhat supportive. 41%
• Somewhat hostile. 27%
• Very hostile. 9%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q41: How often, if at all, do you think colleagues would actively discriminate against you on the basis of your political beliefs?

• Never. 31%
• Rarely. 31%
• Occasionally. 19%
• Frequently. 13%
• All the time. 7%
• No answer. < 1%

 

Q42: What share of your friends have the same party identification or leaning as you?

• All of them. 3%
• Almost all of them. 28%
• More than half of them. 26%
• Half of them. 21%
• Under half of them. 14%
• Almost none of them. 6%
• None of them. 2%
• No answer. 1%

 

How do you feel about each of the following groups in society (Where 0 is strongly dislike and 10 is strongly like)?

Q43:... Left-wing voters

• Dislike (0 to 4). 27%
• Neutral (5). 25%
• Like (6 to 10). 46%
• No answer. 2%

 

Q44:... Right-wing voters

• Dislike (0 to 4). 51%
• Neutral (5). 27%
• Like (6 to 10). 21%
• No answer. 1%

 

Q45: Since the 1960's, professors have become more representative in terms of race and gender. They also have become increasingly liberal. How should the academic profession respond to this growing lack of political diversity?

• Achieving political diversity should be more important than racial or gender diversity. 11%
• Achieving political diversity should be as important as achieving racial or gender diversity. 33%
• Achieving political diversity should be less important than achieving racial or gender diversity. 36%
• Achieving political diversity is not important at all. 19%
• No answer. 1%

 

Appendix

Sample Demographics

Political Party and Political Ideology 

In politics today, do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat, or something else?

• Strong Democrat. 22%
• Weak Democrat. 10%
• Independent, lean Democrat. 16%
• Independent. 15%
• Independent, lean Republican. 13%
• Weak Republican. 4%
• Strong Republican. 7%
• Something else. 3%
• No answer. 2%

Using the following scale, how would you describe your political beliefs?

• Far left. 11%
• Liberal. 26%
• Slightly liberal. 12%
• Moderate, middle-of-the-road. 17%
• Slightly conservative. 11%
• Conservative. 14%
• Far right. 1%
• Haven't thought much about this. 1%
• Libertarian. 2%
• Not listed above. 3%
• No answer. 2%

Departments included in FIRE Faculty Email List

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