Institutional Autonomy and the Politics of Viewpoint Diversity

Concerns, Impacts, Response

The Trump administration’s “Dear Harvard” letter calls for both faculty hiring and student admissions to be fundamentally reordered to focus on “viewpoint diversity”. State level interventions, such as those in Indiana, also highlight the necessity of viewpoint diversity in both curriculum and in faculty promotion and retention decisions.

Some of the mechanisms for enforcing viewpoint diversity include surveys of students and employees, establishing processes by which students and employees can submit complaints when viewpoint diversity is not respected, and, in Harvard’s case, dissolving departments that can’t prove they are viewpoint diverse.

Last week we wrote about why institutional autonomy is valuable to society. In this post we discuss where this push for viewpoint diversity came from, whether the underlying concerns have merit, how it may impact university autonomy, and what to do about it.

What Does Viewpoint Diversity Mean?

We think of viewpoint diversity in this way. The university brings together a set of people who collectively ask a wide variety of questions, and approach similar questions from different angles or with different methodological tools. These people listen to new perspectives on problems without imposing ideological constraints, and they are open to answers that differ from their prior beliefs when another scholar has brought new and credible evidence to the table. In the classroom, students are exposed to credible alternative theories and competing evidence on controversial issues.

Phrased in this way, viewpoint diversity is not just a good thing for the university, it’s a fundamental value we should hold.

It would be great if that was also what politicians have in mind when they seek to mandate viewpoint diversity. But, given recent actions, that is much less clear to us. They may instead have in mind a rebalancing of the professoriate along political lines. Or to ensure the ascendance of conservative viewpoints in left-leaning research and classrooms, while perhaps not exercising the same vigor in ensuring the reverse. And in some cases, to ensure that certain topics are excluded entirely from the curricula.

Where Did This Come From?

Pundits and politicians have long decried what they perceive as the left-leaning political orientation of the university. Universities were hotbeds of protests over the Vietnam War. Some professors’ scholarship took a negative view of US history, for example, focusing on slavery and race relations, the impact of US military intervention abroad, or the consequences of market-based capitalism for inequality.

More recently, some campuses were caught up in disruptive protests. Some university DEI efforts excluded more than they included. Right-leaning speakers were shouted down by students and/or outside protestors. Some job candidates felt excluded by required diversity statements in faculty hiring.

But it is critical to note that these well-known examples of left-leaning scholarship, programs, and behaviors represent a small fraction of the overall activity on a campus. Scholarship at a large university is much broader than a few professors producing left-oriented critiques of US culture and history. Ethnic and Gender Studies programs come in for a lot of criticism, but students in these programs represent 0.3% of undergraduate majors nationwide.

Disruptive protests generally involve a tiny fraction of the campus population, and a small number of campuses. In May 2024 news organizations tallied Gaza protests on 140 campuses and 3100 arrests of faculty, staff, and students…out of roughly 4000 higher education institutions and campus populations totaling 23.5 million. And DEI initiatives are broader and more positive than the excesses of cancel culture and some mandated training would indicate. Many of the DEI policies pursued are (or at least were) a commonplace of not just universities but also major for-profit corporations.

Still, these examples of left-leaning activity have become fixtures in the news even if they are not at all representative of the vast majority of actual activity on a campus. Sometimes your reputation is based on the loudest and most public 1% of people and activity, not on the quiet 99%. (Which raises a question we tackle next week -- why don’t the 99% choose to be more vocal and visible?)

Using the Logic of Racial and Gender Diversity to Advance Political Viewpoint Diversity

Advocates for mandated viewpoint diversity in hiring and curriculum base their argument in the logic of DEI programs, a logic that universities themselves have fully embraced.

At the core of this approach is the quintessentially American ideal that there is strength in bringing together people from different backgrounds. That we learn more when we are around people who have different perspectives and life histories than if we surround ourselves with the like-minded. It is why universities support cross-disciplinary research. It is why universities, and corporations, seek diversity (broadly defined) in leadership.

Including a greater diversity of scholars in the university can change the things we research and teach because our research and teaching can be influenced by our experiences. Breakthroughs in science come not just from brilliance, or a supreme mastery of the methodological tools of one’s discipline. They come through looking at old problems in new ways, or from seeing different problems entirely. Having a wider range of perspectives on how to attack problem, or what problems to attack, is a highly effective way to advance science.

And now, let’s spring the trap. Surely, if that logic for including racial and gender diversity in higher education has merit, then it must also apply to people who have diverse viewpoints for other reasons. Why not select on viewpoint diversity directly? And maybe, while we’re at it, institute political orientation as a new protected class and source of that diversity.

Hence, you get the spectacle of the “Dear Harvard” letter that simultaneously demands an end to DEI policies (historically focused on race and gender) while insisting on admission and hiring quotas based on viewpoint diversity.

It’s a logical pickle for higher ed. But, let’s take a bite.

Are Professors A Bunch of Raging Liberals?

It is not hard to find articles that report biased political orientation among faculty -- far more liberals than conservatives, far more Democrats than Republicans. For someone disinclined to trust universities, it’s not hard to draw a straight line between the relatively small number of conservatives among faculty and the prevalence of left-leaning behaviors with which universities have become associated.

But when you dig into the details of the existing studies you learn this narrative is misleading in two ways. One, while the left-right mix (whether identified by party registration or self-reports of political orientation) often looks highly skewed, the headlines obscure a key fact. The plurality of faculty self-report as neither liberal or conservative but instead as moderates, and a majority of faculty don’t register as members of either political party. The dominant middle is ignored.

Two, many of these studies and the headlines they provoke focus on liberal arts colleges, and on departments in the humanities and social sciences. That is, they focus on places where faculty skew left while ignoring entirely those departments, colleges, and universities that skew right.

Let’s dig in on this last point, because we think this is critical. The UCLA-HERI studies represent the only long-term effort to gauge faculty political orientation (among questions surveying a long list of other faculty attitudes and behaviors). It appears to show that the number of liberals among university faculty is rising over time. That inference seems problematic to us because the institutional coverage of this survey has changed dramatically over the period studied.

Source: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/03/10/mind-the-professors/ based on data from UCLA-HERI.

Still, we think the change over time obscures the more interesting part of these data. While some departments like English self-report to be 60-80% liberal, others like Business self-report to be only 20-25% liberal. Many other campus units (health-related professions, engineering) also skew to the right.

Now compare this distribution to student enrollments by discipline. We noted above that Ethnic and Gender Studies graduate only 0.3% of students, down from 0.5% in 2000. While universities as a whole graduate 62% more students than they did in 2000, the number of English majors has dropped 40% and now represent only 1.6% of graduates.

What about the majors for faculty that skew right? Business majors, taught by the most conservative faculty on campuses, are the largest grouping at 19% of majors nationwide. Health related professions are 13% of majors and have increased 6 times faster than the overall student population. Engineers are 6% of majors, and have more than doubled since 2000. If we look within social sciences, the second-largest and the fastest growing major is Economics, where studies have shown faculty are evenly divided between Republican, Democratic, and Independent political registrations.

So, yes, judging from the UCLA-HERI data and more targeted studies, some units on campus are liberal. But some are decidedly not. And it is the more conservative parts of campus where all the enrollment growth is happening. Is that because the students are seeking out conservative faculty or are both students and conservative faculty more attracted to disciplines that have better job outcomes? We can’t say for sure, but our guess is the latter.

Looking at these data helped us to understand why our perspectives on these issues differ from some of our colleagues around the country. We sit on a STEM and Business oriented campus in the Midwest, a university that Time Magazine called “a hotbed of rest” during the 1960s. Our experience of the relatively mild influence and impact of left-leaning faculty is markedly different from what colleagues on other campuses report.

Does University Research Suffer from a Lack of Viewpoint Diversity?

We think political orientation is less determinative of research and teaching than critics believe.

While the evidence is clear that some faculty disciplines have more liberals than moderates and conservatives (and vice versa), the evidence that this affects research output or student attitudes and beliefs is too understudied to reach conclusions about the effect. So, let’s take a step back and think conceptually about what viewpoint diversity might mean in different contexts, and whether this could be affected by political affiliation.

Most research areas at the university do not have an obvious political connotation. Civil engineering techniques for building a bridge are not partisan. Mathematics is not partisan. Most of the research and teaching that occurs in STEM disciplines has no connection at all to political fights.

Here viewpoint diversity is largely about the choice of problems and that could be affected by a long list of personal interests and life experiences. A drug researcher who lost their mother to cancer might choose to study cures for that disease.

Doing Science When its Implications are Political

Of course, some science and engineering research takes on a political connotation because of its implications for policy. Research on vaccines is one example. Climate science is another.

There may be legitimate intra-field disagreements about the best ways to measure temperatures or atmospheric gas, and probably larger disagreements when one looks to the geological record. There are still larger disagreements about the best predictive models to map these measurements into long run climate forecasts. And, ultimately, disagreements about the extent to which climate change is anthropogenic.

Viewpoint diversity in this context could mean exploring disagreements on the fine points of these methodologies. It doesn’t mean that we continue holding views that are inconsistent with evidence and pretending that they are equally valid. Or that we look for answers to validate preconceived ideas.

That’s all par for the course with science, and nobody outside the specific field would much care -- except for the fact that the implications of climate research are profoundly political. Should we tax carbon or subsidize ‘green’ energy sources? Should we discourage building in low-lying coastal areas? Should our military prepare for the national security implications of a thawing arctic and climate refugees from swamped or desiccated regions?

Not liking the political implications of science causes politicians to want a say in how the science is done. To hire more scientists who might point to flaws in climate studies, or to teach students that the science is unsettled. If this is about ensuring methodologies are rigorous, and that conclusions do not outpace what the research can confidently demonstrate, then fine. That is what science should always do.

The problem comes when viewpoint diversity starts to look like selecting on someone who provides the “right” answers rather than selecting on who asks different questions or employs better methodologies. If viewpoint diversity, or balancing partisan numbers in a field, means finding someone who will reliably provide politically aligned answers to scientific questions, that is a certain path to corrupt research.

Even Policy Oriented Fields Are Not Obviously Red/Blue Partisan

Of course, some fields are inherently bound up with politics. Our field of economics is deeply tied to questions about the effect certain policies have on the economy, and what policies should be pursued.

Some of these – e.g. policies related to income taxation, setting minimum wages, acceptable levels of environmental regulation -- align clearly with partisan politics. Other critical policies – e.g. how long should a firm enjoy intellectual property protection, should we break up monopolies held by giant technology companies -- have no obvious partisan alignment.

Other policy areas have seen a complete inversion of partisan alignment. For decades market-oriented Republicans strongly supported free trade policies. Democrats, concerned about the effect on blue collar workers, resisted. Then Presidents Clinton and Obama came into the free trade camp, leading the Democratic party in this direction, and later President Trump led the Republican party in the opposite direction.

What then does party affiliation in the faculty tell us about whether an Economics department has a diverse viewpoint when it comes to international trade policy?

Where Should we Look for Balance?

Should a university as a whole represent viewpoint diversity, or should it be present within each department?

Diversifying departments, in the manner the “Dear Harvard” letter would require, seems sensible on its face. Say, for every climate scientist who measures ice cores this way, we balance them with a climate scientist who measures ice cores a different way. Or we find an economist whose research points to problems with free trade to balance the economist whose research points to the virtue of free trade.

That runs into two problems. First, very few departments are big enough to afford multiple experts in every research area who balance each other out. Second, some fields are inherently imbalanced in their approach to problems.

We noted above that business school faculty skew more conservative than liberal. And, you’ll find that most business school faculty are broadly supportive of the notion that market capitalism is an effective way to organize the economy. Their teaching and research is largely focused on how to operate within the system of market capitalism. You could try to balance that, but good luck finding radical Marxists with a PhD in Accounting.

Instead, we can look across campus and find examples of disciplines (maybe history, or sociology) where faculty do not presume market capitalism is the only or the best way to run an economy. They are interested in a critique of the system itself, as opposed to refining ways to operate within the system.

As long as there are critics of market capitalism somewhere on campus, does a business school have to hire some in order to ensure that students can find, and the research of the university taken as a whole offers, that viewpoint diversity?

Of course, we’re being cute by picking this example. We do not think the “Dear Harvard” letter means that the Trump administration wants more radical leftists at Harvard Business School. It almost certainly means changing left-leaning departments with an affirmative action program for conservatives.

In any case, balancing across departments to ensure the university as a whole represents diverse viewpoints is not only feasible, it’s what university leaders already do when they support a History Department and an Economics Department, and faculty in Humanities and in Health Sciences. And its what students do when they pick majors. They are picking not only a field of inquiry and perhaps a career trajectory, they are picking a world view. Increasingly, they are picking majors whose research and teaching has no political connotation, or aligns with a conservative worldview.

Viewpoint Diversity in the Classroom

Representing diverse viewpoints in the classroom runs into some of the same problems we just described for research. But it is both feasible and indeed essential to make students aware that other scholars have reached different conclusions and why.

The real challenge lies in political solutions that try to enforce viewpoint diversity. EVERY class with controversial material represents a selective editing of viewpoints, even for the most even-handed instructor. We don’t begin every economics course with an extended digression on Marxist critiques of markets and private ownership of capital. There isn’t time.

For someone outside the classroom it’s simply not possible to systematically evaluate whether a broad selection of university content is teaching all sides; you need expertise in a field to even know the sides.

One thing is clear: students don’t know the sides. They don’t hear and understand everything that is said. They are prone to selective understanding/reporting, which makes them unreliable as monitors, and a system that relies on that reporting is highly problematic.

So, what are faculty to do?

The worst solution is for faculty to pull back from controversial topics to avoid being called out by a disgruntled student. We understand the motivation – even a successful defense is time consuming. But this defeats the point of the university and the point of the classroom. Unfortunately, as we reported last week, some pullback in this area is already happening.

Instead, we think there is a reasonable three-part approach that is consistent with the aims of the university, ethically and legally defensible, and will ultimately save faculty a lot of time and grief.

1. Don’t shy away from controversial topics, but instead signal clearly – in the syllabus, and in class – that this is a controversial topic. And as the best instructors do, teach the controversy. This doesn’t mean rehashing every absurd YouTuber’s take, but doing one’s best to represent legitimate arguments and counter-arguments.

2. Tell students explicitly when you are “teaching the controversy”. Students do respond to and remember cues to pay attention. We think it is entirely legitimate to cue your students with phrases like, “Now we are going to wrestle with the other side of the argument.” Or, “Let’s think about other views.”

3. If your institution provides the opportunity to video record lectures, use it. On more than one occasion we dealt with angry student complaints directly related to viewpoint diversity. When we had recordings to look at, we found that what was actually said was miles away from the student claim. Maybe the students were deliberately misstating the facts or, much more likely, their own biases led them to selectively hear one side.

(On this last point, faculty who are uncertain how to navigate specific laws or university policies regarding recording, student privacy, and consent should first seek input from their relevant campus offices.)

Some Concluding Thoughts…

Taken at face value, viewpoint diversity is a value that every campus should hold dear. The challenge is keeping the focus on encouraging and valuing diverse ideas and not using viewpoint diversity as a means to a political agenda.

Perhaps the folks who both oppose DEI and propose strengthening a political version of viewpoint diversity might keep this in mind. Much of what they hate about DEI began as a sincere effort to include more people in the conversation and respect viewpoints and experiences that arise from racial and gender differences. Are you so sure that political viewpoint diversity will land in a healthier place?

In any event, the current moment is a call to arms. Coming to terms with what viewpoint diversity means on campus and how the campus will promote and protect that core value is a good place to start.

Next Week

Much of the current challenge to higher education is driven by a call for ‘accountability’. Next week we will talk about where accountability fits with institutional autonomy and how both can be improved.

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Research assistance provided by Marley Heritier. We are grateful to Trent Klingerman and Peter Hollenbeck for their excellent suggestions on this post.

“Finding Equilibrium” is coauthored by Jay Akridge, Professor of Agricultural Economics, Trustee Chair in Teaching and Learning Excellence, and Provost Emeritus at Purdue University and David Hummels, Distinguished Professor of Economics and Dean Emeritus at the Daniels School of Business at Purdue.