>“Echo chambers do not produce the best teaching, research, or scholarship.”

>So said a [self-critical report](https://president.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2026-04/Report-of-the-Committee-on-Trust-in-Higher-Education.pdf) published this month by Yale University, bemoaning the lack of intellectual diversity at their own college and most of the nation’s other leading campuses. *Well, duh*, readers of *The Free Press* might respond. To you, this report, which also cited problems in higher education including ballooning tuition fees, opaque and unfair admissions criteria, and [grade inflation](https://www.thefp.com/p/arthur-brooks-grade-inflation-wont)—may sound like a master class in the obvious.

>But to many in academia, this is *not* obvious. Despite decades slipping into an ideological monoculture, many academics still don’t see a problem. Amid increasingly widespread scrutiny, they don’t understand why so many elite colleges have squandered public trust.

>How did we arrive at this situation? Let me start by explaining the two biggest issues that the report identifies as difficulties facing higher education: censorship (including self-censorship) and an almost complete absence of conservative viewpoints among faculty members.

>As a seasoned social scientist with fairly heterodox views, I am keenly aware of the culture that has led to this diversity problem on college campuses. Indeed, I have a [long record of writing](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/opinion/conservative-professors.html) and [speaking](https://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_brooks_a_conservative_s_plea_let_s_work_together) about it. But in my view, the actual virus creating the problem is not liberalism per se, but illiberalism—and even more, of conformism.

>Let’s start with some facts. The ideological skew is extensive and [well-documented](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08913810508443640). A [2020 survey](https://ippsr.msu.edu/sites/default/files/socialscienceresearch.pdf) of tenure-track professors in the social sciences at 67 major research universities showed that the ratio of Democratic to Republican voter registration is about 24:1. The proportion is highest in anthropology (66:1) and sociology (52:1), and lowest in economics (where it is “just” 10:1). This discrepancy has [significantly increased](https://www.independent.org/tir/2022-23-winter/the-hyperpoliticization-of-higher-ed/) over the decades.

>Hypothetically, this ratio wouldn’t lead to a slant in research findings. Most academics see themselves as scholarly Sergeant Joe Fridays from the classic police-procedural drama *Dragnet*: “Just the facts, ma’am.” However, new analysis using large-language models—instead of our human and biased judgment—to evaluate philosophical tilt shows that research has moved in tandem with researchers’ bias. A study just published in the journal *Theory and Society* of 600,000 peer-reviewed academic papers [found that](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-026-09690-2) about 90 percent of all articles with any relation to politics from 1960 to 2024 leaned left; that the leftward tilt increased over the last three decades; and that the most liberal disciplines became more and more ideologically homogeneous in their research.

>Although I personally have only rarely faced discrimination for views that were at odds with the social-science mainstream, others in academia have suffered a great deal. According to the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, two-fifths of [academics admit](https://www.cspicenter.com/p/academic-freedom-in-crisis-punishment) that they would discriminate against hiring a potential colleague if they were a Donald Trump supporter. The phenomenon predates the current president: a [2012 study found](https://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf) that 38 percent of academic psychologists[ ](https://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf)would disfavor a conservative candidate for a faculty position, and 44 percent thought their colleagues would as well. Small wonder that 75 percent of lonely conservatives in the American academy [say they](https://www.prosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Legatum-Institute-Is-Academic-Freedom-Under-Threat.pdf) self-censor out of fear of retribution (versus 35 percent of liberals).

>So why don’t academics realize the problem? Well, the fact that the academy is so overwhelmingly progressive means that, for most of them, this ideological imbalance is no cause for alarm—and has a straightforward explanation: Liberals are *right*. Just as medicine has moved beyond medieval humors and [Victorian phrenology](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/phrenology-in-victorian-america.htm#:~:text=Phrenology%2C%20the%20study%20of%20the%20contours%20of,an%20early%20attempt%20at%20understanding%20human%20behavior.), the thinking goes, social science has discovered that, [in the words](https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/on-the-liberal-bias-of-facts/) of the economist Paul Krugman, the *facts* have a “liberal bias.” To try to achieve viewpoint diversity amounts, they believe, to an attempt to balance between truth and falsehood, which is contrary to the entire intellectual project.

>The sociologist Neil Gross, who has studied this issue extensively, has a different explanation. He shows in his research that progressive ideology correlates with the basic demographics of college life: Academic liberals are [generally secular](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-012-9163-y), for example, and thus choose environments where it is acceptable to question institutions and belief systems like religion. In his book [*Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?*](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674059092), Gross argues that academia has had a self-reinforcing selection bias that encourages bright liberals (who feel at home) and discourages promising conservatives (who do not).[](https://www.thefp.com/p/tyler-cowen-college-wont-get-fixed)

>The ideological skew grew at an accelerating rate, especially after 2000 when, [as shown](https://philmagness.com/2017/12/why-universities-have-shifted-to-the-political-left-in-the-past-20-years/) by the economic historian Phillip W. Magness, the number of left-leaning university positions—in the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences—increased faster than ones in more centrist departments, such as business or engineering. Political scientist Samuel J. Abrams [notes as well](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/opinion/liberal-college-administrators.html) that there began to be a proliferation of administrators at universities who were overwhelmingly progressive and activist.

>This kind of growth in a population—little by little, then all of a sudden—is characteristic of many natural and social systems. Think of an invasive species that appears to explode suddenly, or a song that you hear occasionally, then all the time.

>Or, well, a virus. And indeed, the situation on campus has been labeled a “woke mind virus” by [Elon Musk](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1861081309780889953) and [others (including my ](https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/edi-cancel-culture-bad-boards-killing-universities-gd9rzr0rb)[*Free Press*](https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/edi-cancel-culture-bad-boards-killing-universities-gd9rzr0rb)[ colleague Niall Ferguson)](https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/edi-cancel-culture-bad-boards-killing-universities-gd9rzr0rb)—in other words, an ideological infection that rewards progressive thinking and kills alternative points of view.

>I would argue that this virus is not a virus of liberal views but one of *conformism*. The liberal ethos on campus—which traditionally emphasized tolerance of different points of view—became aggressively illiberal as alternative viewpoints became vanishingly rare. To disagree became costly, especially with the advent of the internet and social media, which made it easy and efficient for activists to punish dissent. Most chose to conform to the increasingly progressive orthodoxy, whether they truly agreed with it or not.

>You might say this seems cowardly, but the desire to conform [is based](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3375089/) in our evolutionary biology: It is extremely important to be accepted by your tribe; it is dangerous to go against the grain. Cancel culture is not the same as being forced out of the tribe to wander the savanna alone, but our Pleistocene brains treat the prospect with similar terror. And people’s livelihoods were at stake.

>I remember, early in my academic career, the cognitive dissonance of seeing the world in a certain way, but fearing professional rejection if I expressed that openly. I consulted a number of older professors, many of whom suggested that I keep my real views to myself, at least until I’d earned tenure. The best advice, however, came from my mentor, the brilliant conservative political scientist James Q. Wilson, who had taught at Harvard for decades. It’s simple, [he told me](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203986604577257452674662624?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqd4jZ11w_B_deuM0xdMuKSEoPviyKkZWFl56xULY_kcL2Md2yYJ_dDqlil5I2Y%3D&gaa_ts=69d3ce76&gaa_sig=OKDc4d_hty3HhFXGDQmy9heKVV9aRXelLybxicdgxVMCYdZeGLfQVsiYM21mbdDFkAmRgHKxdp0v8e1G-GhwLQ%3D%3D): Say what you think, but “be twice as productive and four times as nice as your colleagues.”

>As well as trying to follow that advice, I was deeply influenced by another, earlier Harvard contrarian, the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. His 1841 essay “[Self-Reliance](https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/triumphnationalism/cman/text8/selfreliance.pdf)” became a talisman for me, one to which I constantly turn. It gave me three rules I try to live by as a researcher and teacher.

>**Rule 1: Reward intellectual nonconformism.**

>“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,” Emerson wrote. To embrace the wisdom of any established clique is to put on a “prison-uniform.” Avoid cultural fads and ideological panics; don’t agree without thinking; question everything. As a cultural matter, this means never penalizing ideas that are out of fashion. Rather the reverse—institutions should be intolerant of all attempts to enforce any social or political orthodoxy. “So you want to shut down a speaker or mob someone online? *Bye*.”

>It means hiring and rewarding oddballs and valorizing a culture that thrills at hearing weird—even disturbing—arguments. That makes the academy a proving ground for new ideas that might be right, but could be wrong. That leads to Rule 2.

>**Rule 2: Reward changing viewpoints.**

>No one hates to be wrong—or even intellectually inconsistent—more than academics. To appear consistent in one’s ideas is [central to credibility](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-11410-000) and self-understanding, which is why charges of inconsistency—labeled as hypocrisy—are always used as a cudgel by the cancel-culture warriors. But as Emerson memorably asserted: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” He often changed his mind, and thought others should do so, as they saw fit, with no embarrassment or apology.

>That means a personal and institutional policy of embracing idea change as central to the laboratory of knowledge. For instance, academic departments should make it known that “no science is settled.” This valorizes radical honesty, leading to Rule 3.

>**Rule 3: Reward complete honesty, especially that which is uncomfortable.**

>Emerson believed that you can make your own decisions and form your own beliefs only “by speaking the truth,” a matter so serious that he calls it “the state of war.” Do you doubt this? Think about the times in your life when you have failed to speak up for your views if they were at odds with those of the powerful. Conformism relies, in fact, on the lies of omission that offer the path of least resistance. This leads to mediocrity and is the enemy of intellectual enterprise.

>As the Yale report noted, higher education has plenty of challenges. I’m not saying that these rules have magical powers to solve grade-inflation problems or sort out fair admissions criteria. But they are a good way for universities—which might otherwise be ignorant to the problems festering among their faculty—to illuminate the wider cultural problem of conformism that we face today and provide the outline of a true, lasting solution.

Arthur Brooks: Universities Have a Conformity Crisis (Free Press)