More than 77 percent of Harvard faculty surveyed identified themselves as “very liberal” or “liberal” in The Crimson’s annual survey of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Just under 32 percent of faculty respondents said they were “very liberal.” About 45 percent of respondents identified themselves as “liberal,” 20 percent as “moderate,” more than 2 percent as “conservative,” and less than 1 percent as “very conservative.”
These results largely follow results from last year’s The Crimson survey of teachers, where more than 80 percent of respondents said they identified as liberal, with just 1 percent going identify as conservative.
The Crimson distributed its survey to more than 1,300 FAS and School of Engineering and Applied Science members, including full and tenured faculty, non-tenured faculty and preceptors. The survey gathered demographic information and opinions on a range of topics, including Harvard’s academic atmosphere, life as a professor, and political issues.
The 124-question anonymous survey received 386 responses, including 234 fully completed responses and 152 partially completed responses. It was open to new responses between March 23 and April 14. Responses were not adjusted for selection bias.
The first installment of The Crimson’s faculty survey covered respondents’ views on the controversy surrounding harassment allegations against Professor John L. Comaroff and Harvard’s Title IX policies. The second installment concerns respondents’ views of top Harvard administrators, including outgoing University President Lawrence S. Bacow and incoming President Claudine Gay.
This third installment explores the political views of faculty respondents on a range of issues, including academic freedom, race-conscious admissions policies, and more.
FAS spokeswoman Anna G. Cowenhoven declined to comment for this article.
Academic Freedom
Nearly 76 percent of professors surveyed said they believe academic freedom is under threat in America, with just over 11 percent disagreeing. A majority, about 52 percent, of tenured professors surveyed said they “strongly agree” that academic freedom is under threat, compared to about 27 percent of non-retrieving faculty .
More than 61 percent of faculty surveyed said Harvard emphasizes academic freedom enough, with more than 36 percent saying it deserves more emphasis.
In a free-response question asking what they believed to be the strongest threats to academic freedom at the moment, several professors referenced right-wing political movements and figures.
“MAGA inspired parents and politicians who want to ban books, restrict curricula, revoke tenure and destroy education more than they have done,” one member wrote.
Still, not all teachers said the threat came from the political right.
One faculty member cited “Crazy students and cancel culture.” Another member wrote about the “lack of tolerance for divergent political views, especially more moderate or conservative views.”
About 57 percent of faculty respondents said they agreed Harvard should give a platform to controversial speakers, even when many faculty or students oppose their views. More than 20 percent disagree.
In a free-response question about how Harvard should promote free speech, some professors asked the school to sign the “Chicago Declaration,” a free speech policy statement developed at the University of Chicago and signed by nearly 100 schools, including Princeton University. and MIT
Affirmative action
Like many lawyers expect the Supreme Court to strike down race-based affirmative action this summer, teachers surveyed overwhelmingly supported race-conscious admissions policies.
Just over 76 percent of professors surveyed said they strongly or somewhat agreed with Harvard’s advocacy of race-conscious admissions policies, with about 9 percent disagreeing.
A plurality of teachers surveyed – more than 44 percent – also disagreed with the Court’s decision to take on the case. Almost 19 percent agreed with the decision.
In an open-ended question, some faculty members took aim at legacy admissions, with one faculty member writing, “We need to keep affirmative action, but they question both legacy admissions and athletic admissions policies.” .
Still, some faculty members remained concerned about the impact the university’s admissions policies might have on Asian-American applicants.
“Some of the evidence presented about Harvard’s discrimination against Asian and Asian-American students has made me very sad and upset, and has also been extremely damaging to the cause of supporting admissions policies that promote the diversity,” one member wrote.
More broadly, just over 50 percent said Harvard emphasizes diversity, inclusion and belonging enough, with about 20 percent saying it does too much and about 29 percent saying that it does too little.
Problems on campus
In recent years, Harvard has seen a wave of student activism related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, caste discrimination, and Harvard’s investments in the fossil fuel and prison industries.
A majority of faculty (more than 57 percent) said they would not characterize their views as pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, with about 10 percent saying they are more pro-Israel and more than 32 percent saying they are more pro-Palestine. . However, more than 77% of faculty said the University should no longer support pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian causes.
About 61 percent of professors surveyed said they believed Harvard should follow Brown University in banning caste discrimination, with just under 4 percent disagreeing.
Almost two years after Harvard’s announcement would allow its fossil fuel investments to expire, only 15 percent of faculty respondents said they agreed that the University is doing enough to fight climate change, while nearly 59 percent of respondents said it is not they agreed
Faculty respondents generally supported the decision to divest from fossil fuels, while some called for faster action in an open-ended question.
“Do more and hurry,” wrote one faculty member, and another wrote that “fossil fuel divestment should move faster.”
Harvard still maintains investments in companies linked to the prison industry, long a point of contention for activists. Just under three-quarters of professors surveyed said they thought Harvard should get rid of prisons, with about 8% saying it shouldn’t.
Methodology
Crimson’s 2023 Annual Faculty Survey was conducted through Qualtrics, an online survey platform. The survey was open from March 23, 2023 to April 14, 2023.
A link to the anonymous survey was sent to 1,310 FAS and SEAS faculty via emails obtained in February 2021 from Harvard directory information and updated in subsequent years. The group included individuals in Harvard’s Connections database with FAS affiliations, including tenured, tenured, and nontenured faculty.
In total, 386 teachers responded, 234 completed the survey completely and 152 partially.
To check for response bias, The Crimson compared respondents’ self-reported demographics with publicly available data on FAS faculty demographics for the 2021-22 school year. Respondent demographics generally match this publicly available data.
In The Crimson’s poll, 47 percent of respondents identified as male and 45 percent identified as female, with 2 percent selecting “genderqueer/non-binary,” 1 percent for “other ” and 5% for “prefer not to say”. According to the 2022 Faculty of Arts and Sciences report, 39 percent of FAS faculty as a whole are women.
Fifty-three percent of respondents to The Crimson’s survey were tenured or tenure-track faculty and 47 percent were tenured faculty. According to FAS data, 58 percent of teachers are tenured and 38 percent are not tenured.
Thirty-one percent of respondents reported that their ethnic or racial background was other than white or Caucasian, and 9 percent chose not to report their race. According to FAS data, 27% of teachers are not white.
—You can contact the writer Rahem D. Hamid at rahem.hamid@thecrimson.com.
—Writer Elias J. Schisgall can be reached at elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @eschisgall.
