FEBRUARY 25, 2026, NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Heterodox Academy (HxA), a non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for open inquiry in higher education, announced today the release of How Politically Diverse Are University Faculty? A Review of Studies on the Diversity of Political Viewpoints Among University Faculty, a critical review of research on faculty political diversity across U.S. colleges and universities.

The review covers published research from 2012-2025, focusing on two dozen studies that assessed faculty political leanings using either self-reported measures of political views and party affiliations, or observed behavior such as voter registration, political donations, and social media activity. 

Key findings include:

• There is substantial variability across studies in the magnitude of the political imbalance, but studies of faculty political diversity consistently find that left-leaning faculty outnumber right-leaning faculty. 
• There is considerable variation across academic disciplines, with greater shares of left-leaning faculty found in the humanities and some social sciences compared to economics, business, political science, and STEM fields. 
• A narrow focus on ratios of only Democrats to Republicans (or liberals to conservatives) obscures the true distribution of political viewpoints in academia by overlooking faculty who are moderate or apolitical and may exacerbate perceptions of polarization within the academy.
• There are notable limitations to much of the extant research: low response rates, unmeasured non-response bias, imperfect measures of political leaning, and the focus on only particular subsets of faculty, rather than the full population of faculty. The most rigorous and comprehensive studies tend to produce the lowest estimates of political imbalance

The report is the first comprehensive review of what the literature can tell us about faculty political diversity and, importantly, the strengths and limitations of various studies. For those concerned with viewpoint diversity in academia, establishing a shared understanding of the current distribution of faculty political leanings is a key foundation for an informed discussion on the topic.

“Debates about political diversity in higher education are often driven by isolated statistics,” said Erin Shaw, lead author of the review and Research Associate at HxA. “By assessing the full body of recent research, we provide academics and the public with a clearer, evidence-based understanding of what we know — and what we don’t. Although it's true that most studies find that left-leaning faculty outnumber right-leaning faculty, the magnitude varies, and the strongest studies tend to find smaller imbalances than commonly assumed.”

The Heterodox Academy research team, including the authors of the report, will be hosting a webinar event on March 11 to discuss the report. Attendance is open exclusively to HxA members; membership is free and open to anyone working in higher education.

About Heterodox Academy

Heterodox Academy (HxA) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit membership organization of faculty, staff, and graduate students committed to fostering a culture of open inquiry on college and university campuses. Through a combination of grassroots membership efforts and direct engagement with institutional leaders, HxA equips campus stakeholders to advance viewpoint diversity, constructive disagreement, and the free exchange of ideas — values essential to higher education’s role as a truth-seeking, knowledge-generating enterprise.  

Press Contact

Nicole Barbaro

Director of Communications

barbaro@heterodoxacademy.org