A new report is highlighting how deeply entrenched far-left rot has become in America’s colleges and universities — starting with professors. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) published a study last week, revealing that politically active college and university faculty are almost always on the far-left end of the political spectrum.

The study examined more than 100,000 faculty members at more than 55 universities and concluded that the average faculty member who donates to political campaigns “is only slightly less left on the political spectrum than Bernie Sanders,” the Independent U.S. senator and self-declared socialist from Vermont.

The study cross-checked the names of more than 100,000 college and university faculty members against a database of more than 850 million political campaign contributions made in 2024 and in years prior. Matches were then assigned a score, with lower scores corresponding to the left-wing end of the political spectrum and higher scores corresponding to the more conservative side. Sanders, for example, has a score from FIRE of -1.14, while Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has a score of 1.52. The average score for faculty members identified in the study was -1.02. No “critical mass” was identified for faculty who donated to Republican candidates or their campaigns.

“My analysis shows that faculty members at these schools who make campaign contributions can be fairly described as heavily concentrated on the left. This is a descriptive claim, not a normative one,” the study’s author, University of Rochester political science professor David M. Primo, wrote. While Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) would be ranked the furthest-left members of Congress, Primo observed, the legislators “would appear only slightly left of center in a legislature composed of faculty contributors.”

Primo asserted that “faculty donors are ideologically extreme by any reasonable measure.” Nearly all faculty members who donated to political candidates or campaigns were aligned with the far-Left, including those who made donations of $200 or more. Comparing faculty donors to the average American political donor, Primo noted that conservatives and Republicans make up a larger share of average American political donors than of faculty donors, where conservative and Republican donors have “essentially shrunk to nothing over time.” He continued, “What’s more, the bunching of faculty donors on the left is evident in the fact that the average ideology lies to the right of where most faculty donors are clustered, indicating that a small number of more conservative donors pull the mean slightly upward.” Primo explained, “In other words, the figures suggest that ideological diversity is essentially absent from universities today.”

The study also found that many of the nation’s most prestigious universities have a very narrow range of political viewpoints espoused by professors. The schools identified as the least ideologically and politically diverse include all eight Ivy League institutions (Columbia University, Brown University, Yale University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Cornell University), massive state schools (such as University of California Berkeley, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Oregon, University of California Davis, University of Washington Seattle, University of Michigan, University of California Los Angeles, and others), and other top-tier universities (such as Georgetown University or Stanford University).

Some of the most ideologically and politically diverse schools identified include Brigham Young University, Texas A&M University, Kansas State University, Clemson University, and University of Texas Dallas, among others. With the exception of Brigham Young University, all colleges and universities studied were concluded to be less ideologically and politically diverse than the U.S. House of Representatives, and all colleges and universities studied (including Brigham Young University) were concluded to be less ideologically and politically diverse than the U.S. Senate.

However, different disciplines within colleges and universities reveal differing degrees of ideological and political diversity. The humanities and fine arts were found to be the furthest-left-wing fields and the least ideologically or politically diverse, followed closely by education and life sciences. Business, agriculture, and engineering were found to have the broadest range of ideological and political diversity, but nearly all fields had a median score below -1.0, indicating a high number of left-wing faculty members engaged in those fields.

“Even business faculty who make campaign contributions lean strongly to the left,” Primo noted. “The difference in the means between the humanities and business is driven by the fact that business faculty have at least some conservative representation.” Additionally, Primo’s study found that the lowest rate of political campaign contributions came from among the most ideologically and politically diverse fields (agriculture, engineering, and business), while the highest rates (well over one-third) came from faculty in fine arts, social sciences, and the humanities.

“The results I present in this paper raise serious concerns about viewpoint diversity in academia, and they are consistent with findings from previous studies using different methodologies. Faculty donors are very liberal, and the least ideologically diverse fields contain the most donors,” Primo observed of his study’s findings. “Regardless of one’s political views, the lack of ideological diversity in academia should be of concern for the broader enterprise of higher education. Scholars have raised concerns that the quality of higher education both in terms of scientific progress and the classroom experience is hindered by a lack of viewpoint diversity.”

FIRE Vice President of Research Angela Erickson said in a statement on the study’s conclusions, “Free speech is not just the right to speak, it is the condition that lets universities test ideas through real disagreement.” She added, “Our findings suggest politically active faculty are clustered within a narrow ideological band, which raises serious concerns about whether students and scholars are getting the full benefit of the open inquiry universities promise.”

The proliferation of left-wing extremism is not limited to colleges and universities, but has also infected elementary, middle, and high school education. According to a Fox News report earlier this year, the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, poured millions of dollars’ worth of union funds into progressive, left-wing campaigns and causes in 2024. The NEA reportedly donated $300,000 to the left-wing dark money group Sixteen Thirty Fund, tens of thousands of dollars to the George Soros-linked Tides Foundation, and hundreds of thousands of dollars (totaling more than one million dollars) to pro-Democratic redistricting and election law campaigns and ballot initiatives. The union’s largest donation was $3.5 million, given to the global teachers’ organization Education International, where Fox News noted that NEA President Becky Pringle serves as a vice president.

The NEA also spent tens of thousands of dollars on consulting firms and training programs centered on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), gender identity, racial equity, and other “social justice” issues.