No, higher education isn’t turning students into ‘communists’

The date for accepting President Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” in return for funding has come and gone. Seven of the 10 institutions initially approached have rejected it.

The compact demands that the schools end diversity, equity and inclusion programs in admissions and hiring and protect conservative students from alleged discrimination. It presumes that colleges and universities indoctrinate young people with radical leftist ideology, a belief that has become an article of MAGA faith.  

Trump has accused faculty of “turning our students into communists, terrorists and sympathizers of many, many dimensions.” That claim does not stand up to scrutiny. It gives young people no credit for being independent thinkers and ascribes to faculty a power of persuasion they do not have.  

The degree of choice among schools, majors and courses makes indoctrination impossible. Students can select from 4,360 diverse institutions of higher education, all of which provide ample information on their programs, faculty and student life. One website even classifies schools based on whether they are liberal or conservative.

Since most faculty are liberals, the critics insist, it hardly matters what school a student attends. In a recent survey, 50 percent of faculty identified as liberal, 17 percent as moderate and 26 percent as conservative, but that does not mean that their political convictions guide their teaching.

Most courses cannot be taught from an ideological perspective — left, right or center. Is there a “woke” way to teach chemistry, biology, physics, music or geology? There may be Marxist mathematicians, but there is no such thing as Marxist calculus.

A 2023 survey identified the top 10 majors based on percentage of students: business, nursing, psychology, education, biology, criminal justice, computer science, health professions, accounting and engineering. 

Courses in most of these fields are highly technical and not amenable to ideological interpretation. Business, which attracts the most majors, has a higher percentage of conservative faculty than universities and colleges do in general. 

“What about the humanities and social sciences?” critics will ask. These fields do have the highest percentage of left-leaning faculty, but most teach their courses objectively 

I have required students in my Western Civilization course to read excerpts from “The Wealth of Nations” and the “Communist Manifesto.” That’s not because I want to promote either one, but because both are essential to understanding 19th-century Europe. 

Determining political leaning from choice of major is extraordinarily difficult, but some evidence suggests liberal students are more likely to choose humanities or social sciences. Their beliefs influence their choice of major and selection of courses. The courses do not indoctrinate them. 

All students must take a broad range of liberal arts courses, but they have many options. My “White Supremacy in the United States” class is not a required course, but it fills quickly because of student interest.

Since departments offer multiple sections of required courses, students can pick their instructor. And most schools make course evaluations available, so finding out if a professor has an ideological bias is not difficult. 

If liberal indoctrination really did happen in colleges and universities, it should be evident in voting patterns. It is not.

In the 2024 election, 49 percent of college-educated men voted for Kamala Harris, and 48 percent for Donald Trump (a virtual tie); 61 percent of college women voted for Harris and just 37 percent for Trump. However, most non-college educated women also favored Harris over Trump, 53 percent to 45 percent.

If there is little evidence of indoctrination occurring in the classrooms, what about the campus environment? Supporters of the president’s crackdown insist that many schools do not make conservative students feel welcome. Some undergraduates perceive that they suffer “viewpoint discrimination,” the idea that their beliefs are not respected. 

Perception, however, does not always accurately reflect reality. A June 2024 survey revealed that only 44 percent of college students “felt comfortable expressing their opinions without fear of negative consequences.”

The data revealed that 54 percent of Democrats, 39 percent of Republicans, and 36 percent of “others” felt comfortable sharing their views. However, the same survey revealed that 64 percent of students believed everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of retribution, which suggests conservatives exaggerate fears of viewpoint discrimination. 

Campuses are more tolerant than students imagine. Fear does not equate to the presence of a real threat, but the critics of higher education have decided it does. They cite students’ subjective feelings of anxiety or even discomfort as objective evidence that a campus is “unwelcoming” or even “unsafe.”  

As educators we must preserve a healthy learning environment that exposes students to diverse views without condemning them for the ones they already hold. Challenging their established beliefs, however, requires making them uncomfortable. Without that discomfort there can be no “higher education.” 

Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and the author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat .”