HOW DID COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES in the United States and elsewhere in the English-speaking world become seminaries of centre-Left and radical Left ideology?
That most elite campuses foster political and intellectual monocultures is not open to dispute. In a 2023 poll by the Harvard Crimson, 45.3 per cent of Harvard faculty identify themselves as “liberal” and 31.8 per cent as “very liberal”, a combined total of 77.1 per cent. Twenty per cent considered themselves “moderate” with only 2.5 per cent “conservative” and 0.4 per cent “very conservative”.
The good news is that political diversity at Harvard has thus increased since 2022, when only 1 per cent of the faculty were “conservative” and none at all were “very conservative”. Not coincidentally, in 2023 Harvard came last in the free speech rankings compiled by the nonpartisan watchdog, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
In the United States, the professoriate is not only politically but literally inbred. In 2022, tenure-track faculty members were 25 per cent more likely than the general population to have a parent with a PhD. Then there are the “legacies”. Around 30 per cent of Harvard students have parents or other relatives who are alumni.
How were elite universities in the US and elsewhere captured by a nepotistic, intermarrying caste of liberal and leftwing academics? I submit that Germany is to blame. Not modern
