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A new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression finds that faculty members are four times more likely to self-censor than they were in the 1950s at the height of the Cold War and McCarthyism.
The report explores insights from a national survey of 6,269 tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure track faculty across 55 four-year colleges and universities in the United States. While many faculty remain confident in higher education, and few report explicit threats or experiences of discipline for speech, the broader climate reflects that of rampant self-censorship, worry, and fear, particularly among faculty in the political minority.
Among the report’s key findings:
- Thirty-five percent of faculty say they recently toned down their writing for fear of controversy, compared to nine percent of faculty who said the same during the McCarthy era;
- Fourteen percent of faculty suffered discipline or threats of discipline for either their teaching, research, academic talks, or other off-campus speech;
- Twenty-seven percent of faculty feel unable to speak freely for fear of how students, administrators, or other faculty would respond;
- Sixty-six percent of faculty say colleges and universities should not take positions on political and social issues;
- Forty percent of faculty worry about damaging their reputations because someone misunderstands something they have said or done; and
- Fifty percent of faculty say it is rarely or never justified to require faculty job candidates to submit statements pledging commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.