In 1958, sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens Jr. conducted several studies with academics across the country, questioning them about their behaviors and attitudes toward expression and speech in light of the wave of the Congressional investigations of subversion that was hitting the nation’s collegiate campuses. From this work, they published The Academic Mind: Social Scientists in a Time of Crisis. Lazarsfeld and Thielens found, in aggregate, that nine percent of faculty reported that they “toned down their writing for fear of controversy.” Six decades later, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that more than one-third (35 percent) of faculty report toning down their writing for fear of causing controversy. This is the antithesis of university life and brutally represents the strength of cancel culture hitting far more than just students; intellectual life today on campus is worse than the McCarthy era.
After teaching at Sarah Lawrence College for over 15 years, I have witnessed some of the most intense hostility and hatred toward Jewish students and faculty around the country in recent years. While I am fighting back, I am asked why my reasonable colleagues have opted to remain silent and allow an intense collegiate antisemitic environment to explode. While I am certain that many faculty colleagues recognize the problems on our campus and are disgusted by the hatred, they do not want the attention that I have received and do not want to be attacked or canceled.
New data from FIRE reveals the true depths of how fearful professors are. One disturbing number is that just over a quarter (27 percent) of faculty think academic freedom is secure on their campus today. This only scratches the surface.
Consider this finding: When faculty across the country were asked how often, if at all, they felt that they could not express their opinion on a subject because of how other faculty, students, or the administration would respond, 10 percent reported self-censoring very often or nearly every day. Add into the mix the faculty members who report fairly often and occasionally censoring and that figure climbs to 64 percent. To put it bluntly, almost two-thirds of professors are regularly canceling their thoughts and afraid to share their ideas on our campuses now.
Relatedly, 67 percent of faculty are worried about damaging their reputations because someone misunderstands something they have said or done, and 38 percent of faculty are worried about losing their jobs because someone misunderstands something they have said or done. Thirty-seven percent of professors report feeling some pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics in their classes, and another 31 percent report a good or great deal of pressure—close to seven in 10 faculty should never feel pressure to avoid topics in their academic classes.
Read the rest of this piece at AEI.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Photo: collage of graph with image from NARA in Public Domain, modified.
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