Democrat professors outnumber Republicans 7 to 1 at U. Florida

ANALYSIS: Zero Republicans found in English, sociology, economics, and anthropology departments

Democrat professors at the University of Florida appear to outnumber Republicans by seven to one, a College Fix analysis found.

Additionally, The Fix could not find any Republican professors in four departments.

The Fix conducted its research using voter registration data and identified 236 party-affiliated professors out of 325. Of those 236, 161 were Democrats and 21 were Republican, while 54 were listed with third parties, independent, or no party affiliation. The Fix obtained voter registration lists from Alachua County through a public records request.

Of the 236 political affiliations found, 9 percent of professors who are registered to vote are Republicans, while 68 percent are Democrats, according to the analysis. In other words, the ratio is about seven Democrats for every one Republican.

The Fix analyzed 11 departments and schools within the public university: the English, sociology, economics, political science, chemistry, gender, sexuality, and women’s studies, anthropology, and marketing departments; and the schools of art and digital world institute, music, and theater and dance.

Out of the 11 that The Fix looked at, the English, sociology, economics, and anthropology departments did not appear to have any Republican professors.

The analysis only included professors, including associate professors and assistant professors within each department, but not graduate student teaching assistants or professor emeriti. The Fix cross-referenced against public information, such as curriculum vitae and research papers, to match names with registrations. Other information, including estimated birth year, was matched against birthday data included in the election statistics.

Professors who teach in multiple departments were only counted once in their primary discipline to protect their privacy and to avoid double counting. There may be crossover in some departments as professors are listed in one department but may teach classes under another major.

Patricia Sohn, a political science professor, shared her thoughts on the analysis with The College Fix in a recent email. She is one of two Republican professors that The Fix identified in her department.

Sohn said the university has a good reputation for “respecting freedom of speech, and intellectual freedom.” She told The Fix she used to be a Democrat and, for many years, was an Independent.

“The Democratic party in the South is more conservative than it is in the North. So, some of the numbers that you are seeing most likely do not reflect all of the diversity of political opinions that I see on campus,” she said.

“I also believe that some faculty are more conservative (probably moderately) than they are willing to say. All in all, I think that we have a more robust diversity across the political spectrum on my campus — and others that I have visited for conferences, etc., — than the numbers suggest,” Sohn told The Fix.

Sohn emphasized that she is “not an expert in American politics — just a citizen on this count,” and “I do not represent my University in speaking.”

MORE: Zero Republican professors found across six humanities departments at U. Oklahoma

David Siroky, another Republican in the department, expressed skepticism about the findings in response to The Fix.

“When looking into such issues, it is helpful to have more numbers at hand that you have provided, and also to be familiar with Simpson’s paradox … and you will immediately recognize some issues that must be considered when evaluating the issue of partisan registration/ideology,” Siroky said in a recent email.

The paradox that Siroky referred to is “a statistical phenomenon where an association between two variables in a population emerges, disappears or reverses when the population is divided into subpopulations,” according to an “Encyclopedia of Philosophy” entry at Stanford University.

The Fix also reached out to the university media relations office several times by phone and email and emailed the chairs of the departments that appear to have zero Republican professors, but heard nothing back.

The findings align with similar investigations of other universities’ faculty, Boise State University Professor Scott Yenor told The Fix in an email this week. The political scientist studies DEI in Republican states, including Florida and Alabama.

“Some disciplines like communication and sociology have ratios of one conservative for every 200 faculty member according to studies,” the political science professor said. “In order to find conservative faculty members, researchers actually just call up one particularly famous conservative, sociologist, and ask him to tell them about friends that he might have who share his views.

“That is how rare conservatives are in many disciplines,” he told The Fix.

Yenor said the situation can be changed, but it must be an intentional effort.

“Just as Yale law school has recently made an effort to hire conservatives, so could disciplines where conservatives can be found. But other disciplines are nearly without conservatives. Nothing can be done in those circumstances except, perhaps, to take the disciplines off the university,” he said.

Other recent Fix analyses include North Carolina State University where seven humanities departments did not have one identifiable Republican professor.

Additionally, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has six humanities departments without any identifiable Republicans. In total, there are 203 identified Democrats compared to just six Republicans, The Fix reported.

Similarly, there are six humanities departments at University of Oklahoma without any Republican professors, according to a review of 13 majors in total, another recent Fix analysis found.

College Fix research has found similar results with faculty members’ political donations. A 2020 analysis of University of Wisconsin professors found 98 percent of federal donations went to Democrats.

Another recent analysis by the Brown Daily Herald found Kamala Harris and Joe Biden received almost $62,000 in campaign donations from Brown University faculty and staff since January 2023, while Donald Trump received about $272.

The Fix is not publishing its spreadsheet of professors’ political affiliations to protect their identities.

Breakdown:

English Department
Dem: 23
Rep: 0
Unaffiliated: 4
Unknown: 6

Sociology Department
Dem: 10
Rep: 0
Unaffiliated: 4
Unknown: 4

Economics Department
Dem: 6
Rep: 0
Unaffiliated: 1
Unknown: 11

Political Science Department
Dem: 20
Rep: 2
Unaffiliated: 9
Unknown: 9

Chemistry Department
Dem: 24
Rep: 4
Unaffiliated: 11
Independent: 1
Unknown: 21

Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Dem: 5
Rep: 0
Unaffiliated: 1
Coalition with a Purpose Party: 1
Unknown: 4

Anthropology Department
Dem: 13
Rep: 0
Unaffiliated: 5
Unknown: 3

Marketing Department
Dem: 5
Rep: 2
Unaffiliated: 2
Unknown: 6

School of Art and Digital Worlds Institute
Dem: 17
Rep: 1
Unaffiliated: 6
Unknown: 13

School of Music
Dem: 24
Rep: 11
Unaffiliated: 7
Unknown: 4