Nearly 50 percent of professors have gone on a tangent criticizing President Donald Trump, according to the results of a recent online poll of right-of-center students commissioned by The College Fix.
The question asked 1,000 Republican and Republican-leaning students: “Have any of your professors gone on a tangent criticizing President Donald Trump, even if the class they teach is not related to politics/government?”
Forty-six percent of the students replied “yes, they have,” while 54 percent responded “no, they have not.”
The poll was conducted in November exclusively for The College Fix by College Pulse, an online survey and analytics company focused on college students.
In the comments section of the survey, where students have the option to weigh in on the poll question, several replied that they had more than one professor who went off-topic to rant against the president.
The survey results found that students who are majoring in the sciences had the fewest number of professors go on rants to criticize Trump at 40 percent. On the flipside, students majoring in the arts and humanities and social sciences had the most, at 53 percent and 50 percent, respectively.
In the comments section of the survey, students weighed in on the poll question:
Washington State: I’m surprised it’s that low.
Binghamton: Orange man bad!
UC Riverside: I keep a tally on the front page of my notebook.
NC State: Yeah it’s kind of annoying. Whatever side you’re on, I came to learn about anything but a professors political opinions.
Oklahoma State: In my government class no less. No bias in college here.
CU Boulder: CU boulder is a great spot if you want to hear bullshit from professors about how bad this country is. Literally had one teacher cry in class when he got elected. I payed to learn, not hear propaganda from professors.
Ohio State: One of my personal favorites was a history professor who seemingly set aside 15 minutes every lecture to … discuss Trump while we were covering the last Great War. That was fun.
Central Michigan: I don’t care if you like him or not but when I’m in French class I would prefer to talk about French stuff. Maybe even French politics but I’m not paying you $25 an hour to give me your opinion about politics.
Clemson: There was one class where it was like everyday the professor had something new to criticize him for like they were just watching CNN 30 minutes before being at work and blabbing about whatever bs they were talking about that day.
Arizona State: None of my professors, save for both my history professors, have even mentioned the guy. Every last one of my high school teachers made a fuss over it for a week when he got elected and then again when he got inaugurated.
Miami University: I’m in a very social justice-heavy major, so all I ever hear is how Trump and the right are ruining the lives of women and racial/sexual minorities.
Oregon: The only professor I’ve had who did not whine about the president was my poly sci professor. I was stunned. I disagreed with the professor but I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to see a left leaning person on campus not be driven by hate of the right but by principle.
Arizona State: In a fucking math class no less.
Ohio State: I had a professor in a history course who would point out every moment in American history that proves Trump’s tactics are not unprecedented. He also made it clear with numerous historical examples that the media has nearly sole control over the public’s opinion of anything and anyone, including presidents. All that being said, I don’t know if he was for or against Trump because he somehow did a solid job at not taking any perspective to an emotional level.
Many surveys and analyses over the years have found that often 90 percent or more of professors are registered Democrats or donate to Democratic candidates.
The College Fix asked longtime Towson University Professor Richard Vatz, who recently wrote an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun that “anti-conservatism is increasing at most national education venues,” to weigh in on the poll results. He said professors have free speech rights, too.
“I find nothing wrong with professors opining on any matters, however tangential, and I would 100 percent oppose any effort by university officials to interfere with their (the professors’) freedom of speech, as long as they legitimately teach the subject matter of their course,” Vatz told The Fix.
He added that the underlying reason for the number of professors who trash Trump “is the prevailing liberal bias in universities which hire, promote, tenure, and reward liberal applicants and professors while rejecting conservative applicants and professors.”
Another scholar asked to weigh in on the results was Bucknell University Professor Alexander Riley, who came under fire recently for supporting a campus program that advances viewpoint diversity and free speech. He said he is not surprised by the results.
“I’ve heard the same thing from students here,” Riley told The College Fix via email. “And it’s not just ranting about Trump specifically. I think the ranting from the left about a range of issues, which was already a fairly widespread thing given the ideological skew in college faculties, has increased substantially since the 2016 election. The academic left is considerably more left than the typical Democrat outside the universities, and the level of their disbelief and panic when Trump won in 2016 was palpable.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that faculties have gotten even more left skewed in the 20 years I’ve been teaching,” he added. “The young left faculty today are nothing like the faculty leftists I knew in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Some of them today reject altogether even the idea of civil dialogue with those with whom they disagree–I’ve seen faculty on my campus say it’s white supremacist even to ask people to be civil and refrain from using vulgarities and personal insults in academic discussions because that’s requiring ‘historically disadvantaged people’ to ‘translate’ their own idioms into white male normative idioms.”
MORE: Examples of on-campus shade against Trump
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