Why Does Academia Have Radical Left Faculty? (Long Read)

Appeared in Substack on August 28, 2025

https://anandanandalingam649613.substack.com/p/why-does-academia-have-radical-left?r=o7w77

According to Donald J. Trump universities are full of “radical left” faculty and that educational institutions are “obsessed with indoctrinating America’s youth” about the world with leftist views and perspectives. Targeting “Marxist maniacs and lunatics”, President Trump has vowed to “fire the radical Left accreditors” and replace them with new ones to impose stricter standards, which include “defending the American tradition”. Vice President JD Vance goes even further: Since his 2021 speech titled “The Universities are the Enemy”, Vance has asserted that universities spread “deceit and lies” rather than truth and knowledge. He believes universities are dominated by left-wing ideologies and are hostile to conservative ideas and sees professors as “the enemy”. Vance advocates for “aggressively attacking” universities to reform them and make them more open to conservative viewpoints. The assertions of Trump and Vance are hyperboles at best.
Much of higher education consists of degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in addition to business and economics. Around 50% of the students graduating from every ivy league school major in a STEM field; Yale and Dartmouth are the only exceptions with around 30%. Nothing taught in STEM fields are value laden, either left-wing or right-wing. It would be disastrous if students learnt bridge building and human genomics using anything other than rigorous science and engineering principles. The same goes for areas like computer science, mathematics and chemistry – just imagine left wing STEM, I cannot either! At most US-News top-50 universities, if one includes business and economics to STEM, the percentage graduates in these subjects goes up to 65-70%.
The most popular majors in a business school are finance, accounting, operations management and marketing. In my over 40 years as a business school professor and dean, I have yet to encounter left-wing slants in these fields. In recent years, there has been a lot more education in equity, social and governance (ESG) but the motivating force behind this is to ensure that decision making by future business executives takes into account two things: (1) the pressure by the world at large to have a more equitable workplace that includes women and minorities, and that companies follow proper governance as required by law; and (2) attract young talent who today believe in work-life balance and justice for all and want ESG to be practiced in companies they want to join. Even with the emergence of ESG, In the case of business schools, of the more than 100 credits it takes to receive an undergraduate business degree, a class on ESG might take up 3 credits in some leading business schools and zero in most, i.e. less than 2-3%.
Economics is one of the most popular major in the top-50 universities with around 20% graduating in the field. Economics majors learn the principles of neo-classical economics from the get-go and almost no one veers off to radical left -wing economics anymore. In the late 20th century, several top-tier universities had Marxist economists, but their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing. If one looks at the Economics departments of any of the Ivy League universities or other top-tier universities like Stanford, MIT, Chicago, UC-Berkeley, UCLA and Michigan, together you could count in one hand the number of radical economists. Instead, you will find a number of truly conservative economists, the followers of Milton Friedman and rational choice theory. At Harvard, for example, you even have an economist Jeffrey Minton who studies the economics of libertarianism and another, David Yang, who examines authoritarian regimes very critically. It would be quite surprising if Economics majors graduated with Marxism and left-wing radicalism as their guiding principles.
There are indeed several world class scholars in Economics departments at universities who work on public policy issues like income distribution, poverty alleviation, international economics and labor economics where the reality on the ground leads to analytical conclusions that may be difficult for some people to swallow. For example, Raj Chetty who came to Harvard from Berkeley and is a MacArthur “genius” award winner works on how the U.S. can give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding. Chetty’s research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies including taxation, unemployment insurance and affordable housing to improve the economic outcomes of those who grow up in disadvantaged households. Roland Fryer, who at the age of 30 became the youngest African American to receive tenure from Harvard works on the racial achievement gap, the causes and consequences of distinctively black names, affirmative action, and the impact of the crack cocaine epidemic. In no other era would these research topics be considered “radical left” or not worthy of a top university like Harvard.
About a third of the students do not graduate in STEM or business or economics. Many of these students tend to study political science, history, sociology, anthropology, English and general social science and humanities. These fields help to develop critical thinking in students, and it is not surprising that several lawyers end up majoring in these topics before joining law firms. A vast majority of the federal congressmen and senators seem to have majored in social science and humanities as well. Faculty in these fields are not necessarily bound by principles of mathematics, physics and chemistry, nor by neo-classical economics. However, it should be said that much of modern research in social science and humanities is data driven, especially data that can be digitized and analyzed using principles of statistics and the power of computers. For example, there is a significant amount of data analytical work being done in political science departments on voting patterns and the impact of social media on elections, driven mostly by empirical research rather than theory.
While Science and mathematics were pursued over millennia in countries as disparate as India, China, Arabia, France and England, the social sciences took flight over the course of the nineteenth century. The social sciences are fields that study human behavior, society, and social relationships. At most universities, common majors within the social sciences include Anthropology (the study of human cultures, societies, and evolution), Political Science (study of government, politics, and power), Psychology (study of the mind, behavior, and mental processes), Sociology (study of society, social structures, and group behavior), and Geography (study of human populations, spaces, and environments). There are several subfields as well including international relations, public policy, archeology, criminology, and education. Economics, the analysis of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, is also frequently considered a social science. History is often classified as a “humanities” discipline although it could easily pass as a social sciences discipline because of what historians look at as the determining forces of the time evolution of peoples and nations. Academic research in social sciences has changed a lot over time and especially in the post-colonial era that started in the mid 20th century.
To take one example in social sciences, in the late nineteenth century Anthropology evolved from the biological approach of natural history, and studied the language, culture, physiology, and artifacts of human beings, typically living in European colonies, as though it was more or less equivalent to studying the flora and fauna of those places. For instance, Lewis Henry Morgan, the famed American social theorist could write monographs on both The League of the Iroquois and The American Beaver and His Works. This is also why the material culture of ‘civilized’ nations such as China have historically been displayed in fine arts museums alongside European art while artifacts from Africa or Native North American cultures were displayed in natural history museums with dinosaur bones and nature dioramas. Western Anthropologists considered the natives of the colonized countries to be inferior with exotic and quaint customs and culture and primarily focused on explaining to their home countries on how to interact with such people. Even those who gave the “natives” the benefit of the doubt in terms of the universality of social values, had a very paternalistic attitude towards those they studied.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the field of Anthropology took a reformist turn under the guidance and scholarship of people like Franz Boas, a professor at Columbia University whose approach was empirical and skeptical of overgeneralizations. For example, Boas studied immigrant children to demonstrate that biological race was not immutable, and that human conduct and behavior resulted from nurture, rather than nature. The more the scholars examined the world around without the cloak of imperialism and colonialism, the more they realized that the work that preceded them, especially in the late nineteenth century was full of prejudice. Research by anthropologists, especially in the United States, made it imperative for them to adopt an agenda of social reform and fight discrimination against immigrants, blacks, and indigenous peoples of the Americas. You could argue that the better one understands one’s fellow man, especially those living in the previously colonized countries, the more one realizes that there needed to be a radical change in perspectives and scholarship. Clearly the label of “radical” could fit in with those in most Anthropology departments across the United States, and perhaps even “leftists” if that label is in opposition to the traditional writings that preceded the new scholarship.
While Anthropology makes the clearest case for why there was a radical leftist leaning of the new scholars in the field, similar deductions could be made in other social science and humanities fields as well. In all cases, in every top-tier university, the metric of success is whether the professor has published well researched books and articles in the most prestigious university presses and academic journals. The books are reviewed by a cross section of referees before being accepted for publication. Academia tends to consider thought provoking books and articles that initiate discussion and debate to be much more worthy than scholarly output that has little or no impact. There has to be a wholesale radical left takeover of academia in the social science and humanities for there to be a transformational shift in the mission and vision of these fields. And there isn’t. In fact, if there is one thing that characterizes academia is that each and every professor wants to reflect their unique and original take on events and peoples and mostly argue and disagree with each other to create a space for themselves. Let us examine two areas of academic inquiry, History and English which would reflect what academic discourse in the social sciences and humanities is all about.
Historians come from various political perspectives, including right-wing, left-wing, and centrist views. While historians strive for objectivity in their research, their interpretations of historical events can be influenced by their own backgrounds, biases, and perspectives. E.H. Carr, one of the most eminent Historians wrote a very readable 1961 book called What is History where he challenges the idea that history is a simple collection of objective facts. Instead, Carr argues that history is a dialogue between the past and the present, shaped by the historian’s context, values, and interpretation. History is not neutral—it reflects the historian’s time, social setting, and ideology. Good history involves rigorous methods, logical coherence, and openness to revision. The last point is most important – good social science research evolves over time as more and better information is discovered or revealed, pretty much like the research ethos in the natural sciences.
For the longest time, most historians had a purely individualistic or “great man” view of history. The history of countries and regions became a history of kings (and sometimes queens) who molded how events unfolded within their countries and around the world. That way of writing history became passe, for the most part, in the mid 20th century. Many academic historians went beyond describing events to explaining why they happened. There were multiple causes for historical evolution, and they were interconnected. The debate between the historians in academia, something that continues to this day, was about the pertinent reasons for countries and peoples to evolve through time. Some historians stressed the role of society, change and progress. Some focused on marginalized groups and social movements. Marxist historians focused on class struggle and economic inequality. As Carr wrote, a historian’s political beliefs can influence their choice of research topics, their interpretations of historical events, and their engagement with contemporary political issues. However, academia is full of historians with different political views who might focus on different aspects of history, such as political institutions, cultural movements, or the history of ideas.
The best way to characterize History departments at universities is to say that indeed there are radical leftist faculty there, but they are one group among many. Of course, while historians of the 19th and early 20th century were bound by conservative traditionalist perspectives, since the mid 20th century and with independent nations and non-colonial thinking emerging, congruent with this global change, university history departments have also embraced a more progressive, one might call “leftist” orientation. This is a natural evolution of the progress of humankind, distribution of political and economic power, and of diversity of thought, and one that should be celebrated rather than berated.
The main “humanities” fields consist of philosophy, literature, language and linguistics, religious studies, art history, music, theater and performance studies, classics, and cultural studies. Sometimes history is lumped under “humanities” rather than “social science”. Humanities are concerned with meaning, values, ideas, and cultural expression. For Example: How did Shakespeare’s plays shape ideas of power and identity? Social Sciences are concerned with human behavior, social structures, and institutions, often seeking generalizable patterns. For example: How do political systems influence voting behavior? The humanities deepen our understanding of values and perspectives, while the social sciences explain how societies function and change.
Over time, more women and minorities joined the faculty ranks in the Humanities. So it was not surprising that values, perspectives, and indeed scholarly thinking challenged the former supremacy of work by white men. Many different voices that better reflected the United States and the world at large entered the discussion, debate and scholarship. To some these were “radical” views, and certainly they were as a departure from the old school orthodoxy. One could argue that in the Humanities the “left-wing” shift took place because of enlightenment rather than ideology. Even so, there have always been disparate voices arguing different points of view in every different field of the Humanities. One of the most important examples of the fact that there is vigorous discourse in academia rather than a one-sided “leftist” view is the reception of Edward Said’s work.
One of the most influential books in the Humanities is the 1978 tome Orientalism by Edward Said who was an English professor at Columbia University in New York. Orientalism challenged the neutrality of Western scholarship about the East and purported to expose its political motivations. It laid the foundation for postcolonial studies, inspiring generations of scholars to critique how knowledge and representation are linked to power. Borrowing from the famous French philosopher Michel Foucault, Said argued that knowledge and power were intertwined, that the West produced a body of knowledge about the East that reinforced Western superiority and Eastern inferiority. “Orientalism” was not just about academic study of the East—it is a system of representation that pervades literature, art, scholarship, and politics. One could say that Edward Said’s work on Orientalism spawned work in different fields of the Humanities which questioned the basic premises across these fields.
The book also sparked controversy, with critics arguing that Said overgeneralized or ignored the diversity of Western scholarship. Despite the book’s wide-ranging influence, some have taken issue with the arguments and assumptions of Orientalism. Critics include Albert Hourani (A History of the Arab Peoples, 1991), Robert Graham Irwin (For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies, 2006), Nikki Keddie (An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 1968), and Bernard Lewis (“The Question of Orientalism”, Islam and the West, 1993). American classicist Bruce Thornton dismissed Orientalism as an “incoherent amalgam of dubious postmodern theory, sentimental Third Worldism, glaring historical errors, and Western guilt”.
The point is that universities are a place where new research unearths new ideas, diversity of thought happens as different groups, especially women and minorities join academia, but debate rages on from different angles and perspectives, right-wing and left-wing alike. It is also clear that very few students major in Humanities; commensurately there are very few professors in these fields. In 2024, Stanford had about 15% majors in the Humanities; Yale, which has one of the highest Humanities enrolments had around 20%. The faculty percentage in Humanities was similar, although the striking statistic in this case is that Yale’s faculty in Humanities had dropped 35% in the past 20 years! So even if one calls every faculty member who does research and teaching in the Humanities a left wing radical, something that would be disputed by a whole host of faculty who would be loath to be labeled that way, we are only talking about 20-25% of the professors.
The answer to the central question, “Why Does Academia Have Radical Left Faculty?” is two-fold: First, much of academia is filled with faculty who teach principles of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, economics, statistics and so on, and most students major in these topics. None of the faculty, which compromise more than 70% of academia, could be considered “radical leftists” by any stretch of the imagination. Second, a minority of faculty (less than 25%) are in social science and humanities and perhaps a significant number of them could be labeled “radical leftists” although the label is too sweeping to make sense. The reason for the label is that these faculty are “radical” in the sense that they are challenging old orthodoxies that pervaded academia for a long time, at least until the collapse of colonialism in the mid 20th century. Knowledge and enlightenment are threatening to the old order and labelling the faculty who have views that challenge long-held beliefs as “leftists” feeds into the general paranoia in the United States about socialism and Marxism. The views of some social science and humanities professors are certainly radical, even revolutionary, in terms of wanting to add new thinking to the former beliefs developed during a time of colonialism and imperialism. As one gathered more information and obtained more knowledge, it is only natural that old thinking is challenged, and new orthodoxies are created. If this epistemology could be considered “progress” in the STEM fields, why not in the social sciences and humanities?