Politics of the professoriate: Longitudinal evidence from a state public university system’s universe of faculty

Over the past decade, Democrats and Republicans have grown increasingly polarized in their views of American higher education. Republicans in particular have become far more critical of the political and social views of faculty. In this paper, we thus investigate whether the commonly held belief of a politically liberal professoriate is true for the universe of faculty employed by an entire state’s public university system. Using administrative data that allows us to identify with precision the political behaviors over time for professors overall and by key institutional and individual characteristics, we provide novel evidence on the politics of faculty. Though professors are civically engaged and more likely to be registered Democrats, substantial variation exists in partisanship by department of affiliation, with lower rates of Democratic affiliation observed for those working in the bench sciences. Furthermore, analyses of over a decade of data reveal that faculty are becoming less partisan over time, with greater rates of disaffiliation from the Democratic party. We document that faculty diverge from other voters in the state; those living in the most educated zip codes, while less Democratic than professors, have left the party at much lower rates over the same time period. All together, our results reveal far more nuance in the partisan alignment of faculty, which has implications for the coverage of politics in higher education by popular media and its potential impact on government efforts to expand political control over postsecondary institutions and challenge their independent governance.