2 weeks Ago
WHEN I ask friends to guess what percentage of Dartmouth College faculty donate to Democrats versus Republicans, they typically land somewhere between 70% and 90%. That would make sense — Dartmouth has historically been one of the more conservative institutions in the Ivy League — but the real numbers are shocking. According to Federal Election Commission data, of the 57,559 political contributions made by those listing “Dartmouth College” as an employer, 98.
9% went to Democrats. Just 1.1% went to Republicans.
Strip out contributions from custodians and dining hall staff, and the Republican share drops to 0.7%. In the subset of data from 2024 there were 7,952 donations.
Of these, 7,741 or 97.37% went to the Democrats and 209, or 2.62%, went to the Republicans.
Remove the conservative dining hall staff donations and the GOP numbers dropped to 51, or just .64%. This isn’t just a skew.
It’s a red flag. I say this not to provoke outrage, but to raise a serious question: What does this level of ideological homogeneity mean for academic freedom and open discourse? Curious about how this could be, I sat down with Professor Robert Hansen of the Tuck School of Business — one of the few Republican donors listed. Over lunch at Lou’s in Hanover, he offered a few theories.
First, self-selection: Conservative academics may prefer institutions like Texas A&M or Auburn, where their views don’t put them on the defensive. Second, hiring bias: Departments may favor progressive candidates, whether consciously or not. Unrequired but often submitted DEI statements, for example, can serve as ideological screens.
And finally, there’s fear. If a conservative is hired, they may self-censor to protect their careers. I heard something similar from Professor Ron Lasky of the Thayer School of Engineering.
He said he “came out” as a conservative about 18 months ago and invited students to ask him about it. Only a few have taken him up on the offer. Most are more interested in talking about internships and jobs.
That’s a refreshing sign of intellectual maturity, but it doesn’t change the problem of faculty skew. On the student side, I spoke with Jack Coleman ’26, a leader of the Dartmouth Conservatives, he’s active in the Dartmouth Political Union (DPU), which hosts thoughtful debates with participants from across the spectrum. I’ve attended several and been impressed.
But Jack told me something telling: I n three years at Dartmouth he’s never met a professor who openly identifies as Republican. This matters because political diversity enriches the academic experience. If students are only exposed to one side of the ideological spectrum — especially in fields like history, literature, political science — they are not being fully educated.
They’re being indoctrinated. The consequences are visible. In 2020, Republican candidate Corky Messner cancelled a visit due to security issues.
In 2022, something similar happened when provocateur Andy Ngo’s campus event went from public to Zoom at the last minute. In January, student Malcolm Mahoney ’26 wrote in the New Hampshire Union Leader about the backlash he faced for trying to host a forum on transgender athletes in sports. These are not the signs of a campus that values open discourse.
There is good news. Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Coddling of the American Mind,” recently said that we are emerging from a period of “woke” cultural hysteria such as those described in Charles Mackay’s classic “Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” The Chinese Cultural Revolution is a more recent example.
Furthermore, Dartmouth’s new president, Sian Beilock, has emphasized the need for “brave spaces” over “safe spaces” — a signal that the college is willing to engage with difficult conversations. She recently hired Matt Raymer ’03, a former chief counsel for the RNC, as Dartmouth’s senior vice president and general counsel. The appointment ruffled feathers, but it’s a bold move that could help Dartmouth avoid the ideological scrutiny now threatening elite schools like Columbia University.
Lastly, Dartmouth’s firm “Policy on Institutional Restraint” is a bold attempt by President Beilock to avoid unnecessary controversy and refocus Dartmouth on its mission of educating young people and future leaders. I am excited to announce that on May 8, the DPU and Dartmouth Free Speech Alliance will host Connor Murnane from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression to assess the state of free speech at Dartmouth. Ideally this lays the foundation for a leap in Dartmouth’s FIRE ranking.
There has already been a palpable shift in Dartmouth’s culture, and I hope it continues. But after more than a decade of using DEI rubrics as ideological gatekeepers, there’s still a long way to go — faculty donation patterns highlight the depth of the problem. Still, for the first time in years, I’m optimistic Dartmouth is heading the right way.
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