Nearly 90% of college students fake left-wing views, researchers find

Many college students are pretending to be liberals to please their peers and professors, a new study found.

Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman, both psychological researchers at Northwestern University, spent two years interviewing over 1,400 undergraduate students at their own school and the University of Michigan.

“We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes,” Romm and Waldman wrote.

Additionally, 78% of students admitted to self-censoring their beliefs on transgenderism, 72% on politics, and 68% on their family values.

“These students were not cynical, but adaptive,” the researchers observed. “In a campus environment where grades, leadership, and peer belonging often hinge on fluency in performative morality, young adults quickly learn to rehearse what is safe.”

While institutional policies – such as DEI initiatives or permitting pro-Hamas activism – may discourage students from sharing alternative viewpoints, some of the blame also belongs to teachers.

Even more than K-12 educators, college professors lean extremely liberal. In fact, a 2022 study found a whopping 93% of professors’ political donations went to Democrats.

Meanwhile, more than 80% of students confessed to misrepresenting their own views on homework assignments to please their professors.

Such self-censorship doesn’t stop with the classroom. 

Nearly half of the interviewees told Romm and Waldman they regularly hide their beliefs even from close friends for fear of “ideological fallout.”

The researchers argue this climate is cultivated in the name of inclusivity. But in reality, it forces students to self-censor their opinions and inhibits the purported purpose of education – seeking truth.

“Universities often justify these dynamics in the name of inclusion,” they explain. “We do not fault students for perpetuating a climate that is hostile to intellectual integrity. We fault the faculty, administrators, and institutional leaders who built a system that rewards moral theater while punishing inquiry.

“If higher education is to fulfill its promise as a site of intellectual and moral development,” they concluded, “it must re-center truth – not consensus – as its animating value.”