Of the Class of 2025 who supported a candidate, regardless of whether they were eligible to vote, 87 percent supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election — 3.1 percent fewer than Class of 2024 students who indicated they planned to vote for Biden last year.
Those supporting Donald Trump in the election dropped from 7.1 to 6.3 between the two class years. Of those who supported a candidate, 6.7 percent of the Class of 2025 supported Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins.
Freshmen not affiliated with any political party rose by 3.3 percent, from 22.6 percent in the Class of 2024 to 25.9 percent in the Class of 2025. The proportion of Democratic freshmen decreased from 57.4 percent last year to 55 percent this year, while the proportion of Republican freshmen decreased from 5.2 percent to 5 percent. Independents make up 11.8 percent of the Class of 2025 and libertarians 1.3 percent.
The proportion of freshmen in the Class of 2025 identifying as liberal remained unchanged from last year — 72.4 percent. Those identifying as “very liberal” rose from 31.7 percent of the class to 35.2 percent between the Class of 2024 and 2025.
Survey of 78% of incoming class of 2025 at Harvard via @thecrimson reveals, as usual, many fascinating details. The lack of political diversity remains striking, and has increased in past 5 years. https://t.co/R2QTAgFUO9 pic.twitter.com/zYfiMqsQAc
— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) September 28, 2021
Agnostics (23.9%) and atheists (17.4%) outnumber Protestants (14.5%).
Is left-wing authoritarianism real? Sally Satel at AEI:
An ambitious new study on the subject by the Emory University researcher Thomas H. Costello and five colleagues should settle the question. It proposes a rigorous new measure of antidemocratic attitudes on the left. And, by drawing on a survey of 7,258 adults, Costello’s team firmly establishes that such attitudes exist on both sides of the American electorate. (One co-author on the paper, I should note, was Costello’s adviser, the late Scott Lilienfeld—with whom I wrote a 2013 book and numerous articles.) Intriguingly, the researchers found some common traits between left-wing and right-wing authoritarians, including a “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism.”
A FIRE survey of college students:
- More than 80% of students report censoring their viewpoints at their colleges at least some of the time, with 21% saying they censor themselves often.
- More than 50% of students identify racial inequality as a difficult topic to discuss on their campus.
- Two thirds of students (66%) say it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus, and almost one in four (23%) say it is acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech.
