Although U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha, both hold degrees from Yale University, it remains difficult today to find professors on Yale's campus who openly support the Republican Party. This seemingly ironic reality reflects the pronounced ideological imbalance within America's elite universities and subtly signals that the postwar theoretical social science framework constructed in the West may be facing a crisis, threatened by the sweeping tides of a new era.
According to a recent deep dive by the Yale Daily News, Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings for the 2025 election cycle reveal that nearly 1,100 Yale employees made over 7,000 political contributions. Among those identifying specifically as "professors", the ideological lean was total, with 97.6% of donations went to Democratic candidates or causes. The remaining 2.4% went to independent candidates. Not a single Yale professor, according to the records, chose to financially support the Republican Party.
This means that Yale has effectively purged the GOP from its faculty ranks. While 17 university employees overall did contribute to Republican causes, not one held the title of professor. These findings mirror a December 2025 report by the Buckley Institute, a conservative think tank, which audited 1,666 faculty members across 43 undergraduate departments, the Law School, and the School of Management. Their data was equally stark. 82.3% were registered Democrats or primary supporters, while Republicans accounted for less than 3%.
These figures closely align with the Yale Faculty Political Diversity Report released in December 2025 by the conservative think tank the Buckley Institute. The report reviewed 1,666 faculty members across 43 undergraduate departments at Yale University, as well as Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management. It found that 82.3% were registered Democrats or primarily supported the Democratic Party, fewer than 3% were Republicans, and approximately 15% identified as independents.
Even more striking is that, among the 43 undergraduate departments surveyed, 27 had no professors who supported the Republican Party at all. In some departments, the ratio of Democratic to Republican supporters exceeded 36 to 1. Even the School of Management, often regarded as comparatively pragmatic, showed a clear imbalance when included in the study, where 77.2% of its faculty supported the Democratic Party, while just 1% identified as Republicans.
Yale has effectively become a bastion of political correctness. Renowned legal analyst Jonathan Turley noted on his blog that this extreme disparity demonstrates just how "unwelcome" conservative thought has become on elite campuses.
Turley wrote that, "Yale, however, is now a perfect echo chamber where moderate, libertarian, and conservative students (if they can make it into the school) are left to self-censor and avoid backlash for their views". He further emphasized that this growing polarization in campus politics stands in stark contrast to the broader political landscape of the United States. Gallup polling data show that in 2024, as many as 43% of Americans identified as independents, far exceeding those who identified as Republicans (28%) or Democrats (28%). This gap shows the widening divide between the ivory tower and society at large.
Yale's official response remains predictably bureaucratic. Reacting to the Buckley Institute report, the university maintained that its hiring and tenure processes focus strictly on "academic excellence, achievement, and teaching," asserting that personal politics play no role. Yet, such pale justifications appear particularly unconvincing in the face of stark data and hard facts.
In fact, this is not the first time Yale University has found itself at the center of public controversy. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a sudden attack on Israel, killing more than a thousand innocent civilians and creating a humanitarian tragedy that shocked the world.
In the aftermath, Yale University and other Ivy League schools performed disappointingly. They not only failed to immediately condemn Hamas's acts of terrorism, but even tacitly allowed, or in some cases encouraged, student-led protest movements that targeted Israel, which was engaging in defensive countermeasures.
In one notable instance, a Yale professor's attempt to publish an op-ed in the Yale Daily News exposing the horrific details committed by Hamas was met with heavy-handed editorial censorship. Even Elon Musk posted X that the lack of Republican representation across 30 departments an "outrageous bias."
It is no longer just Yale. This includes the entire American academic world, Harvard included, where self-styled intellectuals assume they can speak for countless members of the U.S. middle class, demanding that people strive for the lofty ideals of these academic elites and contribute to their vision. Yet as the wheels of history keep turning, the arrogance and dogmatism of these elites are meeting a powerful backlash from a new generation of young people.
Gen Z is finding its own ways to challenge this rigid system, with the most direct and powerful approach being to forgo college altogether. An increasing number of young Americans now believe that a college degree is not worth the cost. A poll conducted at the end of 2025 showed that roughly 63% of registered voters feel that the price of a four-year college degree far exceeds its actual value.
In the long term, the crisis of trust in higher education in American society is deepening, most directly manifested in the long-term decline in college enrollment rates and recent structural fluctuations. Relevant statistics show that since reaching its historical peak in 2010, undergraduate enrollment in the U.S. has been on a continuous downward trend. The proportion of high school graduates going directly to college has also plummeted from 70% in 2016 to 62% in 2022.
A new education industry report released in January 2026 shows that total enrollment in U.S. higher education in the fall of 2025 was approximately 19.4 million, a slight increase of 1.0% from the previous year. While the total number of students increased slightly, this was primarily driven by community colleges and short-term certificate programs. At the same time, the enrollment at traditional private four-year universities continued to decline, a trend unlikely to reverse.
In stark contrast, American Gen Z is driving a wave of "anti-degree" sentiment, turning instead toward more practical paths for personal and professional development. At its core, this shift represents a fundamental challenge to the traditional model of higher education.
An increasing number of Gen Z students are opting for shorter, more targeted vocational training programs, skill certification courses, or are entering the workforce directly to gain hands-on experience. Education industry data from 2025 shows that enrollment in short-term skills training programs offered by community colleges surged 28% year over year. According to a 2025 survey conducted by the Resume Builder platform of more than 1,400 Gen Z, 42% of respondents are engaged in, or actively seeking, blue-collar technical jobs, and notably, 37% of these respondents already hold a bachelor's degree.
In this regard, ANBOUND's founder Kung Chan noted that Western postwar theoretical social sciences are essentially hollow. While they may appear polished and impressive on the surface, they are no more than sandcastles on the beach. These systems, although seemingly rigorous and comprehensive, are in fact fragile constructs. They are carefully built with paradigms, schools of thought, academic lineage, and claims to authority, yet lacking a solid foundation. Because their base is weak, the tides of history can easily sweep them away. Kung Chan argues that in today's era of de-globalization, Western postwar theoretical social sciences urgently require a thorough theoretical restructuring, a transformation that Gen Z is initiating and will be completed by them.
Kung Chan believes that theories originating in the unique historical context of the postwar era have become largely irrelevant in today's world, shaped by the confluence of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the energy crisis, and the broader wave of de-globalization. With artificial intelligence transforming production relations and Gen Z redefining societal values, most of these theories are unable to withstand the test of practical application.
Therefore, Kung Chan further emphasizes that while the left-leaning intellectuals in today's American universities seemingly occupy the high ground of academic discourse, they are in reality struggling for their last foothold. The theoretical frameworks and values they rely on once served as the intellectual foundation in an era dominated by the establishment, but in a non-establishment era, they are being abandoned by a new generation of young people. When the tide recedes, the sandcastles on the beach will inevitably vanish, while a new generation of theoretical systems rooted in contemporary realities and responsive to the demands of the times will quietly take shape amid the currents of history.
Final analysis conclusion:
In the face of broader historical forces, Yale University's politically one-sided environment subtly signals that the Western postwar theoretical social science framework, though polished and impressive on the surface, is ultimately no more than a sandcastle on the beach. These systems may appear logically rigorous and grand in scope, but in reality, they are fragile edifices. In essence, they are carefully packaged with paradigms, schools of thought, academic lineage, and claims to authority, yet fundamentally hollow. Today, a new generation of theoretical frameworks is emerging, while the old frameworks are destined to be abandoned.
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Xia Ri is an Industry Researcher at ANBOUND, an independent think tank.
