Ivy League Faculties Fail The ‘Sodom And Gomorrah’ Test

Elite universities have been so thoroughly captured by the left that they are no longer capable of reforming themselves to offer an ideologically balanced and intellectually diverse education.

Declaring that institutions are beyond repair should not be done lightly. The Bible offers an instructive lesson on this. Before judging the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham bargains with God so that the cities would be spared if even 10 righteous people could be found there. If there are fewer than 10, the cities lack the critical mass required for making improvements.

Let’s apply the Sodom and Gomorrah test to the Ivy League. If we can find even 10 openly conservative professors at these universities, it might be possible for them to form a critical mass and make progress in getting their institutions to hire other conservative scholars to achieve meaningful ideological balance. Without even 10, these universities would not only lack the motivation to seek greater ideological diversity, but they would have great difficulty identifying quality conservative scholars and convincing them to join an organization without any like-minded colleagues. The point here is not that conservative faculty are the righteous ones, but that a critical mass of conservative professors is necessary to achieve internal reform.

To search for these 10 conservative scholars who might redeem the Ivy League, I looked at campaign contributions from people who described themselves as professors at these eight universities in support of Donald Trump during the most recent election. There were only two professors, both at Cornell University, from the entire Ivy League who contributed to Trump’s campaign.

At the other seven Ivy League universities, there wasn’t a single professor who contributed to Donald Trump. By comparison, there were around 900 contributions from Ivy League professors to Kamala Harris’ campaign.

Of course, there could be conservative professors who didn’t make a campaign contribution or didn’t even vote for Trump. Rick Hess and Riley Fletcher recently analyzed the faculty websites of 10 selective universities, including Harvard and Princeton, to classify professors as being on the left, center, or right. At none of these universities could they find more than five professors who are ideologically on the right. Again, elite universities fail the Sodom and Gomorrah test, with none of them coming close to having 10 identifiably conservative faculty members.

Given that half of the American electorate supported Donald Trump, the inability of elite universities to have even 10 conservative professors is a political as well as an educational problem. Despite being nominally private universities, the Ivy League receives several billion dollars each year from taxpayers in research grants and student loans. This includes $1.8 billion in overhead on grants that university administrators can use as a slush fund to pay for anything they want, as well as $344 million in subsidies for student loans beyond what is expected to be paid back.

With full control of the federal government and most state governments, Republicans may judge leftist-captured universities and, like a wrathful God, wipe those institutions clean of any taxpayer funding. Even wealthy private universities are highly exposed to Republicans raining the fire and brimstone of funding cuts on them.

According to an analysis by Stand Columbia, the university has $3.5 billion, or 55 percent of its budget, that could be placed in jeopardy by the incoming Trump administration. Even with more than $14 billion in its endowment, Columbia would be financially devastated by significant cuts or the elimination of government funding. Every other Ivy League and selective university is similarly vulnerable.

If universities are determined to have faculty that are ideological monoliths, they can find students and private donors who are willing to indulge this indoctrination and pay for it themselves. These institutions are not entitled to a dime of taxpayer money, especially when they have displayed nothing but contempt for half of the American electorate.

And taxpayers should be untroubled if these universities are unable to survive on their own. New universities will arise, and others that can meet the Sodom and Gomorrah test will reform themselves to offer an intellectually diverse and ideologically balanced education.

Jay P. Greene is a senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation.