Puncturing commonly held perceptions of academics as uniformly liberal-minded, a new study from Brandeis University reveals that most faculty members at American research universities are not politically active, including on issues related to Israel, do not endorse antisemitic statements and hold a wide array of viewpoints on controversial issues.

“The one-dimensional portrayal of U.S. universities as bastions of the political left filled with ‘woke’ faculty who impose their views on students is at odds with the findings of this study,” wrote the authors of the study, “Ideology in the Classroom: How Faculty at U.S. Universities Navigate Politics and Pedagogy Amid Federal Pressure Over Viewpoint Diversity and Antisemitism,” which was published on Tuesday.

The study was conducted by researchers Graham Wright, Shahar Hecht and Leonard Saxe from Brandeis’ Steinhardt Social Research Institute and Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. It is the third study conducted by the center analyzing the college campus environment following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel. It surveyed over 2,200 faculty from nearly 150 R1 research universities across the country on their perspectives on several issues, including racism, climate change, American democracy and the Russian-Ukrainian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

“They’re people who are dedicated to whatever their field is. They’re not very political. They’re not political activists most of the time, and most of them are not responsible for the failure of universities to deal with the antisemitism problem on campus,” Saxe told eJewishPhilanthropy ahead of the publication.

The study analyzed what role faculty play in campus antisemitism, as well as broader political and educational opinions among faculty — in light of the Trump administration’s battle with numerous higher education institutions, Saxe said. 

“The goal of it is to help develop better ways for universities and university faculty to deal with the current situation, the pressures from the government, as well as the need to teach better and to avoid promoting antisemitism and discrimination,” he said. 

Certain findings — that faculty in the humanities are likely to hold more liberal attitudes than those in the sciences — were in line with commonly held conceptions. However, other facets, such as the fact that a majority of faculty reported being interested in teaching a variety of perspectives on controversial topics, challenge common perceptions of academic ideologues, according to Saxe. 

The expertise of faculty should be leveraged to combat antisemitism and other forms of hatred. “Faculty are allies, they’re not enemies,” he told eJP. 

According to the study, a climate of antisemitism on campus is “more likely to be driven by the actions of a very small number of faculty members with extreme views, as opposed to the actions of whole fields or disciplines.”

The study found that the vast majority of faculty (90%) were not hostile to either Jews or Israel. Asked whether they agree with six questions aimed at assessing hostility towards Jews and Israel, 3% of non-Jewish faculty were found to be hostile to Israel, while 7% were hostile towards Jews. 

Of the 3% who were deemed “hostile to Israel,” most respondents (97%) responded that they would not “want to collaborate with any scholars that support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.” Of those in the “hostile to Jews” category, 93% agreed with the claim that “Jews have too much power.” Extremely liberal faculty were more likely to be hostile to Israel, while those with conservative political views were more likely to be hostile to Jews. 

Recent polling highlights a significant generational gap in perspectives on Israel, with younger generations holding more negative views. In this study, 90% of faculty surveyed were older than 35. According to Saxe, findings from the last study indicate that for a majority of Jewish students, antisemitism can be most closely tied to their peers, not faculty members. 

“[Faculty is] not responsible in the sense that they’re teaching an ideology which students are taking and running to the streets with,” said Saxe. “When we ask students what the antisemitism is that they feel, it’s from other students who cut off social relations, other students who don’t let them into the cafeteria, who make the murder, the kidnapping of Israelis out to be some great humanitarian, justice-seeking act.”