Buckley Institute Shines Light on Political Bias in Yale Faculty and Admissions

Yale frequently highlights its commitment to diversity, but two new reports from the Buckley Institute suggest that political and ideological diversity remain strikingly absent in both the faculty ranks and the undergraduate admissions office. Buckley’s 2025 Faculty Political Diversity Report and The State of Political Diversity in the Yale Admissions Office reveal a university where one side of the political spectrum is overwhelmingly dominant.

The 2025 Faculty Political Diversity Report finds that across Yale’s 43 undergraduate departments, the Law School, and the School of Management, 82.3% of faculty are Democrats, 2.3% are Republicans, and 15.4% are unaffiliated or third party, a more than 36 to 1 Democrat-to-Republican ratio. 

27 of the 43 undergraduate departments have no Republicans at all, and in the humanities the imbalance is even sharper, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans by 72 to 1. The professional schools mirror this pattern: in the School of Management, 77.2% of faculty are Democrats and 1.0% Republicans; at Yale Law School, 93.9% are Democrats and 1.5% Republicans.

The Office of Undergraduate Admissions is similarly dominated by Democrats. The report found that 69% of admissions staff are Democrats and 31% are unaffiliated, with no Republicans. Looking at senior leadership in the admissions office, 83% are Democrats and 17% are unaffiliated, again with no Republicans. Political contributions follow the same trend: admissions staff gave roughly $17,956 to Democratic candidates or aligned organizations, compared to just $98 to Republicans.

“For the third year in a row, our research has highlighted the significant political and ideological imbalance among Yale’s faculty,” said Buckley Institute Founder and Executive Director Lauren Noble. “Yale has committed repeatedly over decades to fostering an environment conducive to open debate and discussion but has all but excluded diversity of opinion through its hiring process. With such a dramatic ideological chasm between the Yale campus and the country, it is not hard to see why trust for higher education is so low.”

Polling over the past fifteen years has found Democrats and Republicans each at roughly 30% of the electorate, with about 40% identifying as independent. Against that backdrop, the ideological breakdown of Yale’s faculty and admissions staff stands out. If Yale claims to champion intellectual diversity, a faculty and admissions staff that reflect genuine political and ideological diversity should be a central goal. 

Taking these findings into account, Fight for Yale’s Future’s petition calling for greater intellectual diversity at Yale urges university leadership to develop a plan to address the lack of intellectual diversity on the faculty, assess politicization in the classroom, and recommit to educating students for leadership in a politically diverse country. Readers who share these concerns are invited to sign the petition here. 

Full results from both reports can be found at buckleyinstitute.com/news.