Conservatives are staggeringly underrepresented among Yale University professors, as evidenced by their donations to political causes in 2025, the Yale Daily News has reported.
In an analysis of fundraising disclosures published on Wednesday, the student newspaper estimated that professors at the Ivy League school made 1,099 donations to federal political campaigns and partisan groups last year. Of those, not a single recipient represented the Republican Party, according to the outlet.
“97.6 percent of the donations went to Democrats, while the remaining 2.4 percent went to independent candidates or groups,” the Yale Daily News reported.
Speaking to the outlet, Carlos Eire, a history and religious studies professor who calls himself a “conservative in the traditional mold,” lamented that “there is very, very, very little intellectual diversity at Yale and at most institutions of higher learning when it comes to politics.”
Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis, by contrast, dismissed concerns over the apparent political imbalance among professors, arguing that most of them teach subjects in which political views are largely irrelevant.
In December 2025, the Buckley Institute, an independent nonprofit organization, issued a report according to which 82.3% of 1,666 examined Yale faculty members were either registered Democrats or primarily supported Democratic candidates.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who also temporarily served in the administration of US President Donald Trump last year, expressed dismay in a post on X.
“Literally zero Republicans in 30 Yale departments when half the country is Republican is truly outrageous bigotry!,” the entrepreneur wrote.
Since returning to the Oval Office last January, Trump has confronted multiple higher education institutions, accusing them of failing to address anti-Semitism on campus, as well as of refusing to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Last year, his administration placed over 60 universities under scrutiny and suspended federal funding to several Ivy League schools, including Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Princeton, and Cornell.