Professors at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill are 12 times more likely to be a registered Democrat than a registered Republican, The College Fix reports. In 16 departments, there are no Republican professors whatsoever.
Researchers from The College Fix, a conservative news and commentary site, searched North Carolina’s public voter database to find the political party registrations of UNC Chapel Hill’s 1,355 professors. Many of these were registered as unaffiliated, but of those who were registered with a party, 615 were registered Democrats and 50 were registered Republicans. In 16 out of the school’s 34 departments, there were zero registered Republicans.
Despite these findings, Jim Gregory, spokesman for UNC Chapel Hill, told The College Fix that the university “does not hire faculty based upon their political affiliation, but instead upon academic merit.” He said further that the university tries to achieve diversity “across all domains” but that doing so is “extremely difficult.”
The political leanings of UNC Chapel Hill’s faculty reflect those of broader academia. In 2012, Campus Reform reported that 96 percent of political donations from Ivy League faculty went to the Obama campaign. According to a survey by sociologist George Yancey, about 30 percent of academics say they would be less likely to hire someone whom they knew was a Republican.
The College Fix reports the following UNC Chapel Hill departments as having no registered Republican professors:
African-American Studies
American Studies
Anthropology
Art
Asian Studies
Biology
Classics
Communications
Environmental Science
Genetics
Geology
History
Linguistics
Marine Sciences
Public Policy
Women’s Studies
The department with the most registered Republicans is the Global Business Center. Even there, however, Democratic professors outnumber Republican professors 41-21. The department with the most Democrats is biology, with 60. No biology professors were found to be registered Republicans.
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