With five days to go till the US elections, we take a closer look at the academics supporting Trump and Trumpism in this extract from David L Swartz’s new book, Academic Trumpists 

What does our analysis of the academic Trumpists in fact show? Our findings are based on an illustrative sample of 109 scholars who advocate as public intellectuals for Trump. No doubt many other scholars voted for and/or support Trump but have been less public about it. Indeed, one of the consistent claims made by many Trumpists is that they are taking a stand that is very unpopular in the liberal academy; hence, one does not find more junior and adjunct faculty as public voices for Trump. The Trumpists view the academy as a liberal cultural regime that suppresses and penalizes conservative voices. This view is echoed by several of the 153 conservative professors interviewed by Shields and Dunn (2016).[1] To go public in support of Trump, so the argument goes, might well create negative repercussions down the road for careers in the academy. We do not have the data necessary to fully assess that claim but do note that virtually all the academic signers on the October 2016 list supporting Trump were tenured faculty. However, we also note that Shields and Dunn report that conservative professors find in general that the academy is a congenial place to work – especially with tenure.

On the other hand, our results show that the academic Trumpists are not as isolated from colleagues and peers as they let on or as Fox News would have it.[2] Our data show that they frequent publications, conferences, forums, meetings, and websites espousing politically conservative views. Several have been chairs of their departments, so the ostracism suggested by Fox News certainly does not extend across the board. Moreover, many enjoy affiliations with conservative think tanks, suggesting considerable social network solidarity beyond the university. They are hardly social isolates.

the overwhelming majority have produced credible scholarship by the professional standards of their respective scholarly fields.

A few Trumpists do appear to be marginal relative to their professional peers, supporting a marginal academic hypothesis. We think, for example, of the physicist Frank J Tipler, Tulane University, whose Omega Point Theory is by and large dismissed by professional colleagues as pseudoscience. Or Peter Navarro, an economist with a PhD from Harvard, formerly at the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California – Irvine, then in the White House as an economic advisor, whose book, Death by China (2011), was widely dismissed by fellow economists. But this kind of marginal academic is exceptional rather than the norm for the 109 individuals in our sample. This is not a study of intellectual deviance whereby individuals defend crackpot intellectual theories or perspectives. Rather, the overwhelming majority have produced credible scholarship by the professional standards of their respective scholarly fields. They are also by and large not located in marginal institutions within the American academic field. Most are in mainstream research universities. Only a few are in relatively obscure small schools. And many obtained their highest degrees from prestigious institutions. However, they do appear to invest less in scholarly life than do their anti-Trumpist conservative peers. They publish less in standard peer reviewed academic journals and affiliate less with professional and scholarly organizations external to colleges and universities.[3] This is one key finding from our study.

We asked to what extent the Trumpists represent a heteronomous force within the academic field? That is, to what extent has the autonomy of the academic profession and academic culture been compromised by their presence?[4] Compared to European universities, the answer in the American case may not be as straightforward as the question suggests, for two reasons. First, the boundary between the academic field and the political field in the United States may be more porous than many think. Certainly, this is the charge made by conservatives when they point to the liberal/left political assumptions in campus culture that tend to exclude conservative voices. The work by Gross et al (2013; 2012) on the general liberal dispositions of the professorate suggests as much. Moreover, American universities have shown greater toleration for private sector funding than European universities; further, state legislatures in recent years have frequently tied state financial support to outcome measures and occasionally political issues. Florida and Texas are striking examples where state legislatures have passed anti-DEI (diversity, equality, and inclusion) measures infringing on the autonomy of university practices.[5] And of course, government agencies, such as the military and CIA, have long been job recruiters on university campuses. So Trumpists are hardly the most heteronomous force challenging academic autonomy.

 It is struggle within the academic field that shapes political stances as much if not more than the other way around

Second, despite the evidence from our past study (Swartz, 2020) that many Trumpists are riding directly or indirectly on the benefits of external Koch Brothers funding, our analysis of the significance of campus culture issues suggests some overlap with the argument that Bourdieu makes in Homo Academicus (1988); namely, that it is struggle within the academic field that shapes political stances as much if not more than the other way around.[6] We suggested in Chapter 4 that support for Trump was motivated by the belief that his administration would help check the expansion of political correctness, identity politics, affirmative action, and racial and gender inclusion that these academics so oppose. If there was no struggle over these campus culture issues, one might wonder if the support for Trump would be as forceful as it is among these professors. It is as if these professors have projected their struggle within the academic field onto the political field. Or more anecdotally, the pattern offers support to the familiar quip by the late Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill: “All politics are local.” [7]

If there was no struggle over these campus culture issues, one might wonder if the support for Trump would be as forceful as it is among these professors.

Labeling the Trumpists as a heteronomous force threatening the “professional and cultural or knowledge autonomy” of the universities does by no means suggest that they represent the only or even the prime threat to scholarly autonomy. Numerous critics have voiced concern over the increasing business influence within the universities, some of it coming from outside but also because the internal reorganization of many university programs reflects the market logic of business organizations (Brint, 2018). Curiously, that criticism of the logic of market capitalism is strangely absent from the Trumpists. Indeed, many of them celebrate it. Their critical focus is primarily on cultural and administrative regulation within universities. They appear to see no contradiction or threat to their professional autonomy by bringing in outside political and financial forces to enhance their political agenda. Their criticism of the current state of campus culture resonates with a broader suspicion of higher education found largely within the Republican Party, one that has been growing in recent years. This criticism has been documented by numerous scholars, like Gross (2013) and Brint (2018).[8] The Trumpists are a particularly forceful expression of that growing criticism, particularly in Republican Party circles.

Endnotes

1.  Dunn (Green 2016) reports that the conservative faculty he interviewed support tenure as protecting conservative faculty even if many conservatives report keeping their political views “in the closet” while working to gain tenure.
2.  Fox News frequently and selectively features individuals, including students, who recount how difficult it is to be a conservative in liberal campus culture.
3.  We calculated that the 89 anti-Trumpists have 135 scholarly connections whereas the 109 Trumpists have 85 (ratio of 1.5 to .78).
4.  This is the kind of question raised by Pierre Bourdieu (1988) in his study of French professors in the Parisian universities.
5.  See State Legislatures Targeting DEI in Higher Education
6.  Bourdieu (1988, pp. xvii-xviii) argues that “it is not, as is usually thought, political stances which determine people’s stances on things academic, but their position in the academic field which inform the stances that they adopt on political issues in general as well as on academic problems.”
7.  Two qualifications of that thesis, however, are in order. First, the American academic field historically has not enjoyed the degree of autonomy from external forces to the extent that has traditionally been the case in Europe. The boundaries between the academic field and the political and economic fields are more porous here. Second, political correctness concerns did not arise strictly from indigenous campus concerns. They have been fueled by external forces as well. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) was founded in 1987 for the expressed purpose of lobbying against diversity issues on campus. Several of the Trumpists belong to the NAS or other conservative organizations, such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, that have made their presence on campuses. Moreover, publicity given by conservative media to selected incidents helped create the image of colleges and universities as imposing a liberal agenda on students. So, these external bodies to campuses have nonetheless been influential in shaping the ideological climate in which the Trumpists operate.
8.  Brint (2018, 7494/11844) reports from Pew Research Center data that by 2017 “only 36 percent of Republicans said college had a positive effect on the country, a 20 percent drop over two years. Older and college-educated Republicans were the most negative demographic groups, suggesting that working-class resentment was not the principal factor driving these poll results. Instead, the rise of cultural populism in the 2016 presidential campaign pushed Republican opinion in a distrusting direction across a wide range of issues. In the case of higher education, the populist reaction built on the long history of anti-intellectualism among religious and business-oriented conservatives and the publicity given by conservative media to incidents that made colleges appear overly responsive to the identity politics of liberal professors and students.”

Excerpted from The Academic Trumpists: Radicals Against Liberal Diversity by David L Swartz with Nicholas Rodelo, published by Routledge. Copyright (c) 2025. Used with permission of the publisher.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________ This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions.    _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Main image: “Donald Trump” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Gage Skidmore