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When we wrote recently on student self-censorship, professors from state flagships to the Ivy League wrote to thank us for saying what they could not. They confided their private disagreement with the progressive orthodoxies that now dominate American campuses yet admitted that they feel compelled to play along.
Our survey of 1,452 undergraduates at Northwestern and the University of Michigan (2023–2025) showed that more than 80 percent had misrepresented their own beliefs to align with professors’ expectations. The responses we received from faculty make clear that professors are engaged in the same concealment, afraid that a single unpopular statement could spark a coordinated campaign to ostracize, investigate, or remove them.
This raises a troubling question: If both students and faculty are pretending to endorse radical frameworks, what exactly is sustaining the ideology?
It is clearly not an abundance of sincere conviction. The answer, implicit in both our research and the response to it, appears to be fear — fear of social isolation, institutional reprisal, and professional ruin.
Fear need not be enforced by a majority. A committed minority can create the illusion of consensus, which is often enough to sway decision-makers. Those in power may be true believers, but they may also be ordinary people who, confronted with what they perceive as an unstoppable mob — or afraid of becoming the next target — comply unquestioningly.
This remains a hypothesis, but it is one supported by both our data and the many stories shared with us. If true, it represents a tragedy on academic as well as psychological grounds.
The desire to conform is not new. Human beings have always relied on group acceptance for survival, and adolescents are especially susceptible to peer influence. Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson described adolescence as the stage of identity formation, during which young people cultivate moral intuitions and a stable sense of self.
Disagreement is a developmental necessity. Autonomy and self-knowledge emerge from the ability to distinguish self from others. The process of identity formation requires friction: debate, dissent, and exposure to divergent perspectives. Without the challenge of sifting through competing arguments, young people cannot cultivate independent judgment or resilient moral reasoning — both essential for navigating a complex world.
In developed nations, adolescence now extends well into the twenties, coinciding with higher education. Consequently, identity formation now unfolds not in the bastions of free inquiry and rational debate that universities were meant to foster, but within an environment dominated by the dynamics of terrorism, where a small, zealous minority enforces conformity through intimidation.
Our language is not merely figurative. Universities have long embraced figures directly implicated in political violence. In the late 1960s and ‘70s, Marxist theory and revolutionary activism surged on college campuses, spawning terrorist groups like the Weather Underground (originally the Weathermen). The group carried out 25 bombings, including at the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Capitol. Several members later killed police and security personnel in collaboration with other radicals.
In 1991, Northwestern’s Pritzker Law School hired Weather Underground cofounder Bernardine Dohrn — once an FBI Most Wanted fugitive — to lead its Children and Family Justice Center. Kathy Boudin, another member who served 23 years in prison for her role in three murders, joined the social work faculty at Columbia University and co-founded its Center for Justice. Note that Weather Underground had once planned to blow up Columbia’s administration building.
More recently, Northwestern hired Mkhaimar Abusada, a Gaza-based professor with ties to Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — both designated terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department. The hire followed pressure stemming from an illegal student encampment, one of many anti-Israel campus demonstrations after Hamas’s terrorist massacre of more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and 47 U.S. citizens on Oct. 7, 2023.
Numerous professors at leading universities publicly express support for Hamas, while Jewish students nationwide have been assaulted, had dorm rooms set on fire, and faced ongoing threats of violence. Some students have even been arrested for pursuing genuine terrorist plots against Jews in the U.S.
Given the influence conferred upon former terrorist group members and current terrorist sympathizers at our universities, it is no surprise that campuses are now gripped by fear and trapped in a radicalism that saps their vitality. Positions of influence have been ceded to individuals intent on dismantling American institutions — and they have advanced that agenda with growing success.
Our intention is not to alarm, but to clarify the stakes. When universities abandon open inquiry, they stunt moral development and foster radical thought. Reversing the tide requires the courage to speak honestly despite the risks.
Students will continue to self-censor as long as their professors model the same behavior, leaving the developmentally vulnerable open to increasingly radical ideologies. The ultimate responsibility lies with educators, whose fear — however justified — has become the lever by which dogmatic gatekeepers control discourse.
The longer this culture of fear persists, the harder it will be to restore open inquiry. Those who can must defend intellectual pluralism and critical debate, or they will jeopardize the ability of an entire generation to think independently, reason morally, and embrace the civic responsibilities of adulthood. Nothing less is at stake than our future as a free society.
Kevin Waldman and Forest Romm are researchers in clinical and applied psychology at Northwestern University.
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