Rigor Over Rhetoric
Sociologist Neil Gross co-leads $1 million Harvard Radcliffe Institute research initiative on academic freedom and campus politics
Few topics generate as much commentary, and as little empirical data, as the state of higher education.
A new cross-institutional research collaborative co-led by Colby sociologist Neil Gross will change that by replacing culture-war speculation with rigorous social science. Gross, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology, will co-lead a $1 million initiative of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute titled Intellectual Pluralism, Politics, and Academic Freedom, supported by the Kim and Judy Davis Catalyst Fund.
Codirected with Harvard University sociologist Michèle Lamont, the three-year interdisciplinary research project serves as a cornerstone of Radcliffe’s multiyear focus area, Academic Freedom and Connecting Across Difference.
Investigating the ‘scholarly habitus’
While political alignment among university faculty has shifted over decades, with fewer today describing themselves as conservative, systematic research into how these dynamics alter daily academic practices has remained surprisingly scarce, Gross said. Lamont and Gross’s collaboration is designed to examine how professors across the country define and defend their professional responsibilities amid intense public scrutiny.
By bringing data-driven analysis to questions of academic freedom and intellectual pluralism, Colby, Harvard, and other scholars are laying the groundwork for higher education to navigate polarization while preserving its core commitment to rigorous, open inquiry.
“There’s been a lot of speculation about whether or how professors may be bringing their politics into their teaching and research or adjusting their scholarship because of political pressure from groups inside or outside the academy,” Gross said. “The goal of the project is to gather reliable data on these vitally important questions.”
A primary focus of the research team is understanding how different groups on college campuses perceive political expression within educational settings. “We will be examining what different constituencies mean by politics in the classroom or in scholarship, and how that shapes behavior,” Gross said.
The project’s framework centers on what sociologists call the “scholarly habitus,” or an internalized set of dispositions, ways of thinking, and practices characteristic of academics and researchers. Gross and Lamont are mapping how this habitus is being challenged, adapted, or reinforced as political polarization intersects with academic life.
Over the next three years, the Radcliffe team will share its findings through academic publications, lectures, seminars, and multimedia projects intended to inform higher education leadership and policy discussions nationwide. To execute the study, Gross and Lamont have assembled an interdisciplinary and politically diverse research team of senior faculty from schools across the country as well as postdoctoral fellows and research assistants. Together, the team is gathering qualitative and quantitative data from faculty, administrators, and students across institutional types.
A decade of campus data
The Radcliffe project builds on more than a decade of Gross’s empirical research on the structure of academic life in the United States. His latest book, What Happened to College? How Politics Broke Higher Education and What We Can Do to Fix It (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 2026), provides context for the new initiative.
The new book follows Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? After publishing that book in 2013, Gross shifted his investigative focus to undergraduate life. Conducting interviews with more than 100 students from 18 institutions, alongside surveys of thousands of undergraduates nationwide, Gross analyzed how macro-level political sorting has filtered down into everyday campus routines.
Colby students were not interviewed for the book, Gross said.
His research revealed that political self-sorting, or what sociologists call “affective polarization”— when a person’s political views are central to their identity—influences everything from roommate selection and social circles to academic majors and dating preferences, though more so on campuses with very politically active student bodies.
“The core finding is that polarization has changed the way students decide what colleges to go to, who they become friends with, what kinds of clubs they join, the classes they take, what they major in,” Gross said.
“Polarization reshapes institutions, and it’s been reshaping the undergraduate experience. The book is an attempt to figure out what that looks like by talking to actual undergraduates as opposed to the stereotypes that we sometimes see.”
This degree of ideological sorting, Gross cautions, carries real consequences for liberal arts education and open inquiry.
“There’s a loss of critical thinking that happens when there is insufficient basis for disagreement among students,” Gross said. “It’s harder for students to grow from their conversations with each other. It’s harder for professors to engage students in the classroom.”
