Viewpoint Diversity is the Next Frontier for Free Speech at Furman
Furman can't fix what it won't first measure.
Announcements:
👏 FFSA is hosting a live webinar with Alumni Free Speech Alliance’s Tom Neale later this month on our Substack. Paid subscribers get to ask questions first - so upgrade your membership today and stay tuned for more details!
🏀 Congratulations to the Furman Paladins on their hard-fought first-round NCAA Tournament battle against the UConn Huskies — who lost to Michigan in the National Championship game last night. Go Dins!
🎉 Dins Day, Furman’s annual 24-hour alumni giving celebration, is coming up on April 25. We are not officially affiliated with the university, but there is no one in the Furman community advocating harder for free speech than us! If you’d like to support that, consider becoming a paid FFSA subscriber today or donating here.
Furman Trivia:
With Furman’s basketball team making another NCAA Tournament appearance this year, let’s test your Paladin hoops knowledge. Which Paladin hit the buzzer-beater to stun #4 Virginia in the 2023 NCAA Tournament?
A) Mike Bothwell
B) Garrett Hien
C) Jalen Slawson
D) JP Pegues
*Find the answer at the bottom of the newsletter!*
Does Furman Have a Viewpoint Diversity Problem?
On March 30, our colleagues at Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse (DFTD) published a striking finding: at Davidson College, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 15 to 1 among faculty. Moreover, all of the Republicans are concentrated into only 6 departments in the hard sciences and social sciences. All the other departments — including all of the humanities — do not employ “a single Republican.”
The Davidson study is just the latest in a growing body of evidence documenting a lack of viewpoint diversity on college campuses across the country. The free speech movement has spent decades securing formal protections for open inquiry and expression. Now, it is grappling with whether the intellectual conditions for such inquiry actually exist on today’s campuses. Too often, the answer is unfortunately not.
The problem with this lack of viewpoint diversity is that it leads to the complete exclusion of some perspectives across entire disciplines. The result, as Heterodox Academy has documented, is a university where the range of ideas students encounter is quietly narrowed by the ideological composition of the faculty itself.
The question for Furman is simple: is our university really an exception to this national trend?
The evidence suggests it is not.
We can’t run the same analysis as Davidson. Unlike North Carolina, South Carolina doesn’t have partisan voter registration — meaning there’s no public record of which party Furman faculty belong to.
But the data we do have suggests we would see similar results.
According to City Journal’s 2025 College Rankings, nearly 98% of Furman faculty campaign donations went to liberal or Democratic causes. And as Kevin Wallsten — the political scientist behind the rankings — explained in an exclusive interview with FFSA last month, campaign donations are among the most reliable proxies for faculty ideology available.
This lack of viewpoint diversity should matter to Furman, and especially to President Elizabeth Davis. She has made it a central goal of her administration to help Furman students “engage thoughtfully across difference.” That’s impossible when those differences simply don’t exist at a relevant level.
So, what should Furman do? There’s no magic recipe. Increasing faculty viewpoint diversity is going to be difficult. But the first step is simple enough. We need to assess the reality on the ground and get better data on the viewpoint diversity of Furman’s faculty.
That’s why we are calling on President Davis to commission an independent assessment of faculty viewpoint diversity on campus — working with a credible outside organization like FIRE or Heterodox Academy, both of which have developed rigorous tools for exactly this purpose.
Such an assessment would be a valuable service to students, alumni, parents, and faculty alike. Right now, Furman's community is left to draw conclusions from secondhand data. A rigorous, independent assessment is the easiest way to fix that. Then, from that honest starting point, the university can build a real strategy.
CLPs of the Month:
Furman students must attend 32 Cultural Life Programs (CLPs) to graduate. CLPs are university-approved events meant to “enrich” and “build community.”
Here are some interesting CLPs coming up in April:
On Wednesday, April 8, the Women’s and Gender Studies department hosts “Data Feminism in Action,” a lecture arguing for a movement of “epistemic disobedience” against the “reigning logics of AI and data science.”
On Wednesday, April 15, Furman Theatre presents “HumanKind: be both,” a dance production described as “a celebration of stories untold” that highlights the “beauty of diverse narratives.” Runs April 15–19.
On Wednesday, April 29, the Furman Pride Alliance hosts the “Spring 2026 Drag Show” — featuring professional and student drag performers.
Trivia Answer:
D) JP Pegues — the sophomore drained a 3-pointer with just 2.2 seconds left to give Furman a stunning 68-67 victory, the program’s first NCAA Tournament win since 1974.