University: The institute of higher conformity

Young impressionable adults at university are deep in the motherlode of leftist extremism. The good news is that despite that, many still have some grip on reality. The bad news is almost none of them feel like they can say it — not to their teachers, and not to other students, and about half the time, not even to their girlfriends and boyfriends. University is teaching them something after all: how to pretend to conform, and how to hide their opinion.

So, when asked, an amazing 88% of all students admitted they had pretended to hold more progressive views on campus than they truly felt. 80% had even submitted assignments that misrepresented their own views in order to fit in with their professors opinions. For some, they did it so often, it was second nature.

Imagine the effect on lecturers and researchers of being surrounded by “yes” men and gushing girls? They would be free to come up with the most grandiose mental Zeppelins surrounded by fairy floss with nary a single live spark to pop the balloon before it launched with passengers.

It is the feedback loop from hell. Every student who fakes agreement makes the orthodoxy look more popular than it really is. Other students see the synthetic consensus and stay silent. Hallowed Professors feel like Gods, certain their ideas are self-evidently correct. A small fake consensus begets a bigger fake consensus.

This lack of free speech on campus was what killed Jason Arday. Cambridge needed to hear from the skeptics of Woke orthodoxy ten years ago. They would have poked holes in the fashionable dogmas before reputations were cast in stone and the stakes became catastrophically, tragically high.

Performative virtue-signaling has become a threat to higher ed

–By Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman, The Hill

Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan.

We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes.

This dissonance shows up everywhere. Seventy-eight percent of students told us they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity; 72 percent on politics; 68 percent on family values. More than 80 percent said they had submitted classwork that misrepresented their views in order to align with professors. For many, this has become second nature — an instinct for academic and professional self-preservation.

So even in some of the most gender fluid institutions on Earth, only 7% “believe” gender is a broad spectrum.

Eighty-seven percent identified as exclusively heterosexual and supported a binary model of gender. Nine percent expressed partial openness to gender fluidity. Just seven percent embraced the idea of gender as a broad spectrum, and most of these belonged to activist circles.

It’s a social thing almost as much as a career-related issue. Three quarters of students don’t even tell close friends their real personal views on some topics. And “nearly half” don’t tell their intimate partners (which probably means mostly men are keeping their political opinions quiet around their girlfriends. As many as 40% of young women in the US identify as Liberal or very Liberal, while only 25% of young men did.)

Seventy-three percent of students reported mistrust in conversations about these values with close friends. Nearly half said they routinely conceal beliefs in intimate relationships for fear of ideological fallout.

We know that biological men playing women’s sports is an 80:20 issue — an issue where 80% of the population feel the same way (even at university). Out in the real world, it’s probably a 90:10 thing.

Perhaps most telling: 77 percent said they disagreed with the idea that gender identity should override biological sex in such domains as sports, healthcare, or public data — but would never voice that disagreement aloud. Thirty-eight percent described themselves as “morally confused,” uncertain whether honesty was still ethical if it meant exclusion.

Authenticity, once considered a psychological good, has become a social liability. And this fragmentation doesn’t end at the classroom door. Seventy-three percent of students reported mistrust in conversations about these values with close friends. Nearly half said they routinely conceal beliefs in intimate relationships for fear of ideological fallout. This is not simply peer pressure — it is identity regulation at scale, and it is being institutionalized.

Marvel that somehow despite the non stop agitprop for the last ten formative years, 87% of young adults at these two universities still feel heterosexual. It could be worse.

But when those who ask hard questions are not rewarded, each generation of professors become more absurd than the last. The smartest students know they won’t fit it with academia, and only the most obedient stick around.

In that case, science doesn’t even progress one funeral at a time.

This article originally appeared at JoNova