A decade after his landmark book on faculty politics, Neil Gross decided it was time to give those with the most at stake a chance to speak for themselves. Beginning in the spring of 2024, he launched a massive investigation into how our polarized politics have remade the college experience, interviewing students across the country and polling thousands more. He looked at liberal arts colleges, state schools, faith-based institutions, and elite universities and combed through studies tracking everything from campus dating habits to changes in syllabi.
What he found was startling: Undergraduates today are choosing their schools, their friends, their partners, their activities—even their majors—on the basis of their political beliefs to a degree unimaginable ten years ago, with the goal of interacting as little as possible with anyone whose views don’t line up with their own. Popular campus dating apps invite you to swipe left if you don’t like someone’s political profile—a metaphor for today’s college experience writ large. Instead of resisting this trend, some faculty and administrators encouraged it, creating a cloistered environment where students could avoid uncomfortable disagreement.
