Syllabus data reveals rise of leftist authors in college, decline of classical authors
A Campus Reform analysis of syllabi data from 2008 to 2019 found a steady decline in classical authors, while leftist theorists gained prominence in college courses.
Using Open Syllabus Analytics, Campus Reform tracked the 11-year shift and found that authors like Aristotle and Plato fell considerably in the overall rankings.
A Campus Reform analysis of syllabi data from 2008 to 2019 found a steady decline in classical authors, while leftist theorists gained prominence in college courses.
Using Open Syllabus Analytics, Campus Reform tracked the 11-year shift and found that authors like Aristotle and Plato fell considerably in the overall rankings.
In 2008, Plato ranked 19th and Aristotle 46th. By 2019, their ranks dropped to 53th and 85th, respectively.
Meanwhile, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler consistently ranked high across U.S. college syllabi.
Grouping the dataset in two-year increments revealed the rapid pace of change.
Foucault was the most-assigned author in nearly every period except 2018–2019. He is known for arguing in The History of Sexuality that sex is a construct of modern society.
By 2019, Butler, who identifies as they/them, even outranked William Shakespeare as one of the most-assigned authors.
The writings of Gloria Jean Watkins, better known as “Bell Hooks,” an intersectional feminist, rose steadily in the outer rankings from 56th to 30th.
By contrast, classical and conservative voices declined.
Alexis de Tocqueville fell from a total of 4,552 appearances in 2008 to just 932 in 2019.
Edmund Burke, often described as the “father of modern conservatism,” also dropped from 3,938 appearances to 1,039 during that same time span.
David Randall, Director of Research for the National Association of Scholars, told Campus Reform that students who do not read classical authors are “condemned by their professors to ignorance of Western civilization.” He also stated that this shift “forwards the propagandizing of students toward uncritical belief in radical doctrine, in pursuit of radical activism.”
Randall also called a classical education the “birthright that has been stolen from American children,” saying that such an education is needed “to convey the Western and American ideals and institutions of liberty, republican self-government, and civic virtue.” He added that they are “especially necessary for the students who have had these ideals actively eliminated by radical activists from our culture and our classes.”
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Campus Reform has tracked radical syllabi for years, including a sociology class requiring students to examine “internalized gender rules” and write papers on raising a genderless child.
Other examples include an “anti-racist” professor at the University of Florida who offered extra credit for “diversity bingo” in a computer science course in 2021.
In 2024, the University of Oklahoma faced criticism for requiring education students to study social justice, while Butler University more recently suspended its mandate only after legal pressure.
