It’s no secret that a majority of Americans have lost trust in universities. Survey research from Gallup and Pew points to similar causes, including unfair admissions practices, high tuition costs, limited job opportunities for many graduates and, most importantly, extreme political bias. As universities across the country seek to address these concerns, I’d like to make a suggestion: Start at the heart of the matter and fix the political bias first. By doing so, universities can signal their commitment to institutional neutrality and take the lead in decreasing the political polarization that plagues U.S. politics and culture.
Since the 1960s, university faculty have consistently leaned liberal, but never to the extremes we see today. Nationwide survey data from the “Report of the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education” shows that over 90% of college and university faculty are registered Democrats. Granted, there is a range of beliefs within this large of a group, but it’s a glaring disparity, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the actual political makeup of the United States. The current homogeneity of thought on campuses has created a political monoculture that actively discourages viewpoint diversity, compels conformity, and divides society into tribes typically based on racial or gender identities.
No doubt, the suite of current progressive ideas about identity and culture are well intentioned, but as they’ve played out in institutions throughout the country over the past decade, it’s clear they’ve profoundly exacerbated polarization in the United States. There are many examples one could point to, but I’d argue the most harmful and far-reaching has been the normalization of hyperbolic hate.
The word “hyperbole” comes from the ancient Greek word to “throw beyond.” It is common in everyday speech. We hyperbolize when we exaggerate the details of a story (“I walked five miles to school, uphill both ways”) or when we feel passionately about something (“It’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen!”). Aristotle (384-322 BCE) considered hyperbole to be primarily a stylistic device orators used to express strong emotion. A few centuries later, Roman rhetorician Quintilian (35–100 CE) expanded this definition to emphasize how hyperbolic language subverts the truth:
It is enough to say that hyperbole lies, though without any intention to deceive. But we must be careful to notice how far hyperbole is permissible... for if it goes beyond the proper bounds, the effect is lost, and the figure becomes ridiculous.
For Quintilian, effective hyperbole was a kind of controlled fib that exceeds the truth without exceeding the credibility of the claim. Taken too far, hyperbole becomes “ridiculous.”
The current homogeneity of thought on campuses has created a political monoculture that actively discourages viewpoint diversity, compels conformity, and divides society into tribes typically based on racial or gender identities.
While exaggerating a point can be rhetorically effective in the right situation, the stakes grow larger when the object of hyperbole is hate—the deliberate, exaggerated use of extreme language to malign the motives and beliefs of people who disagree with us. When we place this penchant for exaggeration into a media environment driven by profit and algorithmic control, hyperbolized hate becomes not just ridiculous but dangerous. Research on social media shows that extreme opinions on culture and politics go viral more often and circulate longer than more moderate content.
This is especially true of inflated expressions of moral outrage that exaggerate hate to denounce ideological opponents and unduly attribute harm where it doesn’t exist. Conservative groups that oppose abortion claim that pro-choice liberals are “murderers!” while progressive groups who support transgenderism claim that conservatives are “fascists!” It’s one thing to exaggerate how far you had to walk to school; it’s another to label someone’s motives as hateful because they disagree with your political and/or moral beliefs.
Universities are, in part, responsible for the rise of hyperbolic hate. Beginning with the shift to identity politics and critical theory in the 1960s, new “systemic” frameworks were developed for the study of culture. These frameworks focus on structural questions of power and inequity in search of the root causes of oppression in Western, capitalist, liberal societies. While they certainly can be an indispensable tool for studying social and cultural dynamics, systemic frameworks are rife with methodological and knowledge-based problems that ultimately encourage hyperbolic expressions of hate. In particular, their emphasis on vague, abstract “systems” of power makes those who embrace these ideas prone to erasing individual agency and the rich pluralism of real groups in favor of monolithic identity tribes.
This process of tribalization intensifies polarization by persistently distorting our perception of citizens who disagree with us. When coupled with the reach and speed of modern social media, the use of these “systemic” frameworks to make extreme claims about ubiquitous racism or misogyny leads us all into a kind of mental inferno where hate is present everywhere and at all times.
Nothing could be worse for the mental health of our society than hyperbolized hate. Psychologists who study hate have shown that excessive exposure to hateful discourse leads to an array of social problems including elevated threat perception and more frequent cycles of dehumanization between opposing groups. Such inflated perceptions of hate are known to contribute to chronic stress and excessive catastrophizing in individuals.
According to clinical psychologist John P. Kline, as more perceived hate circulates, it creates a noxious loop that “activates stronger affective response than warranted... [and] biases perception toward negativity.” It also escalates conflict, spreads hostility, and erodes trust, Kline adds. In such emotionally elevated environments, the brain’s empathy response toward opponents is known to shut down. Stuck in an empathy vacuum, we begin to perceive politics as a mortal struggle that, over time, conditions us to experience political and moral disagreement as a form of hate.
If universities are ever to help mitigate the polarization that plagues our society, they must renew their commitment to traditional liberal values of civil debate, free speech, open inquiry, and viewpoint diversity. This is only possible in an environment where we prioritize our common humanity over the echo chambers of our different identity tribes. By promoting a culture of shared optimism and hope over one of hate and division, higher education can begin the long process of restoring the public’s trust.
Excepts for when they actually are.