All our coverage from The Chronicle’s inaugural faculty survey

For the first time, The Chronicle is releasing survey data on Duke faculty.

This year, we surveyed faculty members about their opinions on healthy campus discourse and contentious political issues. Questions ranged from opinions on institutional neutrality to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

This year’s survey was conducted by Data Editor Audrey Wang with assistance from Centennial/Elections Editor Jazper Lu.

Methodology, limitations and summary statistics

The survey was administered from April 8 to 19. A total of 776 faculty members fully completed the survey, and 132 faculty members answered at least one question. Only complete responses were analyzed.

We asked respondents about their faculty tenure status, the schools their appointments were in, race and ethnicity, gender identity, religious identity and political leanings.

Institutional neutrality

The Chronicle surveyed Duke faculty members about their political identities.

While faculty respondents tended to be liberal overall, the disaggregation of the data by field and school revealed variation in political views.

Affirmative action

The Chronicle surveyed Duke faculty members about their thoughts on contentious issues facing higher education, including affirmative action.

We found that faculty members generally opposed the SCOTUS ruling, although this varied by demographics, political identities and field of study. Faculty members who are conservative or agree with the ruling are less likely to believe campus discourse about affirmative action is healthy and are less comfortable discussing the issue with other Duke community members.

Diversity, equity and inclusion

For its first year, The Chronicle surveyed Duke faculty members about their thoughts on the University’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

We found that faculty members had varied views on DEI, with nearly half of respondents indicating that Duke placed too much or somewhat too much emphasis on it. Tenured faculty respondents were more likely than others to share this perspective, as were more conservative respondents.

Israel-Hamas war

For its first year, The Chronicle surveyed Duke faculty members about their thoughts on the Israel-Hamas war.

Faculty members generally responded that the U.S. was doing “too much” to provide military aid to Israel, and an overwhelming majority responded that the U.S. was doing “too little” to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians.

The sample of seven Muslim faculty members surveyed were consistently more likely to believe that the state of discourse on campus was unhealthy and generally thought the range of opinions on the Israel-Hamas war that could be expressed publicly on campus was somewhat or very narrow.

The sample of 66 Jewish faculty surveyed were more likely to say that the state of discourse on campus is healthy and were generally evenly distributed across the range of opinions on the Israel-Hamas war that they believed could be expressed publicly on campus.