The Buckley Institute published a report yesterday which reveals that 13 out of 15 trustees of the Yale Corporation are registered Democrats and trustees have donated 50 times as much to Democrat candidates than to Republicans.
The Schwarzman Center at Yale University. (Credit: Owen Tilman)
Emily Akbar
Campus Reporting Editor, The Buckley Beacon
On February 5th, the Buckley Institute published a report on the political affiliations of the Yale Corporation, the supreme governing body of the university. The report found that 13 out of 15 trustees on the Corporation are registered Democrats, with the other two being unaffiliated.
It also found that Yale trustees have donated 50 times as much to Democrat candidates as they have to Republican candidates. More than $5 million of trustees’ political donations went to Democrats compared to $100,000 to Republicans. Four trustees have contributed to Republican causes, while 14 have contributed to Democrat campaigns or committees.
Buckley Institute Executive Director Lauren Noble ’11, who founded the organization in 2011, said the report sheds light on the university’s failure to hire faculty with diverse perspectives. “The political uniformity of the Yale Corporation is just another indication of Yale’s top to bottom lack of ideological diversity, ” Noble told the Beacon. “Yale has spent the last several years trying to convince the country that it has and is open to different perspectives. Our faculty, admissions office, and now Yale Corporation reviews indicate that Yale’s intellectual homogeneity is comprehensive and unchallenged.”
The Yale Corporation, also known as the board of trustees, serves as the university’s governing body. In 2022, Victor Ashe ’67, along with Donald Glascoff ’67, initiated a lawsuit against Yale for its decision to eliminate the alumni petition process, which had previously allowed alumni to nominate trustee candidates independently. In 2023, As of January 2026, the plaintiffs are seeking a hearing in the state’s highest court, citing the change in the petition process as “fundamentally undemocratic.”
The recent report comes in the wake of the 58-page December Buckley report on faculty political diversity, which also found a large political imbalance amongst faculty members. The report used publicly available voting data to analyze 1,666 Yale faculty, finding that 82.3% of faculty are registered Democrats or primarily support Democratic candidates, while only 2.3% are registered Republicans. The report also found that 27 of 43 undergraduate degree-granting departments had no registered Republicans on faculty at all.
Shortly after the December report, Yale published a statement on faculty political affiliations, stating that the university “hires and retains faculty based on academic excellence, scholarly distinction, and teaching achievement, independent of political views.” The press release pointed to the new Yale Center for Civic Thought, established in May 2025, and Yale President Maurie McInnis’ Committee on Institutional Voice as examples of Yale’s commitment to “promote thoughtful discourse.”
The statement added that “Yale does not track or comment on the political affiliations of individual faculty members” and reaffirmed their commitment to “fostering open debate.”
Last month, the Yale Daily News used publicly available Federal Election Commission data to report on Yale faculty’s political contributions. Of the 1,099 donations from faculty members in 2025, almost 98% went to Democrats with the remainder going to independents.
Peer institutions have a similar pattern of left-leaning faculties. In the fall, the Harvard Crimson conducted a survey of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and found that around 63% of Harvard faculty identified themselves as liberal. The Daily Pennsylvanian wrote that around 99.1% of political donations from Penn faculty went to Democrats, using data from the FEC. The Cornell Daily noted that 98% of Cornell faculty donations went to democrats and left-leaning PACs.
The Yale Corporation’s next meeting will be on February 28, 2026.