Smart? 9 in 10 Students Say They Lie About Their Views to Fit in During College

This trend may be individually smart, but it makes our society dumber and ultimately undermines the potential educational value of a college education. 

Source: https://t.co/agzurnwovs

— Paul Graham (@paulg) August 13, 2025

College students admit to lying about or hiding their views on family, faith, politics, and other socially contentious issues, such as gender ideology, in order to “fit in” at their colleges. At least, in this case, at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University. 

Almost everybody is living a lie, to avoid bullying by the other 10% of students and, of course, the college professors who act like the old Soviet Political Officers in the Soviet Union’s armed forces. 

Don’t cross the commissars!

A new study finds that nearly nine in ten students fake more progressive views than they really hold, often to appease professors or stay in their peers’ good graces. The habit doesn’t stop at the classroom door; even close friends and romantic partners are kept in the dark. From lecture halls to late-night conversations, students are learning that conformity pays and candor costs. If universities still see themselves as incubators of independent thought, these numbers should be a wake-up call. Can students truly develop as thinkers when honesty feels unsafe?

Below is an excerpt from an article in The Hill by the study’s authors, Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman. You can read the full piece here.

Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”

We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes…

Seventy-eight percent of students told us they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity; 72 percent on politics; 68 percent on family values. More than 80 percent said they had submitted classwork that misrepresented their views in order to align with professors…

It’s obvious why the students do it: just look at what happens on college campuses these days, and you will see an American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Dissent is harshly punished through public shaming, poor grades, and even physical intimidation. 

Harvard Law Review Awards $65k Fellowship to Student Charged in Assault of Israeli Classmate: Reporthttps://t.co/fjOiR3wX3l

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) May 1, 2025

All the power is on the side of the woke warriors, even though the average college student apparently isn’t. Harvard and the establishment will give awards and honors to a law student who literally committed a crime, assaulting a Jewish student, and will go to great lengths to shut down the speech of anybody who objects. 

Harvard Student Facing Criminal Charges for Accosting Israeli Classmate Lands Job in DC Public Defender’s Office, via ⁦@JessicaCostescu⁩ ⁦@FreeBeacon⁩ – https://t.co/IzTObrH59x

— Eliana Johnson (@elianayjohnson) June 12, 2024

It’s just safer to keep your head down, get your credential, and pretend to go along. 

You may recall that in China, Deng Xiaoping, who eventually rose to the leadership of the Communist Party of China, couldn’t escape punishment for minor deviations from Mao’s views during the Cultural Revolution. While the totalitarianism of our culture is a bit less harsh in tactics, it is a matter of degree and not kind. Even minor dissent is harshly punished. 

This turns colleges into places that don’t educate, but indoctrinate. The indoctrination may not completely succeed in changing the minds of all the students–after all, if they are lying to cover up their real views, they have not succumbed completely to the brainwashing–but it wipes away any will to explore ideas and learn. 

College is nothing more than a place to party, get high, and climb the social ladder. They also teach that the worse you are, the more likely you are to succeed. 

The credentialed class is livid that Trump is cleaning up this mess, at least as much as he can, given his powers, because academia is the place where they hold the most sway. They control trillions of dollars in spending and the words of millions of students. They can spread what propaganda they like and intimidate whomever they please.

I am a fan of liberal education, as an idea. I believe we actually need an elite class of people dedicated to the pursuit of truth, and I even believe that there is ample room for the leftists to explore their ideas and challenge the prevailing norms. 

But that isn’t modern academia, and in many ways it is the opposite of what students face today. 

Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, the exploration of ideas–they are all alien to modern academia. Not even the sciences are immune to the moral rot. 

I honestly don’t believe that most institutions of higher education can be redeemed. They have been rotted from within. The intellectual termites have so weakened the structures that the smartest thing to do is build parallel institutions and replace the lot of them. 

There are still good professors and scientists, and the idea of the university is a good one. But it is time to abandon the old and rebuild.