Bill Maher Confronts Wesleyan U. President Over Lack of Intellectual Diversity on Campuses
“When I went to Cornell, I could not tell you the politics of any professor I had.”
Wesleyan President Michael Roth doesn’t back down from the questions, but Maher keeps hitting him with the issue. You never see this conversation happening in the media.
Transcript by Overton News:
MAHER: “When one party, one point of view controls everything, they are not checked. That’s what’s happened on campus.”
ROTH: “I believe when we convince the faculty and show the faculty there is this bias, they will correct.”
Maher was not convinced.
MAHER: “Do you think your professors are saying to the kids, ‘I’m not going to put my thumb on the scale of who you should vote for?’ That’s ridiculous.”
“When I went to Cornell, I could not tell you the politics of any professor I had.”
“You couldn’t get a job if you couldn’t demonstrate what your politics were, and it’s very much in the classroom.”
Watch:
Bill Maher confronts Wesleyan University President Michael Roth over left-wing political conformity on college campuses:
"You couldn't get a job if you couldn't demonstrate what your politics were."
Maher pointed to one survey in which 77 out of 80 professors identified as… pic.twitter.com/Fv7UISeRFR
— Overton (@overton_news) August 29, 2026
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
When I was teaching, the leftists were just beginning to hire only leftists. It was about 50-50 at the college I taught at. Now that I am retired, I look back at what happened and see that over 90% of the professors are leftist kooks. The place is no longer a college, but rather a strange group of fools who do not care about their students.
“I believe when we convince the faculty and show the faculty there is this bias, they will correct.”
If you really believe that, president, you’re an incredible moron. Because it would require 50% of them to give up their jobs to strangers… strangers whom they hate.
When I was studying there were 3 groups – those whose politics I didn’t know (though most were more likely than not Left leaning). those who were unquestionably Leftist (some of whom spewed crackpot ideas), and one or two who said they were Marxist (but whom were decent and seemingly unbiased).
Of course it’s often hard to determine if your work is marked down because it’s not quite up to scratch, because the markers object to your political-ideological-cultural viewpoint, or because they consider your argument faulty.
“When I went to Cornell, I could not tell you the politics of any professor I had.”
I graduated from Cornell, and was working there when Bill Maher graduated in 1978. The only way he could say the above is if his professors’ biases were the same as his – so he didn’t notice them.
And Maher couldn’t possibly have been unaware of the faculty members who supported the black activists and the SDS leftists who occupied the student union and the ROTC building in 1969. That’s when most of the conservative faculty in the History Department resigned in disgust. Maher’s degree is a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in English and History.
I appreciate Maher’s concern about the lack of intellectual diversity in higher ed, but he may be seeing his past with rose colored glasses. The great thing about indoctrination is that when it’s successful its victims have no idea they have been indoctrinated.
I think the fact that just about every American college faculty lounge looks just like the break room at CNN, NPR, the AP, or MSNOW is somehow lost to William.
Leave a Comment