Economics
Economics is an ideology whose primary act of meaning-making is its self-presentation as objective social science. Through its graceful yet pernicious definitions of efficiency, value, competition, property, rights, and freedom, economics…
All schools · Liberal arts college
Amherst College
Amherst College's course descriptions average 69.4 on the 100-to-0 ruler: clearly left of center. Across all 100 schools, the average is 67.5, so Amherst College reads 1.9 points further left.
Liberal (100)center (50)Conservative (0)
Where its courses fall
4%Far left92–100
22%Left75–91
68%Center-left59–74
6%Center42–58
0%Center-right26–41
0%Right9–25
0%Far right0–8
Underlined: words the model quoted from the description when we asked it, after scoring, to explain its score.
Furthest left
English & Comparative Literature
(Offered as ENGL 378 and FAMS 382) Calls to defund the police may have helped to cancel the notorious reality program COPS, but crime scenes, courtrooms, cops, lawyers, victims, and vigilantes dominate our media and our imaginations. This…
English & Comparative Literature
Is decolonial love possible? What does it look and feel like? In this course, we will read creative writers and scholars who describe the ways that imperialism, capitalism, racism, and heteropatriarchy structure conventional ways of loving,…
Furthest right
History
(Offered as HIST 125 [EU/TC/ P ] and EUST 125) Given the misrepresentations of Renaissance Florentine politics in popular media (Netflix series Medici) and the attacks on Renaissance European culture from theorists of decolonization, one…
Why this number, in plain words
Political lean of course descriptions. Average Framing score (0 = far right, 50 = center, 100 = far left) of the scored courses in the group.
50 is the survey-anchored center of US adults on each issue (the "moderate" place of the ANES/GSS/PRRI seven-label ruler), not the cohort midpoint; scores above 50 read leftward, below 50 rightward.
Counted: courses with a Framing score (categories L/R/B/C). The likely range (95% interval) is 68.0 to 70.9; a comparison whose range overlaps this one is not a reliable difference.
- Most course descriptions carry no political lean at all and are not in this average; the "share described from the left" view counts them.
- Readings are of catalog description text, not of teaching, syllabi or individual professors.
Amherst College by department (share of courses described from the left)
| Department | Left-framed share | Courses | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Women's & Gender Studies | 66.7% | 21 | view |
| Sociology | 55.6% | 18 | view |
| Ethnic & African American Studies | 50% | 36 | view |
| History | 31.4% | 105 | view |
| English & Comparative Literature | 30.6% | 144 | view |
| Anthropology | 28% | 25 | view |
| Political Science | 24.4% | 86 | view |
| Economics | 12% | 50 | view |
| Philosophy | 10% | 40 | view |
| Religious Studies | 8.2% | 49 | view |
| Psychology | 7.1% | 42 | view |
| Art & Art History | 5.7% | 53 | view |
Lean (mean Framing score) is not published per department within a school; only the left-framed share is. Department rows carry no interval.
Details: exact rows, definitions and method
| Name | Metric | Value | 95% interval | n | scored |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amherst College | mean_bias_score | 69.4 | 68.0 – 70.9 | 669 | 168 |
| All 100 schools | mean_bias_score | 67.5 | 67.4 – 67.7 | 124,290 | 10,124 |
- Formula
- SUM(bias_score) / COUNT(bias_score)
- Interval
- normal approximation: mean +/- 1.96 * sd / sqrt(n), sample sd (n-1); undefined when n < 2
- Model / prompt / snapshot
- gpt-5.6-sol · r12 (2026-10-16-le49-r12) · 6df50b10
- Metric caveats
- Scored courses only (L/R/B/C); N and I carry no score and are excluded, so n here is smaller than the group's course count. Scores are model readings of catalog description text against a fixed anchored definition, not teaching or syllabi. The interval covers sampling noise in the mean only; it does not represent model reading error. Every value carries a `method` label: exact_rows or histogram_midpoint.