Anthropology
Grounded in anthropological and interdisciplinary analyses of policing, prisons, and security, this course aims to account for how carcerality shapes our worlds. Attentive to specificity and variability across place and time, we will…
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Cornell University
Cornell University's course descriptions average 67.2 on the 100-to-0 ruler: clearly left of center. Across all 100 schools, the average is 67.5, so Cornell University reads 0.3 points further right.
Liberal (100)center (50)Conservative (0)
Where its courses fall
6%Far left92–100
37%Left75–91
39%Center-left59–74
9%Center42–58
2%Center-right26–41
3%Right9–25
3%Far right0–8
Subject places what a course studies, not the side it takes. A course on slavery or the Holocaust lands far right and a course on Marx or the Soviet Union lands far left, whether the course praises, criticizes or simply describes it.
Underlined: words the model quoted from the description when we asked it, after scoring, to explain its score.
Furthest-left subjects
English & Comparative Literature
More than thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union, we have the distance needed to view the twentieth-century state socialist project from a historical perspective–even as Cold War tropes are revived amid another major confrontation…
Political Science
This course is a survey of some of the canonical and some of the most exciting contemporary works in the field of Black political thought. The first half covers foundational texts from Delany, Douglass, Du Bois, and Garvey to Baldwin, King,…
Furthest-right subjects
English & Comparative Literature
How is the memory of the Holocaust kept alive by means of the literary and visual imagination? Within the historical context of the Holocaust and how and why it occurred, we shall examine major and widely read Holocaust narratives that have…
English & Comparative Literature
Blood is everywhere. From vampire shows to video games, our culture seems to be obsessed with it. The course examines the power of "blood" in the early modern period as a figure that continues to capture our imagination, not only as a…
Political Science
This course presents a cultural and historical perspective on ideas of agency, responsibility, and punishment through foundational texts of western law. We will primarily focus on three main areas of law: (1) slavery and (2) family (both…
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 65.9 to 68.6; 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.
Cornell University by department (share of courses described from the left)
| Department | Left-framed share | Courses | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Women's & Gender Studies | 46.7% | 30 | view |
| Ethnic & African American Studies | 31.3% | 64 | view |
| Anthropology | 17.6% | 85 | view |
| History | 17.6% | 119 | view |
| Sociology | 16% | 50 | view |
| English & Comparative Literature | 14.5% | 152 | view |
| Political Science | 11.5% | 78 | view |
| Art & Art History | 8.4% | 83 | view |
| Psychology | 5.7% | 70 | view |
| Religious Studies | 5.6% | 18 | view |
| Economics | 1.3% | 76 | view |
| Philosophy | 0% | 49 | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cornell University | mean_bias_score | 67.2 | 65.9 – 68.6 | 874 | 122 |
| 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.
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