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Swarthmore College · Political Science

15.7% of Swarthmore College's Political Science course descriptions are framed from the left. Across all 100 schools' Political Science departments, it is 5.2%.

0%35%
Swarthmore College: 15.7% Political Science at all 100 schools: 5.2% each other school in the comparison

Where Political Science courses fall

0%Far left92–100
35%Left75–91
35%Center-left59–74
24%Center42–58
3%Center-right26–41
3%Right9–25
0%Far right0–8
34 plotted courses (the ones with a political subject). 100 = far left, 50 = the average American, 0 = far right. Subject places what a course studies, not the side it takes.

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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.

Furthest-left subjects

POLS 064 · African American Political Thought (TH)83

Political Science

This seminar is an engagement with African American political thought from approximately 1830 to the present. We will focus on issues such as slavery, systemic racism, and segregation, as criticized by prominent African American…

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POLS 088 · Special Topics: Post-Communism in Russia and China (CP)83

Political Science

During the Cold War, the USSR (Russia) and China were compared as two communist regimes. The Cold War ended, and they were compared as examples of failed and successful socialist and post-socialist reform. Now, they are compared as two…

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POLS 070D · The History and Politics of Punishment (AP)80

Political Science

The question of why the United States has become a vastly more punitive society-some 2.3 million Americans are held in jails and prisons throughout this country, at last count-is the subject of this upper-level division seminar. The aim of…

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Furthest-right subjects

POLS 109 · Comparative Politics: Latin America (CP)25

Political Science

A comparative study of the political economy of Mexico, Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, El Salvador, and Cuba. Topics include the tensions between representative democracy, popular democracy, and market economies; the conditions for…

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POLS 031 · Borders and Migration (CP)33

Political Science

This course, taught in Philadelphia, offers an introduction to the causes and consequences of international migration and examines the political responses of different national communities to the phenomenon. In the first part of the course…

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Why this number, in plain words

Share of courses described from the left. Percent of all courses in the group whose Framing reading is leftward: the description frames its subject one-sidedly to the left.

Counted: all courses in the group, including N and I. No interval is published for this number.

  • Readings are of catalog description text, not of teaching, syllabi or individual professors.
Details: exact rows, definitions and method
NameMetricValue95% intervalnscored
Swarthmore College · Political Sciencebias_left_share15.7—83—
Political Sciencebias_left_share5.24.8 – 5.612,053—
Formula
100 * count(bias_cat = 'L') / n
Interval
Wilson score 95% (wilson_interval)
Model / prompt / snapshot
gpt-5.6-sol · r12 (2026-10-16-le49-r12) · 6df50b10
Metric caveats
Right-framed courses are almost absent (33 of 124,290); this run cannot tell catalog reality from model sensitivity. Compare schools with adjusted_ratio, not this raw share, because department mix differs.

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