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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)
Amherst College: 69.4 (likely range 68.0 to 70.9) All 100 schools: 67.5 each other school in the comparison

Where its courses fall

8%Far left92–100
42%Left75–91
34%Center-left59–74
9%Center42–58
1%Center-right26–41
3%Right9–25
4%Far right0–8
270 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.

Underlined: words the model quoted from the description when we asked it, after scoring, to explain its score.

Furthest-left subjects

BLST 277 · Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World100

Ethnic & African American Studies

(Offered as BLST 277 [CLA], LLAS 277 and HIST 277 [LA/TS/TR]) The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 with a slave revolt on a single plantation and, after more than a decade of total war, destroyed slavery forever and resulted in the…

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BLST 280 · Slave Resistance in Latin America & the Caribbean100

Ethnic & African American Studies

(Offered as BLST 280 [CLA], HIST 280 [LA/TR/TS] and LLAS 280) Slave resistance was caused by slavery itself. In a multitude of ways, from the moment they reached the shores of the Americas, Africans fought against their enslavement. The…

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ECON 211 · AntiRacist AntiEconomics100

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…

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Furthest-right subjects

BLST 201 · Power and Resistance in the Black Atlantic0

Ethnic & African American Studies

(Offered as BLST 201 [D] HIST 267 [AF/LA/TE p /TR] and LLAS 201) The formation of "the Black Atlantic" or "the African Diaspora" began with the earliest moments of European explorations of the West African coast in the fifteenth century and…

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BLST 275 · Gender and Slavery in Latin America0

Ethnic & African American Studies

(Offered as BLST 275 [CLA], SWAG 274, HIST 275 [LA/TR/TS/ P ] and LLAS 275) Latin American slavery was one of the most brutal institutions the world has ever known, and it affected women and girls, boys and men in profoundly different ways.…

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BLST 281 · Africa, Latin America, & the Atlantic Slave Trade0

Ethnic & African American Studies

(Offered as BLST 281[CLA], HIST 285 [AF/LA/TR/TS] and LLAS 281) The Atlantic slave trade was, until the twentieth century, the largest migration in human history and one of the most consequential events in the history of the world. Its…

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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)
DepartmentLeft-framed shareCourses
Women's & Gender Studies66.7%21view
Sociology55.6%18view
Ethnic & African American Studies50%36view
History31.4%105view
English & Comparative Literature30.6%144view
Anthropology28%25view
Political Science24.4%86view
Economics12%50view
Philosophy10%40view
Religious Studies8.2%49view
Psychology7.1%42view
Art & Art History5.7%53view

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
NameMetricValue95% intervalnscored
Amherst Collegemean_bias_score69.468.0 – 70.9669168
All 100 schoolsmean_bias_score67.567.4 – 67.7124,29010,124
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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