History
Most Americans who know and love Harriet Tubman know she escaped enslavement, led herself and more than 60 people out of bondage via the Underground Railroad, gave instructions on getting to freedom to 50 or 60 more people, and became a…
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Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University's course descriptions average 66.5 on the 100-to-0 ruler: clearly left of center. Across all 100 schools, the average is 67.5, so Carnegie Mellon University reads 1.0 points further right.
Liberal (100)center (50)Conservative (0)
Where its courses fall
6%Far left92–100
30%Left75–91
42%Center-left59–74
12%Center42–58
1%Center-right26–41
3%Right9–25
6%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
History
This course covers an epic set of events in Russian history beginning with the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and ending with the death of Stalin in 1953. Spanning almost a century of upheaval and transformation, it examines the…
History
Joseph Stalin has been vilified and praised, damned and worshipped. He left behind a mixed and complex legacy. He created an industrialized modern economy in the Soviet Union and won a great and painful victory over the Nazis. At the same…
Furthest-right subjects
History
This course is part of a set of 100-level courses offered by Dietrich College departments as independent studies for second-semester freshmen and first- or second-semester sophomores in the College. In general, these courses are designed to…
History
Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow (The New Pres 2010) has drawn attention to the ways that American institutions and social systems continue to produce racial inequalities. The recent failure of federal voting rights bills in the United…
History
This course, taught in Somerset prison, covers many aspects of the war unleashed by the Third Reich: its origins; Hitler's ideology and war plans; the course of the war; major military operations; the Holocaust; Nazi occupation of Europe;…
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 64.7 to 68.4; 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.
Carnegie Mellon University by department (share of courses described from the left)
| Department | Left-framed share | Courses | |
|---|---|---|---|
| History | 25.2% | 159 | view |
| English & Comparative Literature | 20% | 170 | view |
| Art & Art History | 6.6% | 122 | view |
| Political Science | 4.8% | 62 | view |
| Philosophy | 2.7% | 75 | view |
| Economics | 2.6% | 39 | view |
| Psychology | 2.4% | 85 | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carnegie Mellon University | mean_bias_score | 66.5 | 64.7 – 68.4 | 712 | 92 |
| 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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