When Students Refuse to Be Friends, Our Republic Is at Risk

By Samuel J. Abrams

Sunday, October 05, 2025

 

America is in the midst of a “friendship recession.” Rates of close friendship have plummeted over the past two decades, and loneliness has grown so severe that the U.S. Surgeon General recently called it a public health epidemic. Among young men, the numbers are particularly stark: A quarter of those younger than 30 say they have no close friends. These aren’t just personal struggles. They have deep civic consequences.

 

Colleges should be the antidote to this social crisis. Friendships teach empathy, build trust, and help people navigate differences. They are the foundation of a free and self-governing society. At college, young adults from different backgrounds come together to live, study, and grow. These years ought to foster bonds that bridge divides and prepare students to lead in this current political moment.

 

New findings from the Buckley Institute’s 2025 national survey of undergraduates show that campuses are failing in this essential work. Instead of forging meaningful connections, many students are actively rejecting them. Forty-six percent of students say they cannot be close friends with someone from the other political party. Among self-identified liberals, that number soars to 64 percent, compared to just 25 percent of conservatives.

 

Two-thirds of liberal students now say that someone who thinks differently politically is unworthy of friendship. That isn’t just campus polarization; it’s a sign of a generation being formed to see political opponents as enemies rather than neighbors. If almost half of today’s students graduate believing this, our civic life will grow even more brittle and fragmented.

 

Beneath these troubling headline results, the Buckley survey also shows that this trend is driven by education majors. The very students preparing to become teachers are among the most likely to say they cannot be friends across political lines. These are the people who will be in classrooms shaping the civic and cultural formation of millions of young Americans. These two crises — the collapse of friendships and the collapse of civic knowledge — reinforce each other. Students who lack a deep understanding of our constitutional order are more likely to fear disagreement and retreat into ideological silos.

 

Teachers are not just transmitters of knowledge. They are civic role models. Every day, they show children, through their actions and relationships, what it means to handle disagreement, to include others, and to live with difference. If tomorrow’s teachers cannot form friendships across lines of belief, they will not be able to teach students how to do so either.

 

If we want to strengthen civic knowledge and civic trust in America, we must focus on the people who will teach these lessons every day.

 

Teachers are civic multipliers. A single well-trained teacher reaches hundreds of students each year and thousands over a career. By ensuring teachers graduate with constitutional mastery and the ability to model cross-partisan relationships, we can begin to reverse these troubling trends. This starts with teacher education programs themselves. Colleges must require courses on the U.S. Constitution and American political thought as part of every education major. Teacher candidates should be required to participate in structured dialogues or “civic practicums” that bring students of diverse political perspectives together to discuss difficult topics face-to-face. Education schools can also partner with local schools and civic organizations to give future teachers real-world experience leading cross-partisan service projects or debate clubs.

 

This isn’t about adding another standardized test. It’s about reorienting teacher preparation toward civic leadership and pluralism. At the policy level, states should mandate that teacher licensure exams include a demonstrated understanding of core civic principles, and accreditation bodies should evaluate education schools on whether they prepare teachers to foster civic trust. Without these changes, colleges will continue to graduate teachers who are academically prepared but civically unprepared.

 

The approaching 250th anniversary of America’s Founding in 2026 is a rare opportunity to act. This milestone should not just be celebrated with parades and fireworks. It should mark a recommitment to forming citizens — and especially teachers — who can carry forward the work of self-government.

 

If we fail, campuses will continue to produce graduates who won’t engage with someone who disagrees politically. Education majors will enter classrooms unable to model the habits of pluralism and exemplify the benefits of viewpoint diversity. And students will grow up without the classroom encouragement to see friendship across differences.

 

Colleges need to protect free expression and foster opportunities for cross-partisan friendships. For instance, universities can require all freshmen to participate in bipartisan service-learning experiences, pair students from different backgrounds in housing or leadership programs, and sponsor regular debates and forums that encourage civil disagreement. These initiatives need to be intentional and sustained, not one-off workshops. Above all, we must invest in teachers. Equipping educators with civic knowledge and the skill to bridge divides is the most cost-effective strategy for rebuilding our civic culture because a single teacher influences hundreds of students each year. Over time, this creates a multiplier effect: One well-prepared teacher can shape the civic outlook of thousands of future voters and leaders.