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Academics Contribute Most to Obama
Written by Fred Lucas, CNSNews.com Staff Writer
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama received about $1.5 million in contributions this year from college professors and others in the education field, outpacing the party's front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton, who got $940,000 from academics. Still, Clinton's near-$1-million second-place finish was almost as much as academia's total combined donations to leading Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. That many college professors and academics lean to the political left is no surprise -- 76 percent of their donations went to Democratic candidates in the first two quarters of 2007. But the volume of their donations is increasing, according to an analysis by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), which tracks money in politics.
Story Continues Below "College professors and others in the education field have contributed more money than the oil industry and drug makers, with the nearly unanimous goal of putting a Democrat in the White House," the report said. Faculty members from Harvard University led the way in overall political contributions -- $266,044 -- with 81 percent of those gifts going to Democrats so far in 2007, according to the report. The second largest sum came from the University of California -- $248,488 - with 90 percent of those donations going to Democrats. (See Complete School Breakdown) On a related note, employees of the University of California, which has nine campuses, contributed more to 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign than any other employer, including corporations. In the 1990s, political giving from university employees hovered around $7 million, the CRP said. That jumped to $17 million in 2000 and nearly doubled in 2004, when academics spent almost $30 million to defeat President George W. Bush. The jump is partly a result of great dislike for Bush, according to professors interviewed in the CRP report. But it can also be attributed to increased faculty pay, as professors at elite universities can often earn as much as top lawyers and corporate chiefs. It's often liberal professors who demonize industries for their political giving, said Sara Dogan, director of Students for Academic Freedom, a conservative group that monitors what it considers liberal indoctrination on college campuses. "When you consider how much some professors bash the oil and pharmaceutical industries for trying to get Republicans elected, you see they are trying to influence elections just as much, if not more," Dogan told Cybercast News Service. "We've heard directly from conservative professors who can't speak their views for fear of losing their job," Dogan said. Also, "students have difficulty at these universities if they are conservative and disagree with a professor." Gary Jacobson, a professor at the University of California-San Diego, said that more professors are Democrats. "If your sensibilities are Republican, you think you should go out in the market and get rich," he said. "If your interests are in ideas and you don't plan on getting rich, you'll be attracted to academia." Dogan disputed that point. "There are plenty of conservatives in academia, and they work at think tanks," Dogan said. "They can't get hired at universities because of academic blacklisting." The analysis falls short of demonstrating a bias on college campuses, said Nicole Byrd, a government relations associate with the American Association of University Professors. She said the CRP did not provide the methodology for the study, which does not differentiate college professors from other university and college employees. "It's a little tricky to read into that," Byrd told Cybercast News Service. "As a faculty organization, we take methodology very seriously when someone throws numbers around." Though Students for Academic Freedom asserts that liberal professors outnumber conservative professors 9 to 1, Byrd believes the group's studies cherry-pick schools and disciplines to obtain such results. "There are a lot of accusations against the professoriate that have not borne out," Byrd said. "Whatever a professor's political views, it depends on their level of professionalism and their willingness to leave one hat in the classroom and one hat in their personal life." © CNS News.com. All rights reserved.
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