Ivy League Profs’ Zillions of Dollars of Academic Blood-Money Going to Democrats
A recent Huffington Post article has uncovered a piece of truly startling news: your professors are giving crazy amounts of money to Democrats, and just about none to Republicans (it’s 86%-14%, to be exact). Most people will shrug it off, but we’re hoping this will galvanize the like 27 Ivy League celebrants of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week to go on a hunger strike.
Ivy League professors have given $470,000 this election cycle, which is significantly less than just about every special interest group ever. Obama has taken in $205K from this very important lobby; Hillary has received $147,000. Even Mitt has got in the game, amassing $33,000. If only BYU was in the Ivy League!
Poor conservatives! They’re really struggling these days, what with control of the White House, the Supreme Court, and until recently, Congress. At least the liberals still have their Ivory Tower.
After the jump: the HuffPo’s article in full.
Professors and administrators at the nation's top colleges are supporting Democratic candidates during the 2008 campaign at a rate higher than the historic averages.
More than 86 percent of Ivy League teachers and employees who have donated to presidential campaigns have given to a Democrat , according to an analysis of campaign finance reports. That percentage -- which does not include those who work in affiliated hospitals -- is more than 10 points higher than the education industry as a whole.
Of the roughly $470,000 donated by these Ivy League higher ups, approximately $205,000 has been given to Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL, and $147,000 to Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY. The top Republican recipient was former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, who received approximately $33,000 in Ivy League largesse.
"I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that professors are more liberal than most," Massie Ritsch,, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, told the Huffington Post. "This industry is as Democratic as the oil industry is Republican and I don't think the split in either end would surprise anyone. With professors, however, we assume that these are more ideologically driven than economic."
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the education industry has become increasingly Democratic over the past twenty years. Whereas in 1990, 57 percent of the industry's donations - including Political Action Committee dollars - went to Democratic candidates, by 2006 that number had increased to 71 percent. The amount of money in play is also on the rise. In 1996 the total amount of contributions from academia was more than $8.8 million. By 2000, that had doubled and in 2004 it doubled again to more than $36 million.
In the current political atmosphere, some Ivy League institutions are leaning more left than others. Of the 11 donations made by teachers and employees of Brown University, only one went to a Republican candidate (Rudy Giuliani). The University of Pennsylvania appears to have the most balanced Ivy League faculty. Thirty-nine of the donations from that institution of higher learning went to Democratic candidates, 15 to Republicans.
Whether or not these donations have a bearing on the teacher's classroom decorum is a classic and long-standing political debate.
"I don't know how much this ideological persuasion translates into intellectual bias," said Ritsch. "I don't think these professors are skewing their teaching because they want to see a particular candidate in the White House. If this were the case we wouldn't have as many conservative college students as we do."
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November 14th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Why is this such a surprise? Clinton, Obama and Romney all have at least one Ivy League degree. No other candidate in either party has an Ivy League degree except for Mike Gravel (Democrat) and Alan Keyes (Republican).
November 14th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
doesn’t count. he barely acknowledges Columbia as his alma mater. That jackass would probably rather be from NYU.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
doesn’t count. he barely acknowledges Columbia as his alma mater. That jackass would probably rather be from NYU.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Obama did go to Harvard Law School, you know. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to be associated with Columbia :-p
November 14th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Since when is harvard law school anything special? This is no surprise, 95% of college faculty across the nation donate to democrats. So much for neutrality in the classroom.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
The past six years have demonstrated that reality has a strong liberal bias.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
That was too convoluted to make a successful point.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
So WHAT if the academy overwhelmingly favors Democrats? This has not made the American people listen to our academics, the smartest people walking on this land. Rather, Americans view the academy’s leaning as “liberal bias” and not a studied, defensible conviction. Calling a studied opinion a “point of view” or a “bias” is a grave simplification and offense to what the academy is all about – no, these “opinions” are not “personal opinions” and not randomly generated by a machine. They are works of strong scholarship.
As to why Obama hates Columbia, the answer is very simple: He experienced racism firsthand when he was here, and he personally saw the socio-economic-racial inequalities in America while he spent his years at Columbia. I quote from the NYTimes: “[Obama] passed his first night in an alley near 109th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, unable to get into his apartment. The next morning, he bathed at a hydrant alongside a homeless man.”
No doubt he was treated by everyone as just another black man. No one cares that he’s half-white.
Refer to this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html
November 15th, 2007 at 2:46 am
If you can’t read, that’s not my problem.
November 17th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Score one for Penn. I’ve always suspected we had the fewest stupid hippies in the Ivy League and now I have proof.