According to some recently published data, educators at many of the nation’s top colleges and universities are heavy donors to Democratic candidates. The data which is available from the Center for Responsive Politics compiles donation information to federal candidates and parties from 1990 to the present.
Out of the schools that appeared in the top twenty for every election cycle the most lopsided donations were from educators at Harvard University with 91 percent of the total donations (2.7 million) from 1990-2004 going to the Democratic party and their candidates. The University of California system which comprises of ten campuses and over 200,000 students was slightly better with 85 percent (3.1 million) going to the Democrats. Others regularly making the top twenty were the University of Texas, University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University also heavily tilting to the Democrats.
If you take a look at Duke University located in red state North Carolina though the Democrats received 74 percent of the political money donated by professors, researchers and administrators. These figures only confirm what conservatives have suspected for years- that the world of academia is filled with liberal professors that are constantly indoctrinating their students. You have to look no further than this quote that appeared in The Chronicle to see why this is the case.
“There are no conservatives at Duke,” said Michael Munger, chair of the political science department. “Even the conservatives are liberal—there are no conservatives in academia in the sense of straight-up Republicans.”
Munger is correct for the most part. There are exceptions to this statement if you consider Hillsdale College, Brigham Young University or other private or religious institutions for example, but the threat of not gaining tenure probably keeps most conservative professors closeted.
I don’t expect the trends to change anytime soon since the liberal professors have tenure and even though they make frequent calls for more diversity, they don’t want it to apply to political diversity in their own backyard.
