USA TODAY: Do professors lean left? Follow the money for a clue (and my response)

[yurbud]

Do professors lean left? Follow the money for a clue

Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly is just one of many who say things like the "corridors of higher education" are filled with liberals.

Today's Boston Globe will add some fuel to the critics' fire:

Professors and others in the education field have given more to federal candidates running in 2008 than those who work in the oil, pharmaceutical, and computer industries -- a sign of how academia has become a much bigger player in the political cash sweepstakes.

Of the more than $7 million that academics donated in the first half of this year, more than $4.1 million went to presidential campaigns, particularly Barack Obama's, according to a study released this month by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The Illinois senator brought in almost $1.5 million, while Hillary Clinton received nearly $940,000.

Republican Mitt Romney was in third place, with about $448,000, but overall, three-quarters of contributions went to Democrats.

FULL TEXT:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/08/do-professors-l.html

My comment posted under that:

While many in academia lean left, we give money to Democrats for very pragmatic reasons: they sometimes help education while Republicans actively harm it.

If you listen to Republican rhetoric, you realize that what they love, they deregulate and give money to, and what they hate, they regulate and defund.

When the energy pirates in California used deregulation to bilk us out of $10 billion, the Republicans somehow made it our hapless governor's fault, and shoehorned Arnold into office. Rather than fight to get our money back, Arnold made deep budget cuts that resulted in a third of the part time faculty being fired at one of the schools where I teach.

The bulk of community college instructors are part timers who have to patch several jobs together to make a living and don't get health insurance from any of our employers.

Democrats do little to help us, and Republicans priorities are more tax cuts for the wealthy and more service cuts for the rest of us.

Education is the primary means of upward mobility, but when teachers barely make a living, and most kids have to work full time and go to school part time, and maybe finish their bachelor's degree by the time they are thirty (if they are lucky), we have to look at who is going to keep the lights on and make our paycheck.

Republicans would do away with public education so most of us would have to choose between a religious school or Walmart Elementary and McDonald's University. If we couldn't afford even that, we'd just have to remain ignorant, which they would prefer anyway. As Karl Rove said, "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans...unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."

[IndyOp]

1. Good reply! Of course, academics are also often attracted to rational people -

which explains some of our rampant liberalism.

:hi: