At least as interesting as John Cloud's discussion of the youthful campus Right, is his look at the aging campus Left.
"Just look at the academy's political donations: according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, 72% of university employees' $16.7 million in contributions during this election cycle has gone to the Democratic Party," Cloud writes. I'm surprised it's that low. My guess is that the 28% going to the Republicans comes mainly from non-administrative, non-faculty workers, community college employees, and instructors in the hard sciences. Cloud continues: "The figure for Harvard is 97%, and every penny of the $156,000 from the College of William and Mary has gone to the Democrats. Employees of the University of California have given more money to John Kerry's presidential campaign than have workers at any other business or institution; Harvard employees are No. 2." By way of comparison, employees at no college or university even making President Bush's list of top twenty contributors.
Several of the liberal professors interviewed clearly revealed themselves as out to lunch. "Our strength is our ability to offer our students alternative perspectives," remarked a defensive Ithaca College professor to charges of bias. Cloud appropriately observes, "Alternative in this case means liberal."
Perhaps the line of the article came from Assistant Professor Charles Venator Santiago of Ithaca College, who teaches a class called "Ideas and Ideologies." When Cloud asked him whether he taught any conservative thinkers, the academic responded: "I am teaching Hitler." That ignorant mentality, in a nut-shell, is what many conservative students face from professors from orientation to graduation day. I know I did.
Maybe these people, people who get paid to think all day, know more than we do about politics. Maybe we should see thier dollars as an endorsement, not a crime.
Who are the conservative thinkers?
Smith? Mill? Friedman?
What we should be talking about is the corporate takeover over our nation's public campuses. research corporations drain our universites by getting research univerities to do thier work for them. Tuition is going way way way up. These are issues.
