Opinion: Academics moving into political giving

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Those folks with the pointy-heads, the beards and the leather patches on the elbows of their sport coats are getting into the political money game big-time.

A new study by the Center for Responsive Politics finds that political donations by academics totaled $8.8 million 11 years ago to rank education 34th in terms of giving occupations. By 2000, that amount nearly doubled to $16.5 million and more than doubled again by 2004 to $37 million. That ranks education eighth in giving among all industries. (So that’s where all those tuition increases are going!)

Using the Center’s data, an article in today’s Boston Globe by Marcella Bombardieri notes that so far this year professors and others in education have given more money to federal candidates than workers in the fields of pharmaceuticals, computers and oil. Education ranks 14th for 2007, behind law, medicine, Wall Street and real estate.

Of the more than $7 million donated in the first six months of 2007, 75% went to--now, who do you really think?--Democrats. More than $4.1 million of it went to presidential candidates with Barack Obama receiving the most ($1.5 million) and Hillary Clinton coming in second ($940,000). But Mitt Romney still got $448,000 for third place.

Experts say academics have become more aware of the influence of money in politics in recent years (where exactly have they been the last 30 years?) and while some instructors are modestly paid, many tenured faculty now rake in income well into six figures, providing room for political donations.

The heavily-liberal tilt to academic giving could contribute to the continuing controversy over teaching politics in the classroom. ‘Academia today,’ says Stephen Balch of the conservative National Association of Scholars, ‘is much more like a church with a creed than an open marketplace of ideas.’

Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist, counters, ‘To make a political judgment and a choice is not bias. It is citizenship.’

--Andrew Malcolm