Elections

Obama grabs 99 percent of donations at Princeton

Robby Soave Reporter
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A staggering 99 percent of political donations among faculty and staff at Princeton University went to President Obama, while Mitt Romney earned just 1 percent, according to public records.

Obama received $170,000 from Princeton professors and administrators, The Daily Princetonian reported. Romney, however, received donations from just two Princeton employees—a visiting lecturer and a custodian.

The custodian, Mark Oresic, said he supported Romney in large part because of his pro-life stance.

College campuses are typically bastions of support for Democratic candidates and left-wing causes. Still, the overwhelming support for President Obama among Princeton professors raises questions about bias, wrote David Azerrad, associate director of the Heritage Foundation’s Kevin B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics.

“You could give the faculty the benefit of the doubt and assume that they leave their political opinions outside the classroom and simply teach their subject matters in a scholarly way, presenting different viewpoints for the students to consider. Some professors, of course, do just that,” he wrote, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “More often than not, however, they don’t. And that’s why our universities—in particular the elite ones—betray a persistent and pervasive liberal bias.”

Liberal bias has negatively impacted the curriculum at universities, according to Azerrad, who cited the decline of military history and the rise of gender, sexuality, and ethnic studies as evidence.

“Important books and subjects are either not required or simply not taught anymore,” he wrote. “Meanwhile the various “studies” proliferate… and they don’t even try to conceal their blatant political biases. So what we see happening is the entire curriculum being tacitly pushed to the left.”

The unanimity of the donations also undercuts a claim made by many universities, including Princeton, that diversity is a paramount goal in higher education, wrote Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

“The findings suggest that, for all the talk of diversity when it comes to race and ethnicity, universities are profoundly homogeneous when it comes to ideology and values,” he wrote in an email to The DC News Foundation.

Universities are some of Obama’s most generous backers. Faculty and staff at the University of California topped a list of contributors to the Obama campaign. Employees of Harvard University also made the list, coming in fifth.

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Robby Soave