GOP Candidates Get Financial Help From Faculty and Administrators at Black Colleges and Universities
In the last election cycle leading up to the 2004 presidential election, faculty, administrators, and other employees of Harvard University donated $1.1 million to political candidates. Given that black voters tend to overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates, readers might be inclined to predict that political contributions made by faculty, administrators, and other employees of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities would go exclusively to Democratic candidates. But this is not always the case.
Overall we found that political contributions were made by employees of 48, four-year black colleges and universities in the 2003-04 election cycle. The total amount of contributions from black college employees was only $163,268.
Of the 48 black colleges with political contributors, 28 schools contributed no money whatsoever to GOP candidates. At 20 black colleges and universities, employees did make contributions to Republicans.
At six black colleges and universities, all of the political contributions went to Republican candidates. They were Fisk University, Bethune-Cookman College, Johnson C. Smith University, Stillman College, Lane College, and Morris College. At Fisk, all the contributions were made by then-president Carolynn Reid-Wallace.
At Barber-Scotia College, Tennessee State University, Langston University, Voorhees College, and Hampton University, more than half of all political contributions were to Republican candidates or their affiliated committees.
Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.