Brown and White Vol. 130 no. 24

              The Brown and White Vol. 130 No. 24
Tuesday, May 10, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Professors’ political donations lean left
Faculty have donated more than $25,000 to Democratic entities
By EM OKREPKIE
News Editor
More than 80 percent of Lehigh fac-ulty
members who have donated to a
political party or presidential cam-paign
have given to the Democratic
National Committee or to the cam-paigns
of Democratic presidential
candidates, according to data from
the Federal Election Commission.
Lehigh professors have donated
$30,588 to presidential candidates,
political parties and joint fundraising
committees associated with specific
presidential tickets since the 2000
election, and only 16.8 percent of that
has been donated to Republican pres-idential
candidates or the Republican
National Committee.
Twenty-eight faculty donors have
made 26 donations to political parties
and 53 donations to specific presiden-tial
candidates since the 2000 elec-tion
cycle, with a combined $5,800
going to the Democratic National
Committee and $1,750 going to the
Republican National Committee.
They have contributed a combined
$22,388 to Democratic presidential
candidates and a combined $3,400 to
Republican presidential candidates
since 2000. One donation of $250
was made in 2000 to Ralph Nader, a
Green Party presidential candidate,
and no donations have been made by
professors to independent presiden-tial
candidates.
“Faculties are notoriously progres-sive
and liberal,” said John Ochs,
a mechanical engineering profes-sor
and the director of the technical
entrepreneurship program, who has
donated $1,400 to the Democratic
National Committee since July. “It’s
a bias the Republicans and conserva-tives
have often complained about.
Higher education (is a) bastion for
liberalism and liberals in general.”
Almost half of the donations were
given leading up to the 2012 election,
and $11,738 — or 80 percent of the
contributions before the election —
was given to Obama for America
and the Obama Victory Fund 2012.
Saladin Ambar, a political science
professor who studies the American
presidency, said Obama’s “histor-ic
presidency” as the first African-
American president was likely part
of the reason Lehigh faculty donated
the most money during this election
season.
Donations from individuals who
listed Lehigh University as their
employer and have taught or are
teaching at Lehigh were recorded for
this analysis. Ambar said those who
donate to presidential campaigns
tend to be middle or upper-middle
class individuals who follow politics
closely. He said donors are tradition-ally
college-educated and have large
sums of money to donate, but there
has been a movement to encour-age
smaller donations to campaigns.
Democratic presidential candidate
Bernie Sanders has said the average
donation his campaign receives is
$27.
“We are, because of the Internet,
seeing a transition away from the
purely well off or affluent donor
to smaller donors, and it’s become
easier for people with less means
to donate, as Bernie Sanders has
shown,” Ambar said. “I think that
has helped level the playing field
somewhat, but it’s still a system
dominated not just by corporations,
Campus works toward inclusive community
By AMBER CARDONA
B&W Staff
Lehigh has placed a renewed
focus on promoting diversity on
campus in the past few years, and
President John Simon updated the
Lehigh community on campus cli-mate
and recent efforts to increase
diversity in an email on April 28.
With several ongoing projects
such as a campus-wide audit and
the Lehigh Survey, and continu-ing
conversations about the CORE
report, the university has collected
data and analyzed it to implement
changes around campus to promote
diversity.
For the campus-wide audit, Karen
Salvemini, the university’s equal
opportunity compliance coordina-tor,
is working with the Council for
Equity and Community to review
“all activities related to diversity
and inclusion programming, train-ing
and other educational efforts,”
according to the email. Members of
the campus community had until
early May to complete a survey
about diversity at Lehigh.
The online harassment and dis-crimination
program, the creation
of the Vice President of Equity,
the Cornell Interactive Theatre
Ensemble, diversity in hiring prac-tices
and the creation of an endow-ment
for the expansion of Africana
studies at Lehigh were all designed
to improve the campus climate.
“Increasing diversity on campus Gaby Morera/B&W Staff
Allon Vitenson, ’17, writes on the “Wall of Hate” during the Without
Walls project March 28. President John Simon said initiatives such
as this one have helped foster a more inclusive community at Lehigh.
See DONATIONS Page 3
See DIVERSITY Page 3
Em Okrepkie & Cate Peterson/B&W Staff