Harvard’s Faculty Lead Academia in Record Donations to Democrats in Key Senate Races

University personnel, stung by almost two years of Trump administration lawsuits and investigations, are donating to Democrats in key midterm races at unprecedented levels, with Harvard professors, administrators and staff leading the charge.In direct donations of $1,000 or more, a record-setting $4 million had been raised for Democrats from 582 schools through July 31, with that total likely to more than double by Election Day, based on patterns in the last two midterm cycles. The figures were compiled in a database of Federal Election Commission records built by The New York Sun.Following conflicts with the Trump administration that have cost the schools billions of dollars in frozen research grants, legal expenditures, and financial settlements, the academic community has directed more than a quarter of its donations — $1.2 million — to key Senate races in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan in apparent hopes of securing a Democratic majority there.Donations from Harvard-affiliated faculty and staff alone had totaled $500,000 by the end of July and were expected to top $1 million by Election Day, based on 2018 and 2022 donation patterns. The biggest total went to the local Democratic senator, Seth Moulton, but all five of the key Senate races were among the 10 top destinations for Harvard donors.“We’re at war,” an American Association of University Professors press secretary, Kelly Benjamin, told The New York Sun. “The assault we are under has left us no choice.” The AAUP announced endorsements of Senate candidates this year, an unprecedented move for the century-old liberal non-profit. Earlier this year the group endorsed a Michigan Democrat, Abdul El-Sayed, and on Tuesday it endorsed Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. Both are among the top recipients of this college cash.“Universities have not formally announced their partisanship, but they are clearly an informal part of the Democratic Party,” president of the National Association of Scholars, Peter Wood, told the Sun. His group is critical of the left-wing tilt in higher education.While the college-related sums are small in terms of a $10 billion election cycle or the estimated $366 million donated to Republicans by Elon Musk this election cycle, the figures show that university personnel are more motivated than in the past to try to flip control of Congress.As non-profit or state-funded institutions, colleges and universities cannot overtly engage in partisan electoral politics themselves. The donations by faculty, staff and administrators, more than 90 percent of which go to Democrats and allied independents, are made by school-affiliated employees as individuals who have no such restrictions.Harvard, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, University of Texas, Columbia, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Emory and New York University are the 10 schools whose staff have donated the most, according to the Sun’s database of FEC records. The job titles and workplaces of the donors are included in the FEC records. The Trump administration has made Harvard a focus of its campaign targeting universities. Trump appointees have tried to freeze more than $2 billion in research funding, derail admission of foreign students and pressure the school to change admissions and DEI practices. Lawsuits have proliferated and in August, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit focused on charges the school was antisemitic. Last month, another judge delayed the effort to restrict foreign student visas. The 12-member governing board of Harvard, called the “President and Fellows of Harvard College,” has not shown a pattern of giving to the five Senate races. Only a handful of members have given any political donations in this election cycle.Harvard President Alan Garber did not respond to requests for comment on the school’s role nor did he make any donations. A former president, Larry Summers, a sometimes critic of Harvard and a donor of $9,000, responded to an email saying, “I have no comment.” One of Harvard’s top donors and former law school dean, Martha Minow, also declined an interview. So far she has given $10,000. Faculty from across the country, including from Harvard, are also making a record amount of donations over $1,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, an umbrella group that backs Senate candidates around the country, with total donations on track to pass $1 million before Election Day on top of the donations going straight to campaigns. In addition, dozens of prominent faculty, including some from Harvard, have given to the two main Democratic superpacs running independent ads in the five Senate races. Those are the Senate Majority PAC run by the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and Texas-focused Lone Star Rising, according to FEC records examined by the Sun. There are good reasons to target a few Senate races using the limited donations that faculty can muster, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Kevin Kosar, told the Sun.“Deposing the Republican majority in the Senate would enable Harvard and other schools to roll back some of the changes the Trump administration made,” he said, pointing out that the Republicans have long been predicted to lose the House. If Democrats win the Senate, too, they “could defund and reverse [Mr. Trump’s] new policies. A Democratic-controlled Senate and House also makes it possible for them to deploy the Congressional Review Act to strike down any pending Trump regulations affecting higher education.”The biggest college cash donors have a motive to do just that. According to the Sun’s donation database, nine of the 10 schools whose employees have taken a lead in such fundraising are under investigation by the Trump administration Department of Education, Department of Justice or Department of Labor, or sometimes all three on suspicion of diversity practices, antisemitism, race-based admissions, foreign influence, and immigration violations. The one school not under Trump investigation is facing probe by the Trump-allied Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate, Ken Paxton. Two of the schools have already settled their cases, paying nearly $300 million to the Trump administration. Columbia and Northwestern’s settlements are the largest that the administration has extracted.“These investigations show the universities no longer enjoy the immunity they once did,” Mr. Wood from the NAS said. While the high-value donations to Democratic Senate candidates has come in 1,965 individual donations through the end of July, there have been 955,000 smaller contributions totalling millions more from college and university employees through ActBlue, an umbrella online fundraising organization for Democrats. More than 28,000 of them, in amounts, ranging from five bucks to hundreds of dollars, have come from Harvard employees alone. WinRed, a Republican counterpart to ActBlue, shows 58,000 such donations across all colleges in the FEC database, but none from Harvard staff.A New York Sun analysis shows that total donations could easily double what was spent on midterm elections in 2018 and 2022 when records from the frenetic last months of this year’s campaign are disclosed. However, midterm elections have been much lower spending affairs than presidential contests, at least until this year’s election which some predict may break that pattern.Harvard staff spent more than $1 million to try to elect Kamala Harris in 2024, according to OpenSecrets.org, more than what its employees have donated to the five key Senate races so far this year. The 2024 election was the peak year for donations by university-affiliated individuals. The University of California that year donated nearly $20 million across its schools – 97.4% of it to Democratic candidates according to OpenSecrets.org. The November 2026 election will be a peak for such mid-term donations.Professors, researchers and administrators are also reaching deeper into their pockets. The average donation to the DSCC has grown from $3,000 the last time Trump faced a midterm to more than $3,600 this year. Average donations directly to the five Senate campaigns have grown from $1,530 in the 2018 midterms to just over $1,800 now.Drilling down to the individual Senate races, local universities in the respective states are the leading sources of donors. However in four of the five key Senate races, Harvard is a top-five source of donors among universities. Almost all of the top 10 donating schools nationally have been targeted by the Trump administration. In North Carolina, Senate hopeful Roy Cooper has raked in more than $200,000 from personnel at in-state schools Duke and the University of North Carolina system. Stanford, Harvard, the University of California and Columbia employ the next most generous donors, accounting for about $50,000. All are under investigation by the Trump administration. Duke’s School of Medicine and some law school programs have been found by the administration to discriminate against whites and Asians. The Department of Health and Human Services has frozen more than $100 million of Duke’s research funding. At UNC, the Trump administration has cut $40 million in grants and forced the school to alter or remove some of its DEI programs.In Georgia, Senator John Ossoff’s biggest college cash donors are employed at local institutions Emory and Georgia State, followed by Harvard, Columbia and Northwestern from out of state. Mr. Ossoff’s total college cash is $250,000.Emory is under a civil rights audit by the Department of Education and in August, the Department of Defense launched an investigation into the school’s foreign ties. Georgia State is embroiled in the Trump administration’s DEI review.In Texas, Senate candidate James Talarico’s top supporters work at local universities Baylor and the University of Texas. The next most generous are employed at Johns Hopkins, Harvard and the University of Chicago. Mr. Talarico has received over $240,000. All three out-of-state schools are under investigation by the Trump administration. The two local schools are not, but Mr. Talarico’s opponent, Mr. Paxton launched an investigation into the law school’s relationship with the American Bar Association over the ABA’s DEI requirements and political bias, a cause that has also been taken up by the Trump administration. In Michigan, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has received $215,000 from academics and staff with the local University of Michigan and Wayne State University leading the way. Employees of the University of Washington, Yale and Loyola rounded out the top five.The top source of donations, the University of Michigan, is under investigation by the Department of Education on suspicion of hiding or misreporting hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign funding. Wayne State and Loyola are not under investigation by the Trump administration.In Ohio, Sherrod Brown, who has received over $200,000 from staff at colleges and universities, is backed by employees of local schools Ohio State, Case Western Reserve and the University of Cincinnati. Rounding out the top five are donors at Harvard and Vanderbilt. All are under investigation by the Trump administration.Ohio State received a warning from Trump’s Department of Education about antisemitic harassment and discrimination on campus. The school is also under investigation on suspicion of race-based admissions at the medical school and hiding continuing DEI programs after they were shut down. Case Western Reserve is under investigation for problems with its disclosure of foreign donations. The University of Cincinnati is under investigation for DEI practices in both its graduate programs and medical school.

Harvard’s Faculty Lead Academia in Record Donations to Democrats in Key Senate Races

Harvard’s Faculty Lead Academia in Record Donations to Democrats in Key Senate Races

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