Are all of you sitting down? I just picked up this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, and there, big as life, is this front-page headline: “Donors from Academe Favor Obama by a Wide Margin.”
The article reveals that “Professors, college administrators, and other educators” are donating a lot more to Obama than they are to John McCain. The article digs further and concludes that there are not one but two reasons for this. First, academics do not like President Bush. That’s right: They do not like the current president of the United States.
And, second, Senator Obama is viewed by academics as “almost one of them.” Apparently, left-of-center professors identify more with a left-of-center professor than with a former Navy combat pilot. No, really, I kid you not. It seems very counterintuitive, I know, and I would not have believed it, so it is a good thing that CHE, and the three reporters who contributed to this story, devoted nearly three full pages to documenting this extraordinary phenomenon.