EXCLUSIVE ANALYSIS: Faculty, admin at Ilhan Omar's alma mater gave exclusively to Dems
Newly-elected Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar made headlines in recent days for anti-semitic comments in which she insinuated that Jewish groups lobby the U.S. government to support Israel.
Her comments drew criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Omar later apologized, saying, in part, “my intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. I unequivocally apologize.”
Amid backlash to her comments, Campus Reform analyzed the donation records of employees at Omar’s alma mater, North Dakota State University. The analysis was created with publicly available 2017-2018 records from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), in order to determine the political leanings of faculty and administrators at NDSU.
[RELATED: CASH COW: Vermont college employees churn out big dough for Dems]
According to a Campus Reform analysis, 100 percent of all college administrators and faculty members who donated to political candidates or causes gave a total of $21,415.78 to Democrat politicians or Democrat organizations, such as former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp’s reelection campaign.
The FEC records reveal there were no donations made to Republican candidates or causes by any NDSU faculty or administrators.
For the purposes of this data, Campus Reform defined “faculty” as employees of the college that have direct instructional contact with students, such as professors, teachers, and instructors. This definition includes teaching fellows and assistants. “Administrators” were defined as employees who manage programming or are responsible for students and faculty, such as department chairs, deans, presidents, and provosts.
Campus Reform sorted individual donors using their stated position at the college. For example, if the individual donor noted that they were a “professor of literary theory,” they were designated as a faculty member. If an individual noted that they were employed as an “executive director,” they were designated as an administrator. In the event an employee’s title was ambiguous and could not be confirmed, they were marked as general employees, but not sorted into faculty or administration categories. Campus Reform used a variation of keyword searches to cull data specific to Boston University employees.
Campus Reform used the most recent FEC donor records from Jan. 1, 2017 to Dec. 31, 2018.
This latest analysis is similar to multiple other analyses that Campus Reform has conducted in recent months, in which the overwhelming majority of faculty members and administrators at colleges and universities donate to Democrat candidates and causes over Republican.
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