The College Fix

The College Fix presents a roundup of the top scandals, screw-ups, and stupid decisions involving college campuses. This week, we tackle the recent election, in which colleges campuses and the people therein – students and professors – played a huge role in President Barack Obama’s re-election.

3) So 60 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds broke for Obama, catapulting him to victory. In key swing states, the margins were more like 75 percent for Obama. Should we be surprised? Absolutely not.  National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood put it like this: “If those who value America’s deeper traditions hope to win future elections, they had better get serious about higher education. Ceding the colleges and universities to cultural and political progressives has led to generations of graduates who have scant knowledge of our nation’s founding principles, a distorted understanding of its ideals, and settled patterns of disdain for genuine intellectual diversity.”

In other words, how can we expect young people to vote for a pro-conservative, pro-capitalist ticket when, day in and day out at universities, they’re taught and influenced by people who have an open disdain for the Republican Party and everything it stands for? Even college students who come from “Republican” homes are completely susceptible to the daily onslaught of liberal bias they’re spoon-fed.

For decades, the leftist slant of universities has been shrugged off, dismissed, even accepted as status quo and not a huge concern. In the meantime, these professors continually create young minions who vote on Election Day. Why do you think Obama and his wife visited so many college campuses in the last few months of the campaign? If Republicans and conservatives want to win elections, they better vie for the hearts and minds of young people, and they can start by addressing what amounts to taxpayer-subsidized leftist indoctrination at college campuses across the nation.

2) The leftist control of campuses isn’t just speculation, either. Professors are squarely in the corner of the Democrats and their platform. One need look no further than the millions of dollars they donated to the Obama campaign this election cycle.

Among the top 20 donors to his campaign were university educators. Employees and faculty affiliated with the University of California system came in as the top Obama donor in the 2012 election cycle at $1.1 million in contributions, beating out companies such as Microsoft and Google. Harvard University came in fifth place on the Top 20 list at about $600,000 in donations, with Stanford University right behind in seventh place at $532,000. Not to be outdone, Columbia University came in at ninth place with $411,000, followed by the University of Chicago at about $325,000 and in thirteenth place. Finally, University of Michigan came in at seventeenth place with $308,000 given to Obama.

At Princeton University, of the 157 educators and staff members who donated to presidential candidates, only two of those donations went to Republican Mitt Romney. The rest went to Obama. Similarly, at the State University of New York-Purchase campus, the vast majority of professors’ campaign donations went to Obama as well.

In fact, I challenge our readers to locate one public university across the nation where professors’ donations to Romney outpaced donations to Obama. Here’s a hint: Don’t bother wasting your time.

1) So fervent was the Obama camp to win re-election that it resulted to mind games – manipulating people to vote for Obama. The president’s campaign team relied on good ‘ol professors to explain how best to do so. The so-called “academic dream team” consisted of a small group of educators who dubbed themselves the “Consortium of Behavioral Scientists” and advised Obama campaign volunteers on what to say, how to say it, and basically use smoke and mirrors to gain the electorate’s favor.

We’re not talking about clever marketing, here. We’re not talking about slick ad campaigns. We are talking about taking what’s known about the human psyche and twisting it, “using subtle motivational techniques that research has shown can prompt people to take action,” according to a report in The New York Times.

“In addition to Dr. (Cragi) Fox, (a psychologist in Los Angeles), the consortium included Susan T. Fiske of Princeton University; Samuel L. Popkin of the University of California, San Diego; Robert Cialdini, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University; Richard H. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s business school; and Michael Morris, a psychologist at Columbia.”

… Many volunteers also asked would-be voters if they would sign an informal commitment to vote, a card with the president’s picture on it. This small, voluntary agreement amplifies the likelihood that the person will follow through, research has found. … Obama volunteers also asked people if they had a plan to vote and if not, to make one, specifying a time. … Another technique some volunteers said they used was to inform supporters that others in their neighborhood were planning to vote … Simply identifying a person as a voter, as many volunteers did — ‘Mr. Jones, we know you have voted in the past’ — acts as a subtle prompt to future voting.”

The Obama campaign also didn’t just target the Average Joe voter with these tricks. They used them on college students across the nation as well, as detailed in a recent report by The College Fix.

As a wise man once said, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Using secretive manipulation tactics as opposed to the merits of a good argument to win the White House isn’t just sad, it’s disturbing. What’s worse is it worked.

Click here to Like The College Fix on Facebook.

IMAGE: Frustated/Arden’s Way of Life/Flickr