By David Mastio | The Center Square
Tax instructor Erich Eischen is the only college or university employee in the country to give $1,000 or more to Trump’s presidential campaign so far in the 2024 race
Erich Eischen is unique.
According to Federal Election Commission data, he is the only person who lists his employer as a college or university in the United States who made a contribution of $1,000 or more to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign so far in the 2024 election cycle.
Such donors are a dime a dozen for President Joe Biden. There are 289, in fact, according to the FEC.
Biden has more higher ed support at the University of California alone, than Trump has in the whole country. And Biden’s support comes from schools that will tell you they are the most prestigious — Cornell, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, Penn, NYU, Georgetown and on and on.
Where does Trump’s single big dollar contribution come from? A Dakota State University tax and accounting instructor. According to the school’s website, he teaches introductory tax and accounting classes as well as more advanced courses.
He has taught in the United Arab Emirates, China and Morocco and studied at the University of Denver. He did not respond to email and phone requests for comment.
Critics of higher education say that the disparity in donations is a sign that universities are out of touch with the rest of America which funds them.
“We hear a lot about ‘diversity’ and the need for a higher education sector that ‘looks like America, but higher education looks about as much like America as the National Hockey League does,” Glenn Reynolds, author of “The New School: How the Information Age will Save American Education from Itself,” told The Center Square.
“It’s a political monoculture … Taxpayers are beginning to wonder why they support an industry that regards so many of them as outright enemies.”
In recent elections, colleges and universities have become more and more lucrative sources of donations primarily for Democrats. The University of California system was Joe Biden’s 10th largest donor in 2020 with nearly $20 million dollars in donations to all candidates, according to Open Secrets. Over 97 percent of its donations went to Democrats.
This originally published Feb. 7 on The Center Square.
MORE: Politically polarized universities alienate Republicans, professor says
IMAGE: Courtesy of Dakota State University web site
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