by WorldTribune Staff, October 18, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
At Harvard University and on other major American campuses many of the same people who cheered the lawfare campaign which sought to keep President Donald Trump from returning to the White House are now looking to derail Trump Administration investigations of their institutions by helping to fund the Democrat Party’s bid to take control of the Senate, an analysis said.
Harvard faculty, “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,” David Mastio wrote for The New York Sun on Saturday.
President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social last year: ‘Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity.’ / Wikimedia Commons
Donations from Harvard-affiliated faculty and staff totaled $500,000 by the end of July and were expected to top $1 million by Election Day. The biggest total went to the local Democrat senator, Seth Moulton, but all five of the key Senate races were among the 10 top destinations for Harvard donors.
Mastio noted: “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.”
After seeing billions of dollars in research grants frozen, legal expenditures, and financial settlements, as a result of Trump Administration investigations, 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 Democrat majority.
“We’re at war,” American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 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 socialist Abdul El-Sayed, and on Tuesday it endorsed Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. Both are among the top recipients of midterms 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.
“As non-profit or state-funded institutions, colleges and universities cannot overtly engage in partisan electoral politics themselves,” Mastio noted. “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 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,” Mastio noted.
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.
There have been 955,000 smaller contributions totaling 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.
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 [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.”
Almost all of the top 10 Democrat 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. 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. Talarico has received over $240,000.
• 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.
• 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.
