"In the 2012 presidential race, 96 percent of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama. That statistic, drawn from Federal Election Commission data, should give us pause -- and I say that as someone who endorsed President Obama. When 96 percent of faculty donors prefer one candidate to another, you have to wonder whether students are being exposed to the diversity of views that a university should offer. Diversity of gender, ethnicity and orientation is important. But a university cannot be great if its faculty is politically homogenous."
This danger lurks at UCLA. I see this on almost a daily basis with many of our students' and the faculty's mistrust of free markets and competitive capitalism. I sense incredible cynicism about how the world works. In this narrative, rich robber barons have captured the political process and use their $ resources to buy monopolies and minimize their exposure to regulation. The poor and vulnerable suffer as they are exploited by the privileged. Under this vision, life is a zero sum game.
In my UCLA classes, click here or read this--- I present a very different vision for how free market capitalism operates. The select set of students who take my classes are exposed to the role that competition plays in protecting us and improving all of our standard of living. Some faculty might gain from taking this class.
As UCLA enters a crucial fund raising campaign, it will interest me to see what are the backgrounds of the people who make major gifts to the school. How did they make their money? What did they study at UCLA?
