Taxpayer dollars fund college and university professional membership groups that increasingly promote political advocacy ahead of their stated educational purposes, a new report from a public policy research organization says.
American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Aug. 26 report, “Scholarly Associations Gone Wild,” noted that 80 of the 99 academic organizations it researched, or 81 percent, have at least one official position on race/affirmative action, the Israel–Hamas conflict, climate change, immigration, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The report says these organizations’ positions “uniformly reflect progressive orthodoxy.”
Public higher education learning institutions spend at least $183 million annually subsidizing membership dues and conference registrations for organizations that have promoted contested political positions within the past five years, according to the report….