Since the current presidential election campaign began in earnest more than a year ago, 13 professors from the Harvard Business School (HBS) were contributors. The Kennedy School of Government had nine donors, the Harvard Law School had six, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences had four, and the Harvard Medical school and Graduate School of Education had three donors each.

It's not surprising that business school professors make up the largest plurality of the Harvard donor cohort, says Theda C. Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology.

"I'm sure they're in a better position to donate than anyone else," she says. While HBS faculty financial support appears evenly divided between Democratic candidate Bradley and Republican candidate Bush, most Kennedy School faculty donations went to Democratic candidate Gore. Several members of the Kennedy School faculty--including Willian Julius Wilson and Elaine Kamarck--have either publicly declared their support for Gore or advised the candidate himself.

Kennedy School sociologist Christopher Jencks is a top Bradley advisor and gave the candidate $1,000, the maximum allowable by campaign finance rules.

Steven J. Kelman '70, a professor of public management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (KSG), said that the outside world perceives Harvard's faculty as skewed to the left.

"I'm not sure [the perception] is true," he says. "I don't think the Harvard faculty is as uniformly democratic or liberal as many outsiders think." He says that the opinions of Harvard faculty may be divided more evenly along political lines, but that the Republican-leaning professors may not contribute as much as the Democratic-leaning professors.

Kelman, a Gore supporter, said he thinks that the KSG faculty appreciates Gore's commitment to the reinventing government program. He said working for a better government in "a low visibility program for which you don't get many brownie points" is "what the Kennedy School is really all about."