Education Makes You Smarter. Who Wouldda Thunk It? The rabid ideologues at the Leadership Institute have released a study that shows US university faculty disproportianately donated to John Kerry's campaign over Bush.

Predictably, the LI feels this is compelling evidence of a 'liberal' bias in academia. Certainly, the evidence is difficult to ignore. But as usual, conservative logic is all wrong.

They seem to think that these liberals have somehow managed to infilitrate higher education, and are now free to foist their "radical leftist" views on unsuspecting students. According to pundits, liberals arrive on this planet full-formed and ready to corrupt.

Here's a thought. Maybe the more educated you are, the more progressive you become. When you've learned about the world, perhaps it becomes more difficult to be intolerant and reduce the world into black and white compartments. Perhaps a professor has a hard time agreeing with the kind of zero-sum logic reflected in a statement like "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists". Maybe these folks donate to Kerry because they are intelligent enough to understand what the lesser of two evils actually is.

This may be a reason why the last election didn't just break down into red state/blue state. Votes for Kerry generally corresponded to educational attainment rates.

Maybe progressive values really are the smart choice.  ¶ 1:06 p.m.