Left-leaning students are overwhelmingly awarded the Truman Scholarship, a federal scholarship granted to U.S. college juniors for demonstrated leadership potential and a commitment to public service, according to a survey by The College Fix.
According to the survey, more than a third of Truman Scholarship recipients have ties to Democratic politicians or leftist activist groups. Only several had ties with Republican or right-leaning organizations.
More than 40 of the 112 scholars in 2015 and 2016 have ties to Democratic politicians or liberal groups while less than a handful were found to have worked for Republicans or conservative organizations.
Among the 2015 Truman Scholars, at least 26 had either worked for Democratic politicians and administrations, liberal-leaning organizations or were members of the College Democrats before or after they were awarded the Truman Scholarship. The Fix identified only two scholars as having ties to Republicans or conservative groups on their resumes.
Multiple scholars interned for local and Congressional Democratic lawmakers, as well as at the White House during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Scholar Frank Smith was a fellow for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Another, Katherine Hamilton, worked on Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. Others worked for liberal-leaning think tanks and advocacy groups such as the Brookings Institute, Planned Parenthood, Feminist Majority Foundation, NAACP and Urban Institute.
The survey revealed that 16 recipients had worked for Democratic candidates, while only two had worked for Republicans.
When asked about the discrepancy, Andrew Rich, the executive director of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation claimed that the foundation doesn’t discriminate based upon an applicant’s political activity.
“We’re really focused on what they’ve done by way of service and then their engagement with leadership around it. It’s fairly infrequent that it’s political,” Rich said. “Most [scholars] aren’t very political at all.”
“In all honesty, I mean, we do see both intellectual and ideological variety among our applicant pool. To the extent that there’s less … one direction or another, it really has to do with the schools are sending our direction,” he said.
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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