A big media outlet covers (at last) Boston.com / News / Politics / Presidential candidates / john kerry / Professors back Kerry with campaign giving a story we covered long ago: The professoriate is overwhelmingly leftist.

Through the end of March, Kerry had received $1.32 million from employees of four-year colleges, compared with Bush's $512,000, according to data compiled for The Boston Globe by Dwight L. Morris & Associates, a Virginia-based consulting firm. Their combined total was nearly triple the $667,000 that Bush and Gore collected over a longer period before the last presidential election.

Strong antiwar sentiment on campuses appears to account for at least some of the shift in contributions away from Bush and also for the overall increase in contributions from those who work in higher education, which still represents a modest sum for a presidential campaign.

Kerry collected the bulk of his college contributions, $822,000, in March, after he virtually wrapped up the nomination and antiwar candidate Howard Dean had dropped out of the Democratic primary race. Before his departure in mid-February, the former Vermont governor had been his party's principal beneficiary of donations from professors.

Certainly Dean was still receiving funds in early 2004. Professors like this, some of whom bring their biases into the classroom, are often 100% of a department. No bias? Guess again.