Higher Ed Issues At Stake Today

College students are expected to vote in record numbers today in a presidential election that will determine the fate of several key issues affecting higher education—from stem cell research in university laboratories to military recruiting on college campuses and affirmative action in university admissions.

President Bush, the Republican incumbent, and John F. Kerry, his Democratic challenger, appear to be fiercely divided on major issues facing colleges and universities across the country. The Kerry campaign has positioned itself as an alternative to the president after nearly four years of Bush policies on higher education which have drawn lukewarm reviews from Ivy League administrators and faculty.

Harvard and its peer institutions have clashed with President Bush on several occasions during his tenure, most notably over Bush’s stance on stem cell research, which Kerry has vowed to reverse, if elected.

“There are certainly significant differences between President Bush and Sen. Kerry on issues of higher education,” Nils Hasselmo, president of the Association of American Universities, said in an interview yesterday.

“There has, of course, been a sharp division on the stem cell research issue and the association and the research university community has taken the Kerry position on that—or rather, Sen. Kerry has taken our position, however you want to say it,” Hasselmo said.

In August 2001, Bush restricted federal funding to research on existing lines of human embryonic stem cells. But Harvard has pressed forward with privately financed research using new stem cells developed in the University’s laboratories.

“Others may abdicate,” University President Lawrence H. Summers told a gathering of alumni last month, referencing the Bush decision. “Harvard will not.”

Scientists at Harvard and elsewhere have said that human embryonic stem cells, which can grow into any human tissue, could be used to find cures for some debilitating diseases. The Bush administration has said that existing stem cell lines are sufficient for such research.

Summers has not officially endorsed a presidential candidate, though as a former secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton and a guest at the Democratic National Convention in Boston this summer, his allegiances are clearly with Kerry.

And while administrators elsewhere in the Ivy League and Boston area have similarly declined to take sides in the race, their students appear to support Kerry in staggering numbers.

Of the six Ivy League undergraduate newspapers which endorsed a candidate in advance of today’s election, all chose Kerry. He also received the endorsement in all six major undergraduate newspapers in the Boston area which took sides, including MIT’s The Tech, The Tufts Daily and Boston University’s Daily Free Press.

The Citizen, a sporadically published newspaper at the Kennedy School of Government, appeared to be the lone dissenter among student publications in the area, endorsing Ralph Nader, the independent—and far-left—candidate.

A poll of Harvard undergraduates conducted late last month by The Crimson found 73 percent of eligible voters supported Kerry, while just 19 percent favored Bush. The poll had a margin of error of 5.1 percent.

The incumbent president and his Democratic challenger hopped among a handful of contested states yesterday in a massive drive to turn out voters for what polls indicate could be an even closer election than that of 2000, when recounts and protracted legal challenges left the nation in limbo for over a month.

ON THE ISSUES

Higher education did not garner much mention in either of the candidates’ stump speeches yesterday, but Bush and Kerry have traded barbs on such issues for over a year now.

The president has often touted a dramatic increase—nearly $5 billion—in federal financial aid under his administration. But the Kerry campaign said that this rise can be attributed to more families qualifying for federal aid because of dropping family incomes under the Bush economy.

Still, both candidates have promised further increases in a variety of federal aid programs to low-income college students. In the third presidential debate, Bush said that his signature No Child Left Behind Act was preparing more students for a college education.

In several speeches across the country yesterday, Bush said he had “challenged the bigotry of low expectations by reforming our public schools.”

Race and education emerged at the forefront of a nationwide debate last year as the Supreme Court ruled on two lawsuits challenging the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policies.

At the time, both candidates supported the Supreme Court’s decisions, which permitted affirmative action so long as it does not constitute a “quota” system, but Bush said last month that “race-neutral admissions policies ought to be tried.”

In an interview yesterday, Gary Orfield, professor of education and social policy at the Graduate School of Education, lamented that issues from financial aid to affirmative action did not play more prominent roles in the presidential campaign,

“Almost all chance of real mobility is tied to higher education,” Orfield said. “It should have been a higher priority than it was, but higher education doesn’t have as well-organized constituencies.”

The two candidates have largely sidestepped the ongoing debate over military recruiting at Harvard Law School and other campuses. But as a vocal opponent of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Kerry has implicitly sided with those schools which have objected to the military’s presence on campus.

PREPARING FOR VICTORY

While the Kerry campaign made preparations for a victory celebration in Copley Square set for tonight, volunteers at Bush’s election-night headquarters in Washington, D.C. began literally setting the stage for their candidate’s own victory party in the nation’s capital.

Technicians and stagehands rushed yesterday to put the finishing touches on an elaborate setup that will host the Bush family and 4,000 supporters at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center tonight. The stark, modernist atrium of the building was transformed into a glowing red, white and blue motif, complete with massive American flags and candy-colored lighting schemes.

But with 24 hours before election returns were to begin rolling in, there were still technical glitches to be worked out. A filing center for the media was lacking internet access and a special podium designated for Laura Bush, the First Lady, remained packed away in a crate.

—Reporting for this article was contributed by Nicholas M. Ciarelli, Daniel J. Hemel, Sahil K. Mahtani, T. Josiah Pertz and Anton S. Toianovski in Cambridge. Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.

—Staff writer Zachary M. Seward can be reached at seward@fas.harvard.edu.