Free Republic

From: DGiannotti@eth.state.ma.us FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 6, 2009 Contact: David Giannotti, Communications Division Chief 617-371-9505 Ethics Commission's Enforcement Division Alleges that Town of Harvard School Superintendent and a Former School Committee Chairman Violated the Conflict of Interest Law Allegedly Used Official Positions to Secure Reimbursement of Private School Tuition by Harvard Public Schools The State Ethics Commission's Enforcement Division, in two Orders to Show Cause ("OTSC"), alleged that Harvard Superintendent of Public Schools Thomas Jefferson ("Jefferson") and former Harvard School Committee Chairman Paul Wormser ("Wormser") violated G.L.c. 268A, the conflict of interest law, by using Jefferson's official position as Superintendent,...

Former University of South Alabama Professor Barry Simpson, 44, was sentenced today by U.S. District Court Judge Joan A. Lenard to 63 months’ imprisonment, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Simpson was previously convicted of attempting to transmit obscene material to a minor using the Internet. As part of a child exploitation investigation, an undercover FBI agent posed as a 13-year-old girl in an Internet chat room. In the chat room, Simpson approached the undercover agent and initiated a conversation. During the course of the conversation, Simpson transmitted clothed pictures of himself and sexually explicit material to...

Supporters of Darwin’s theory continue to distinguish themselves on America’s college campuses—not for their reason and logic, but for their incredible ill manners and an almost pathological inability to engage in civil discussion. Last week, a factually-challenged attack on intelligent design was published in The Nevada Sagebrush, the student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Reno. Nothing new in that; I see ill-informed articles on intelligent design all the time. But after my colleague Rob Crowther posted a short comment suggesting that readers might actually want to hear from intelligent design proponents themselves (imagine that!), the Darwinist thought-police came out...

The Obama administration is trying to strong-arm America’s colleges and universities into complying with a bill that hasn’t been signed into law yet. The bill, which would replace current subsidized-student-loan programs with a government-run system, passed the House last month, but its fate in the Senate is far from clear. Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Education Committee, plans to use the budget-reconciliation process to pass the contentious bill with a simple majority, but The Hill newspaper reports that it might not even have 51 votes. The bill is far from a fait accompli, making the administration’s pressure campaign all...

<p>EUGENE, ORE. – When I began examining the political affiliation of faculty at the University of Oregon, the lone conservative professor I spoke with cautioned that I would “make a lot of people unhappy.”</p> <p>Though I mostly brushed off his warning – assuming that academia would be interested in such discourse – I was careful to frame my research for a column for the school newspaper diplomatically.</p>

I had a somewhat disturbing conversation yesterday with Steve Fussell, the senior VP of human resources at pharmaceutical maker Abbott. His basic message, which I may pursue in a column down the road, was that Abbott is going to be hiring tons of people for high-paying jobs over the next decade, but not many of them will be Americans because we study the wrong things in college and we're not willing to work overseas. The key quotes: 1) "I hate to say we don't have the world's best universities. We may have the best minds, the best liberal arts education....

High school student Chad Farnan, 17, speaks at a campaign fundraiser for Shawn Black, a GOP candidate for the 70th Assembly District, earlier this month. The legal group that represents Farnan, Advocates for Faith & Freedom, has been ordered to pay $19,688 in legal fees. SANTA ANA – In a legal twist that challenges the notion of what a prevailing party is, a federal court clerk on Friday awarded $19,688 in court-related fees to the attorneys who represented high school teacher James Corbett, sued two years ago for making anti-Christian comments in class. Milli Borgarding, the deputy in charge of...

Government watchdogs are blasting taxpayer-funded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities that send college professors on free vacations and pay for programs on topics like the "cultural significance of the circus poster" -- just a few items on an eye-popping list of questionable NEH projects.

JACKSON, Miss. -The University of Mississippi has shortened one of its fight songs to discourage football fans from chanting "the South will rise again" during part of the tune, which critics say is an offensive reminder of the region's intolerant past. However, some fans have continued to recite the chant at the end of the song, "From Dixie With Love," despite the change made last week at the chancellor's request. The Ole Miss band performs the medley before and after games. Earlier this month, the Ole Miss student government passed a resolution suggesting the chant be replaced by the phrase,...

A dangerous idea has been gaining momentum within education-reform circles: Too many young people are going to college. Since Charles Murray took up this line in a series of Wall Street Journal op-eds and then in last year’s book Real Education, the idea has neared the mainstream. Though only directly addressed in a few words, this idea haunts nearly every page of Matthew B. Crawford’s otherwise excellent book Shop Class as Soulcraft, which made it up to number 17 and was listed as an editors’ choice on the New York Times Bestseller List. An article in National Review’s recent special...

Online (Re)Education Bethany Stotts, October 21, 2009 The newsmagazine Diverse: Issues in Higher Education ranked Walden University among the top ten of its “top 100 Graduate Degree Producers” in a number of categories this year, many rankings of which were for Master’s degrees in Education among minority populations such as the African-American, Hispanic and Asian communities. Diverse also placed Walden in 4th place for its number of “total minority” Masters degree graduates in Education. But what, exactly, is Walden teaching the nation’s future minority teachers? Walden faculty members featured at the University’s 2009 Social Change Conference offered a clue. In...

A recent survey of college professors by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that nearly 90% thought that the students they teach were not very well prepared in reading, doing research and academic writing by their high schools. At the same time, many college admissions officers ask students for 500-word "personal statements," which have become known as "college essays," and many high school English department spend a lot of their writing instruction on this sort of effort. History departments and English departments are assigning fewer and fewer term papers, so it is not surprising that lots of students are arriving...

A skirmish between powerful teachers’ unions and President Barack Obama over nearly $5 billion in education spending is shaping up as a preview of the battle to come over No Child Left Behind in Congress early next year. But the tables are turned: now the unions are worried that Obama, a Democratic ally, is going to be just as tough on them as President George W. Bush, a longtime foe.

School wants $52,000 for expenses related to suit against former professor. The University of Colorado is asking for more than $52,000 from Ward Churchill to recover costs the school incurred fighting a lawsuit filed by the former ethnic studies professor. The total tab, filed in Denver District Court last week, includes individual expenses ranging from $2 for courthouse parking to $22,095 for "in-trial video and visual exhibits." "The university believes that what we've filed is both fair and appropriate for some of the expenses that we incurred during the trial," said Ken McConnellogue, spokesman for the University of Colorado system....

InsideHigherEd.com writes: In the last few years, a conservative legal organization [Ed. -- Mark Levin's Landmark Legal Foundation] has filed complaints and extensive information requests to at least 11 colleges and universities with regard to labor centers that conduct research about and offer programs for unions. ... The [American Association of University Professors'] statement questioned the basis for the Landmark actions and said that the association was trying to undercut the labor centers by waging an ideological attack on them. Further, the statement noted that colleges and universities have a range of offerings for different organizations in society, and that...

Three-steps-from-crazy-cat-lady WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan is teaching at Harvard. Our spies report: "Peggy's a ridiculous, hilarious person to speaking with any authority on anything at all." They've provided us with her awesome quotes. We're presenting them emoticon-contextualized them for you...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwvUz0mtrOk&feature=player_embedded# This video found on michellemalkin.com is a good example of how propaganda comes out of our academia....^^^ To understand all these scientific and social FACTS that come at us from our learned and so-called intellectual eschelon, you have to understand the POLITICS of academia. As a young student striving for an education/poli-science degree, I worked at the university in the school of engineering as assistant to the dean . Our professors were HOT on anything to do with NASA at the time, because it meant mega-bucks from federal grants for the space program. It was required that our professors...

A student who transferred from Texas A&M is suing her former university, saying an academic counselor recommended that she intentionally fail three classes. The classes were taken in the fall of 2007, the first semester of her freshman year, according to the suit, and the student approached the counselor because she was having trouble understanding her professors. The student, Jennifer Temple, wanted to Q-drop the classes, but she contends in her suit that the adviser told her that she would lose her parents' health benefits if she did. Students are given a limited number of Q-drops, which allow them to...

On the eve of the French Revolution, the aristocrats inhabiting the palace of Versailles enjoyed, “as an ironic lark, sporting the clothing of the working classes,” according to writer Charles Stenson. These pampered elites were undisturbed by the fact that their peasant getups mocked the real peasants, many of whom were dying as a result of the elites’ self-serving policies. These clueless aristocrats have descendents in spoiled college kids who think it’s trendy to idolize Communist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Che’s face is emblazoned on T-shirts, he was glamorized by the movie “The Motorcycle Diaries,” and Time magazine described him...

I've been thinking a lot recently about the disparate gap in reasoning between the mainstream academic elites and the rest of America. Why is it that liberalism is so often an outgrowth of scholarly people? The most prominent colleges in America---the ivy league schools---are often the most liberal environments, and produce the writers, artists and politicians who are often the most liberal. Why is this so?

Race-Based Student Government by: Alana Goodman, September 24, 2009 Racism is alive and well at the University of Massachusetts. And I’m not talking about the hysterical, trumped-up allegations of racism made by people like Henry Louis Gates and Jimmy Carter at the mere mention of legitimate criticism about Barack Obama’s policies. I mean clear-cut, systematic, institutionalized racism. Just look at our Student Government Association (SGA) By-Laws. As we prepare to swear in our elected representatives to the SGA Senate next week, UMass students should be aware that 13 percent of our SGA Senators will not have even competed in Tuesday’s...

During his first year at Humboldt State University (HSU) - as a tenure-track professor in the Psychology Department - faculty and students tried to silence Mark Harwood on a number of occasions. He was hired primarily to teach Human Sexuality—a class he had taught in a variety of settings including a doctoral program in the UC-system, a psychology program in the second highest ranked City College in the nation, and at a private university. Mark Harwood received excellent reviews from most students; however, with a class as personal as human sexuality, some found a way to be offended. His teaching...

If you are straight, white, and male, please stand up. Congratulations, you are more privileged than you probably ever realized. Because of your blessed birth, you are responsible for the victimization of thousands of your underprivileged peers. You may not be aware, but implicitly you hate, resent, and distrust everyone who does not look like you. How does this make you feel? No, do not answer. Instead, allow us to tell you how you should be feeling. You should be feeling extremely guilty and ashamed, and in order to move past your racist tendencies and make amends for being born...

The American university is the anti-Disneyland, the saddest place on Earth. Today's colleges can make MSNBC seem fair and balanced and give the term "clinical depression" a sunny and joyful flavor. It's no wonder so many prominent liberal intellectuals are angry, begrudging, and gloomy. They imbibe four to ten years of it during their college studies. And their brethren in the media give them a consistent platform for their gloom. A few years ago, the Washington Post discovered that over 72 percent of college professors classify themselves as liberal. The study showed that the most left-leaning departments are in the...

over the last six years, Buffalo taxpayers have paid millions of dollars to teachers not to teach. Twelve different teachers have collected $2.25 million in salary while under suspension and waiting for disciplinary hearings during that time. And that amount doesn't include the costs for substitutes and the hearings themselves. The average wait for those hearings: three years. The school district doesn't release the names of the teachers, or what they've been charged with, but we've learned that right now there's a Physical Education teacher awaiting a hearing who was suspended four years ago this month and has been paid...

Obama was “appointed by God”, we are instructed by a man boasting academic credentials. Writing in the Orlando Sentinel, Jeremy Levitt, “associate dean for International Programs and a distinguished professor of international law at Florida A&M University College of Law in Orlando,” makes this case at the conclusion of a rambling attack on critics of ObamaCare and the right in general:

Ivory or Clay Tower? by: Allie Winegar Duzett, September 16, 2009 Jane Shaw’s article, “The Ivory Tower: Crumbling From Within?” featured in the June 2009 edition of Perspective, shares the thoughts and ideas of famed entrepreneur and education maven Jeff Sandefer, as shared at an Atlas Economic Research Foundation forum where Sandefer was the keynote speaker. Shaw begins by pointing out Sandefer’s notable ability for prediction, noting that Sandefer in 1996 predicted the collapse of Enron Corporation; she goes on to examine Sandefer’s credibility in both business and education, drawing attention to the fact that Sandefer is the mastermind behind...

A federal education grant will soon be used to introduce Arabic language and culture into Missoula high schools. The five-year, $764,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education comes to Missoula schools with the help of University of Montana.

Philosophers and career-thinkers from academia have a place. I can appreciate their zeal and gift for boundless thought. I can even realize that some of their ideas may shape our future for the better. I draw the line however, at giving them stewardship or power over policies that directly affect the country. Policies should come from practical, time tested sources, not radical ideas from people whose purpose is to think of new ways of doing things. Thinkers are mostly just that -- thinkers, not doers. There is a huge gap of scrutiny and trial & error before an idea should...

Within the past year Sarah Schupp has hired five new employees with freshly minted college degrees. She fired one on his first day for inappropriate sexual comments to a co-worker. Another lasted a week before getting a pink slip. ..." you can't call in sick at 7:45 a.m. just because you don't want to come to work at 8 a.m." Jeanne Achille also was disappointed with the hiring of a recent college hire, promoted by a university professor as a "superstar" and fired after three weeks when it was discovered she spent hours online at work visiting a dating site....

Talk about rolling out the welcome mat for new students. Some University of California professors are so peeved that UC's Office of the President has forbidden them from taking furloughs on teaching days that they're planning to walk out on their classes later this month. The date they've chosen - Sept. 24 - is the first day of class at several UC campuses, including UC Davis. Professors advocating for the walkout say they can make political inroads by forcing students to feel the impact of budget cuts prompting the furloughs. "Instructional furloughs pressure the state to cease defunding the UC...

Despite the million-dollar vista, this is not the penthouse suite of a four-star hotel or a luxury condominium in the Back Bay. It’s the common room of a Boston University dorm, perhaps the most opulent residence hall to ever grace the local college landscape. Name tags taped to students’ doors say it all: “Skyview from the Center of the BUniverse.’’ “Sometimes I miss the elevator because I’m too busy looking out the window,’’ said Rina Beyda, a junior from Los Angeles and one of just 14 students lucky enough to land a room on the 25th floor, the highest residential...

Being powerful, Margaret Thatcher once said, is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t. On college campuses, that rule applies to “sex columnists” who tell us they’re bold and cutting-edge for writing about their sex lives in the student newspaper. These columns are overwhelmingly written by uncreative girls who have modeled their personalities and lifestyles after Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex And The City”—right down to the slang, the clothes and, apparently, writing a ludicrous sex column. “Vibrators, cross-dressing, oral sex, multiple orgasms, masturbation, bondage — no topic is too hot to handle,” USA...

During an economic slowdown, prices usually fall. But there’s just one sector of the economy that’s bizarrely insulated from reality: Academia. Tuition, room and board at Sarah Lawrence College just hit $53,166 per year. That’s like buying a C-Class Mercedes every year — without the car. Other colleges are comparable, with even state school tuition rising to levels some parents find impossible. We figure it’s worth it. Universities offer students not just a degree that’s valued in the marketplace, but a chance to broaden their interests and deepen their souls; to gain a solid grounding in the fundamentals that made...

AUGUST 19, 2009 College-Entrance Test Scores Flagging ROBERT TOMSHO Only about a quarter of the 2009 high school graduates taking the ACT admissions test have the skills to succeed in college, according to a report on the exam that shows little improvement over results from the 2008 graduating class. The Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT said 23% of this year's high school graduates had scores that indicated they were ready for college in all four ACT subject areas, or had at least a 75% chance of earning a grade of C or better in entry-level courses. Last year, a similar ACT...

Academic welfare for wash-outs? by: Deborah Lambert, August 17, 2009 If former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales thought the brouhaha surrounding his public life would subside once he entered private life, he was sadly mistaken. The recent appointment of Gonzales to a teaching post on the conservative Texas Tech University campus triggered a firestorm of protest among students. Many alumni sounded off in two Facebook groups–“Citizens Against Employing Alberto Gonzales at Texas Tech” and “Alberto Gonzales Doesn't Belong at Texas Tech”—before the former attorney general showed up for the first day at his new job on August 1st, according to Inside...

UnPROFessional Online by: Bethany Stotts, August 14, 2009 Students have been warned since the advent of social media not to place damaging photos or text on Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. And well they should, considering the string of school suspensions prompted by such postings. Calvin College student Tony Harris was suspended for lewd content on his Facebook profile this February; in 2008 Katherine Evans was “disciplined for ‘cyberbullying’ a teacher on Facebook,” according to Wired.com; and this week Lindsey Wessel came under fire allegedly for bikini shots posted to her MySpace profile. She will not be...

An eye-opening book titled The Language Police lists about 500 words that are banned from school textbooks. Some are amusing, some stupid (probably a banned word), and some are chilling. Here is a very partial list of banned words: Founding Fathers—Banned as sexist. Replace with Founders or Framers. (Because we would not want to note that the men who wrote the documents were men) Caveman—Banned as sexist, replace with cave dweller. (Wonder if that makes the Geico Cave . . . uhhh . . . dweller feel a little better?) Disadvantaged—Banned, replace with reference to the resources or rights that...

Over the past five years, taxpayers have paid about $8 million to 117 administrators who either returned to the faculty or left the university. In 24 cases, the payouts were for $100,000 or more. A News & Observer review found that these agreements, along with other transitional payments, offered sizable sums of money with few or no strings attached, in at least three cases violated UNC system policies and in some cases rewarded administrators with as much as a year's salary for a job poorly done.

However, Free Press, at this May 14 summit, didn't say one word about the well-documented liberal bias that has contributed to the decline in readers and viewers for traditional media outlets and has enabled the rise of the Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio, and the Internet. Instead, Josh Silver of Free Press attacked the "bellowing ideologues" on the air and declared that "The entire dial is empty of local news in many communities." New Strategy This was a tip-off that, in order to take conservative radio hosts off the air, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will be flooded with...

WASHINGTON -- The University of Chicago released a statement Thursday saying Sen. Barack Obama "served as a professor" in the law school -- but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed on Friday. "He did not hold the title of professor of law," said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an assistant dean for communications and lecturer in law at the school. The U. of C. statement was posted on the school's Web site two days after the Clinton campaign issued a memo headlined: "Just Embellished Words: Senator Obama's Record of Exaggerations...

NYU will be short one professor this fall. Thio Li-ann, a professor at the National University of Singapore and a member of that country’s Parliament, was scheduled to teach a course on human rights in Asia and a seminar on constitutionalism as a visiting professor at NYU’s Law School. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, she cancelled her plans last week in response to campus protests of her comments in opposition to homosexuality. More than 740 people have signed an online petition saying that, by hiring Thio, the law school was “acting in opposition to its own policy of...

Another day, another casualty in a conflict pitting equality and demographic diversity against free speech and diversity of opinion: "A Singapore law professor who was to teach a human rights course at New York University Law School this fall has withdrawn after students protested what they called her anti-gay views," the New York Times reported last week. The anger at Dr. Thio Li-ann's appointment as a visiting professor was understandable: According to a petition protesting it, she had opposed repeal of a Singaporean law criminalizing homosexual conduct and "supported the imposition of a $15,000 fine on a free-access Singaporean television...

17 Ware Street Cambridge, MA 02138 . . Located on a residential, tree-lined street, this completely renovated home features a new kitchen, several decorative fireplaces, and a landscaped yard. . . Constructed in 1885 and renovated in 2004, 17 Ware Street consists of one wood-framed, two-level house. It is located near Harvard's Law, Divinity, and Design Schools and is within walking distance of Harvard Square and Harvard Yard. Several small convenience stores and a small grocery store are within a five-minute walk. . . Apartment Features This house has: * A living room. * A dining room. * A study....

Note to the reader: Dr. Henry Louis Gates has reach and influence in the academy, and that reach can–and has–severely damage careers. A pseudonym, in this case, is essential. Notes from a Phantom Negro. The Ivy League is not real life. College in general is not real life, and the Ivy League is a more fantastic version of college. The amenities are better, the rules are flexible and everyone, student and faculty alike, is well aware that the realities of life as most people know it are merely a peculiar footnote to the day to day of campus life. I...

“Nearly All My Professors Are Democrats. Isn’t That a Problem?” is the title of a wonderful opinion piece at the Christian Science Monitor by University of Oregon journalism student Dan Lawton. Lawton’s investigation into the liberally funded diversity program at the University of Oregon yielded some interesting results: “The University of Oregon (UO), where I study journalism, invested millions annually in a diversity program that explicitly included "political affiliation" as a component. Yet, out of the 111 registered Oregon voters in the departments of journalism, law, political science, economics, and sociology, there were only two registered Republicans.” When Lawton published...

JERUSALEM – The lawyer representing Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor at the center of a national race controversy, was a mentor of both Barack and Michelle Obama and served on the president's black advisory council. Charles Ogletree Jr., himself a Harvard University professor, is closely linked to the Black Panthers and to radical black ideology. He is a key member of the reparations movement and once pursued the possibility of bringing a class action lawsuit to win reparations for descendants of African slaves. "I met Barack when he arrived at Harvard Law School in fall of 1988. He...

Though now scrubbed from the Boston Globe website where it was originally posted, what appears to be a .pdf copy of the incident report (#9005127) filed by the officer involved in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Gates is available online. Before being swept up in the indignant frenzy being whipped up over this supposed outrage, it's worth perusing.

SHE'S tired of the 'bullying' and 'torrent of abuse' she has received for her views on homosexuality. She questions why her detractors have chosen to attack her personally and jeopardise her job, instead of focusing their attack on her views. And she asks if people can appreciate the cost she has paid for holding on to her convictions and principles. Dr Thio Li-ann expressed these views in an 18-point memo she sent to the dean of the New York University (NYU) law school and some faculty members, a copy of which has been posted on a US legal blog....

This was originally from the Telegraph.co.uk but the PDF file was omitted or purged. It was then posted by member GQuagmire here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2298940/posts http://www.amnation.com/vfr/Police%20report%20on%20Gates%20arrest.PDF