Free Republic

Back on April 15, I received an extremely courteous message from Matthew Weinberg, the chairman of the UCLA chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), inviting me to speak on campus in mid-May. While I was grateful for the invitation and immediately accepted, being invited to UCLA was the equivalent of getting a message from the dentist saying it’s time for a root canal: it’s painful and unpleasant, but necessary. The pro-Hamas mob in the campus encampment, however, might not allow someone as dangerous as me to speak there. Yes, they’re the ones in charge. YAF explained what is happening...

You’ve had this coming for a loooooong timeOne of my favorite all-time films is 1982’s “The Verdict” starring Paul Newman as down-and-out attorney Frank Galvin who takes on a case against the Archdiocese of Boston.After astonishingly turning down a settlement offer from the defendant and opting to go to trial, Galvin soon loses his star witness.Desperate and not knowing what to do, Galvin goes to the home of the trial judge late at night to beg for a continuance.The judge slowly closes the door in his face and says “I have no sympathy for you.” Consider me the judge these...

America’s academic leaders seem powerless only because they’ve spent decades promoting the ideologies now on such brutal and ugly display.The scenes unfolding at America’s most prestigious colleges are horrific. Antisemitic mobs preaching genocide — at times crossing the line into actual violence — have rendered campuses unsafe for Jews. Faculty members cheer them on, advocating for full-on pogroms.Top administrators flounder. Columbia had protesters arrested and suspended, then stood dumbfounded as a larger, more belligerent wave took their place. Unable to guarantee the physical safety of its students, the school moved all classes online. Copycat mobs on campuses across America formed...

When Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky set up Retraction Watch in 2010, the idea of highlighting academic malfeasance was seen as unusual. Researchers didn’t peddle disinformation; they were the arbiters of truth and the custodians of society’s collective knowledge. In the fourteen years since, the scales have fallen from our eyes as the breadth of academic falsity has been uncovered – through the work of Marcus, Oransky, and a host of others. When they set up Retraction Watch, they believed there were around three retractions published by journals a month. It was actually 45. Now it’s closer to 300. The...

The pro-Hamas demonstrations that have become the latest social contagion to afflict the nation, with “encampments” springing up on college campuses across the country to demand “freedom” for “Palestine,” show clear signs of being orchestrated. One telling indication of this is that a massive number of these allegedly grass-roots protesters have identical tents, as if some well-heeled leftist bought them in bulk with the intention of helping this allegedly spontaneous movement get going. The groundwork for what is happening these days, however, has been laid for years. These demonstrations are in large part the handiwork of the Middle East Studies...

The Left’s winter of discontent appears to be transitioning into a summer of rage as college campus unrest heats up with the warmer weather. Well-funded and well-organized anti-Israel protests are spreading from one college campus to another. And they are becoming a feature in America’s Democrat-run cities as mobs of radicals have been able to shut down roads, bridges, busy intersections, and businesses with impunity. Unlike in 1968 when similar student unrest was eventually met with force when protests got out of line, most of America’s institutions have become willingly or unwillingly helpless in the face of this chaos. There...

The University of Saint Katherine, a small nonprofit in North San Diego County, recently announced it will close May 18, citing “financial pressure due to unprecedented inflation and rising state-mandated labor costs.” It’s not alone. Nationwide, universities face financial hardships that appear to be getting worse. More than 100 colleges and universities have closed or merged, or announced plans to, over the last eight years, according to a tracker updated this month by Higher Ed Dive. The list, which does not include for-profit colleges and also omits mergers among public institutions, totals 108 since 2016. The closures span the spectrum...

Maryam Alwan figured the worst was over after New York City police in riot gear arrested her and other protesters on the Columbia University campus, loaded them onto buses and held them in custody for hours. But the next evening, the college junior received an email from the university. Alwan and other students were being suspended after their arrests at the “ Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a tactic colleges across the country have deployed to calm growing campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war. The students’ plight has become a central part of protests, with students and a growing number of faculty...

Here’s that Professor of Economics who was arrested at Emory university and everyone seems to think is some poor victim of police repression. Caroline Fohlin ADMITS she hit a police officer on the head. Even professors are not allowed to assault cops. Yes, even professors.

Over the past few years, numerous plagiarism scandals have rocked the world of higher education. Prominent public intellectuals and university scholars have been caught improperly citing passages or even straight-up wholesale copying from other scholars’ works in their academic writing. The most high-profile of these scandals involved Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University. She resigned her position under pressure due to her academic misconduct, which involved lifting quotes from other authors and not attributing other writers’ work. Many of Claudine Gay’s supporters were quick to minimize her actions. For example, D. Stephen Voss, associate professor of political science...

“Academia, particularly at the level of Columbia and the Ivy League, is completely broken. I don’t think it can be repaired internally. They have created over 20 to 30 years a unified monoculture which is hostile to western values, which is hostile to capitalism, and which exploits and singles out Israel as the object of their ire as a mobilizing tactic…. People need to understand that there is no internal opposition left.” There is a plus-side to the vile anti-Israel and antisemitic encampments at Columbia and several other universities – the anti-American side of the movement is on full display....

Dozens of anti-Israel protesters were arrested at Emory University Thursday in a violent clash with cops, including at least one professor seen being wrestled to the ground and handcuffed in an online video.In the video, filmed by CNN but widely circulated on social media, chaos unfolds on the Atlanta campus as officers move in on the impromptu tent city erected by demonstrators early that morning.A chorus of screams goes up from the crowd as officers snatch demonstrators and place them under arrest.At one point a woman, identified by reports as Emory economics professor Caroline Fohlin, approaches one of the protesters...

The Nazi cheers of Sieg Heil didn’t start out in Munich, but in Massachusetts.The Nazi chant was borrowed from Harvard football cheers and imported to Germany by Ernst “Putzy” Hanfstaengl, a Harvard man in good standing who befriended Hitler and helped build a more respectable brand for the National Socialists.“Putzy” was one of a number of Ivy League elites who were enchanted by the Third Reich.Socialism forcefully implemented by great men, whether it was FDR, Mussolini, Stalin or Hitler, was the great obsession of America elites of the era who were convinced that it was the only answer to the...

As far as the student protesters at Columbia University and other universities are concerned, they’re making a strong and principled stand for justice. Yet events at Columbia and elsewhere have taken an ugly turn, with the protesters sounding more like the National Socialists (remember, that’s what “Nazi” means) of 1930s Germany than any actual crusader for human rights.When this latest social contagion has run its course and the hysteria has died down, these students would do well to consider carefully what they’re actually supporting. It’s clear that they haven’t done so as of yet.The New York Post on Thursday published...

If you are up on the latest trends in academia, you’ll know that “institutional neutrality” is in the news as more universities consider or adopt it. In my view, this is a good thing, as it maintains the role of the university as a neutral arena in which faculty and students can freely express and debate a wide range of viewpoints constructively rather than feel stifled when their university takes a public stance on a political or social issue. However, there is confusion within academia on what institutional neutrality means and how to implement it. The free-speech organization FIRE (Foundation...

This is all Obama. What you see happening right now in New York City. It all started at Columbia University way back in the early 1980’s. Obama was my Columbia U classmate. And now it’s all full circle back to our roots (excuse the pun). Columbia University is the canary in the coal mine. George HW Bush talked about “1,000 points of light.” Obama uses “1,000 points of destruction” to achieve his goal- the intentional destruction of America. You can see it all happening just blocks apart right now – all built around Columbia University and NYC. Upper Manhattan is...

FBI Director Christopher Wray on April 18 warned national security and intelligence experts, as well as students, that risks the government of China poses to U.S. national and economic security are “upon us now”—and that U.S. critical infrastructure is a prime target. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] has made it clear that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage, and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America’s will to resist,” he said in...

Activists from the Im Tirtzu movement filed a complaint with the police on Wednesday against Dr. Anat Matar, after she praised convicted terrorist Walid Daka, who died in prison on Sunday. Daka, a convicted terrorist, was imprisoned following his role in the kidnap, torture, mutilation, and subsequent murder of IDF soldier Moshe Tamam in 1986. In May of 2023, there was a renewed attempt to have Daka released from prison as he was ill with terminal brain cancer, but the motion did not pass and he was not released. Dr. Matar, a professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University, eulogized...

A woke professor at Baylor University has come under fire for blasting acclaimed Harry Potter author J.K. Rowing for her opposition to normalizing the transgender movement, calling her out for her apparent ‘hatred of trans-people.’ While this is deeply troubling, it is hardly the worst thing about him. Founded in 1845 and claiming 16,000 students, Baylor University is the world’s largest Baptist University and one of the oldest. Like many once-faithful institutions that have gone before her, however, Baylor is deeply compromised and is inexorably on the downgrade. Not only have they hosted Beth Moore and Jemar Tisby for a...

Students at Vanderbilt University are facing expulsion and suspensions after a protest outside of an administration building in March turned chaotic and led to arrests. A university spokeswoman said Vanderbilt couldn’t share how many students are facing expulsion or suspension related to the incident at Kirkland Hall, where students pushed past a community service officer to enter the administration building as part of a sit-in protest. But in an update to students and staff on Friday, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs C. Cybele Raver said after a thorough review of the incident, including examination of evidence and interviews...