Free Republic

“I have had enough bullshit,” wrote Notre Dame sociology professor Christian Smith in a recent piece about the systemic problems of American Higher Education. “The manure has piled up so deep in the hallways, classrooms, and administration buildings of American higher education that I am not sure how much longer I can wade through it and retain my sanity and integrity.” This forward, in-your-face commentary on the state of today’s higher education caught the attention of many in the realm of the Ivory bell tower, but should also serve as a wake-up call to those who don’t follow higher ed...

Academia turns a blind eye to the reality of actual socialism, the ideology practiced by Marxists while they sought the perfection of communism...someday. Socialism is ruining Venezuela today, and the whitewash pervades elite culture, even when the evil strikes close to home for an elite American small college. I attended Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio) in the mid-1970s. I enjoyed my time there, made some great lifelong friends, and graduated with a sincere appreciation of the benefits of having a liberal arts education as it was practiced at the time. Over the years, my political perspective has moved well away from...

The notion of academic rigor has fallen on evil times. In a typical instance of continuing epistemic degradation, Donna Riley, of Purdue University's School of Engineering Education, insists that rigor must be eliminated since rigor is a "dirty deed" fraught with "exclusionary implications for marginalized groups and marginalized ways of knowing." It matters little, apparently, if our bridges collapse so long as "men of color and women, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, first-generation and low-income students" are welcomed into the new holistic community defined by "other ways of knowing" – whatever these may be. Similarly, Rochelle Gutierrez, of the University...

In 2017, President Trump’s first year in the Oval Office brought academic rage to new heights as professors frequently blasted the Commander-in-Chief and berated his voters and anyone who does not embrace progressivism. Here are five things that professors actually said in 2017: 1) Prof suggests Texans deserve hurricane for supporting Trump A University of Tampa professor publicly suggested that Texans deserved Hurricane Harvey because the state voted Republican last year. “I don’t believe in instant Karma but this kinda feels like it for Texas,” Professor Ken Storey tweeted in August. “Hopefully this will help them realize the GOP doesn’t...

A Drexel University professor who asked for “White Genocide” for Christmas last year is finally resigning. George Ciccariello-Maher, now a former professor from Drexel, has a history of controversial tweets targeting conservatives and white people. “All I want for Christmas is White Genocide,” he tweeted, followed up by, “To clarify: When the whites were massacred during the Haitian Revolution, that was a good thing indeed.” In addition to targeting white people and conservatives, Ciccariello-Maher has also made controversial posts about soldiers. Ciccariello-Maher even went as far as blaming the “white supremacist patriarchy” for the Las Vegas shooting, going on to...

A Drexel University professor who received death threats after posting several controversial tweets said Thursday he is resigning because the year-long harassment has made his situation "unsustainable." George Ciccariello-Maher, a professor of politics and global studies, had been teaching his class remotely via video conference after being put on administrative leave, a move that Drexel said was for his own safety.

When academics look for male role models, you never know what they’re going to find. "For one thing, there is not much substantive evidence that male role models are decisive in healthy boys’ development," Michael Kimmel writes in the December 15, 2017 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. "They might be nice to have, but the male role model--the elementary-school teacher, the father, the stern but supportive coach--by himself, as a single variable, doesn’t really have much of an independent effect on a boys development." "And that's why single moms, lesbian moms, female teachers, and female coaches can provide...

The head of Purdue University’s School of Engineering Education, Donna Riley, argued in a recently published academic journal article tough engineering courses only serves to uphold “white male heterosexual privilege.” According to a report from Campus Reform, Riley, in an astonishing feat of vague postmodern writing, published an article in the most recent issue of the academic journal Engineering Education in which she argued that the concept of academic “rigor” is used as a means to exclude students from marginalized groups from academic communities.

The pushback against Lindsey Sheppard, the graduate student raked across the coals for recording a meeting with advisers and admin upset she could NEUTRALLY show a clip of Dr. Jordan Peterson debating transgender pronouns in a Canadian communication class. After being attacked by admin for being neutral on the political subject, called a white supremacist and transphobic, she released the tapes to protect her academic career. After the school's public embarrassment, the administrators attack her for daring to shed "white women's tears" to delegitimize the non-white admin who berated her to tears in the first place. Other students attack her...

I have been in school for more than 40 years. First preschool...Thanks to tenure, I have a dream job for life...Yet a lifetime of experience, plus a quarter century of reading and reflection, has convinced me that it is a big waste of time and money.... How, you may ask, can anyone call higher education wasteful...those with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, 73 percent more than those who have only a high-school diploma, up from about 50 percent in the late 1970s. The key issue, however, isn’t whether college pays, but why.... Educators teach what they know—and most have...

A University of Colorado, Denver administrator worries that white children may “forfeit their humanity” if they aren’t raised by sufficiently progressive parents. In an academic article, Naomi Nishi, who facilitates educational programs for professors and periodically teaches classes, argues that parents should employ “critical race parenting” to prevent white children from committing “racial microaggressions” against their peers.

Brooklyn College is advising New York City Police officers to use bathrooms out of sight from students to avoid possibly offending them. Students said the NYPD “made safe spaces not feel safe.”

CONWAY—A flier reading "IT'S OK TO BE WHITE" was posted on the business school and other locations at Coastal Carolina University's campus this week, and some students felt the message was racist. A picture of the flier was posted by the school's Social Justice Research Initiative on Facebook. In the post, the university department wrote that the messages had been posted on the Wall Building and other places around campus on Monday.

And the sky is blue and water’s wet. For Chris Cuomo to acknowledge that there is a liberal influence in American universities is to do nothing more than to state the incontestably obvious. Even so, it was refreshing this morning to hear the CNN host admit an irrefutable fact that many on the left might nevertheless deny: that American academia slants strongly to the left. Cuomo asked and answered his own question: “is there a liberal influence in universities? The answer is yes.” View the video here.

When you see their efforts to measure racial attitudes on campus, you might wonder. For example, take the latest attempt to do so at the University of Washington. "“For this study, the team, with the help of focus groups of students of color from three universities, devised the Cultural Cognitions and Actions Survey (CCAS) and administered it to a small group of students -- 33 black, 118 white -- at a large public university in the Midwest," Kim Eckart explained in a news release from the University of Washington. "The 56-item questionnaire asks the white respondent to imagine him- or...

Our Dying Universities Msgr. Charles Pope • February 5, 2017 • The last vestiges of the once impressive institution known as the “university” are disappearing as our culture continues to crumble. Perhaps it is poetic justice, since the universities themselves have been a central cause of the cultural collapse that is burying them.The recent riots at the University of California at Berkeley and on other campuses are the result of a decades-long process that has increasingly sought to silence opinions or facts that are at odds with liberalism. Most universities have become indoctrination centers that tolerate little if any...

"His messages indicate he's not so sure that gun control would stop a tragedy like this, but is quite convinced that unencumbered white supremacy is the real problem."

<p>A University of California, Riverside student stole another student’s “Make America Great Again” hat. Then, she marched to a campus office and demanded that administrators outlaw “Make America Great Again” hats because they represent “genocide.”</p> <p>At one point, the student whose hat was stolen says, “You do not get to take other people’s property that is legally theirs.”</p>

Georgetown University Law Center professors plan to take a knee outside of the campus auditorium where Attorney General Jeff Sessions is scheduled to speak Tuesday.

A Bridgewater State University assistant professor is expressing regret after his post-election rant slamming President Trump and his supporters made headlines. . . . “F– Donald Trump,” and “F– ANYONE who voted for Donald Trump,” a now-deleted Nov. 10 post by Mr. Nichols read. A Nov. 11 post, which has since been deleted, featured a picture of the Ku Klux Klan and Mr. Nichols‘ comment that read: “Trump voters, you belong in this parade.”